Taobao Pinduoduo updates after-sales rules, and the "refund only" strategy is reversed!

On July 26, Taobao announced that it would optimize the "refund only" strategy, enhance the after-sales autonomy of merchants, and reduce or cancel after-sales intervention for high-quality stores. One stone stirred up a thousand waves, on the one hand, from the applause of the platform merchants, and on the other hand, from the doubts of consumers.

Why did the simple three words - "refund only" cause fierce controversy in the market?

Let's take a look at how "refund-only" was born.

"Refund only" was first launched by Pinduoduo as a consumer service strategy, where consumers can apply for a refund directly without sending the product back if they are not satisfied with the product after online shopping. Starting in December 2023, platforms such as JD.com, Taobao, and Douyin have also begun to follow up on this service, and "refund-only" has quickly become the standard in the e-commerce industry.

The original intention of the launch of "refund only" is to protect the rights and interests of users, reduce the trouble of returns, and force merchants to improve the quality of goods and services. When consumers express dissatisfaction with the quality of the goods, the platform customer service will intervene to pop up a refund-only option to dispel consumers' concerns about after-sales; Especially when the price of the product is not as high as the shipping cost, only the refund actually saves the cost of return shipping for the merchant.

For example, Taobao's previous rules show that if the seller has too many bad reviews or violations, is complained by consumers, or the seller delays or forces the delivery without the buyer's permission, the system will support the buyer to refund only.

Douyin clarifies in the rules that if the praise rate of the product is less than 70%, the platform has the right to take measures to support the consumer to refund only the refund and return the refund including the shipping fee for the after-sales application of the product transaction order.

JD.com also said that if the goods delivered by merchants to consumers have a large number of problems such as inferior quality, inconsistent descriptions, and abnormal packages, the platform has the right to decide whether to agree to refund only.

It can be seen that the original intention of each platform to set up refund-only is to assume governance responsibilities and provide better protection for consumers' rights and interests.

However, what is unexpected is that in the subsequent development, this rule, which is convenient for merchants and service consumers, has changed. Since the major e-commerce platforms followed up and came into effect the "refund only" rule, "refund only" has continued to cause controversy, and has even become synonymous with "wool". On social platforms, many merchants posted the losses caused by "refunds only", and publicly complained about the unfairness of the platform's punishment.

The platform is involuted, and the volume is the quality of service, which is supposed to benefit consumers, so that everyone can be more confident when consuming. However, this kind of confidence, when it falls into actual operation, has to a certain extent fueled the arrogance of the "white prostitution party".

Since the emergence of "refund only", all kinds of "wool picking" strategies have emerged in an endless stream, breeding a group of people who specialize in exploiting loopholes, and even forming a gray industrial chain. Novices pay to join the group, learn the strategy of white prostitution, and get wool by complaining to merchants and taking advantage of the delivery time difference.

According to reports, since the beginning of this year, topics related to "refunds only" have been on the hot search many times. Some Shanghai store owners drove more than 1,000 kilometers to find buyers to defend their rights for 12 pairs of socks that were unreasonably refunded, pushing the "refund only" policy to the forefront. Moreover, because of the controversial refund-only, the originally small conflict between some consumers and e-commerce merchants has been intensified.

In addition to the unfair competition between the malicious refund-only "wool party" and merchants, some buyers also tend to overuse the refund-only feature, and the platforms mostly prioritize supporting consumers. In this way, the seller will have to bear the cost of an additional loss of goods.

Under this pressure, merchants either raise prices, move to other sales channels, or reduce the quality of goods. Obviously, the extensive "refund-only" strategy has increased the cost of merchants, and after cost transmission, it has brought harm to the rights and interests of consumers and experience.

In a dilemma. On both the consumer and merchant side, satisfaction with the platform's refund-only strategy is gradually declining. On the one hand, merchants are trapped in a large number of refunds and appeals, resulting in high costs and operational difficulties; At the same time, another voice began to ferment on the Internet: only the increase in refunds has caused a decline in the quality of goods, merchants are focused on saving costs, and customer experience is not so important.

In this turmoil caused by "refunds only", the balance between consumer rights and merchants' interests began to be unbalanced. The unreasonable cost of refunds for some users is eventually passed on to everyone, so that the rights and interests of all e-commerce consumers are harmed. This has also made major e-commerce platforms start to calmly consider this rule again.

From September 1, the State Administration for Market Regulation's "Interim Provisions on Online Anti-Unfair Competition" will be officially implemented. Article 24 of the "Provisions" proposes that platform operators shall not use service agreements, transaction rules and other means to impose unreasonable restrictions or impose unreasonable conditions on the transactions of operators on the platform on the platform, transaction prices and transactions with other operators.

E-commerce platforms should not only protect the rights and interests of users, but also maintain fairness on the merchant side, so as not to damage the quality and experience of the entire e-commerce ecosystem, and the most important thing is to be fair and not biased.

As a result, recently, Taobao and Pinduoduo have updated the relevant regulations on after-sales service and are soliciting public opinions. This involves a shift in the "refund-only" strategy to be fairer to merchants.

Taobao will launch a series of adjustments for refund-only from August 10. According to the new regulations, premium merchants will not be actively intervened by the platform to request only refunds:

(1) After the strategy is launched, ≥the platform will not actively intervene through Want Want to support refunds only after receiving the goods through Want Want, but encourages merchants to negotiate with consumers first.

For merchants in other segments, the platform will give different degrees of independent disposal rights according to the experience score and the nature of the industry. The higher the experience score, the greater the merchant's disposal power.

(2) Taobao has optimized the refund-only appeal link. After the merchant initiates an appeal, the platform will ask a third-party testing agency to conduct a random inspection of the goods, and if the test is passed, the platform will compensate the merchant for the loss.

(3) The platform will upgrade the refund-only behavior recognition model for goods that have been received, and reject refund-only claims submitted by consumers with abnormal behaviors

(4) Only refunds for higher amounts will be manually reviewed by the platform's customer service.

Taobao's new regulations are oriented towards "balance", including not forcing high-quality merchants to refund only, providing quality inspection services for merchants' complaints, and algorithms identifying users with abnormal refund behavior.

Although other e-commerce platforms have not yet seen the latest follow-up policies, they will basically follow up from the current market trend. Because this is not a trivial matter related to one or two e-commerce platforms, but a major event for the healthy and orderly development of the entire e-commerce industry.

In the final analysis, "refund only" is only a means of protecting consumer rights and interests, and does not create a binary opposition between consumers and merchants. Therefore, the key is balance. The orientation of Taobao's new regulations is "balance". On the one hand, the complaint handling mechanism of merchants has been improved to ensure that the reasonable interests of merchants are protected; On the other hand, we will strengthen our technical investment and data analysis capabilities to more accurately identify and deal with malicious "refund-only" behaviors and bad merchants, so as to maintain a good trading environment.

The essence of "refund-only" is trust. E-commerce platforms must be worthy of the trust of merchants and consumers, in order to achieve long-term development. Today's adjustment of strategy is a return to the value of fairness in the true sense.

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