The siege on “refund only”, an organized business conspiracy?

What is the reason behind the business war caused by "refund only"? Is "refund only" reasonable? Who is hurt? And who is trying to stop "refund only"? This article gives answers to all the above questions. I recommend this article to those who want to understand business wars. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Real business wars are often cruel and ugly.

Recently, Nongfu Spring issued a lawyer's letter to the Hong Kong Consumer Council, pointing out three major mistakes of the Hong Kong Consumer Council and requesting the Hong Kong Consumer Council to immediately clarify, apologize and eliminate the impact.

On July 18, Zhong Shanshan said on social media that "the competitors were treacherous and cruel. If Nongfu Spring hadn't been tough, it would have been killed long ago."

In this regard, many netizens said that regardless of the truth, "a healthy market environment is the foundation for the development of enterprises."

In fact, it is not just Nongfu Spring. In the field of e-commerce, a fierce "battle" is also in full swing.

"Refund only" is the focus of this business war.

The original intention of launching the "refund only" model is mainly to protect consumer rights and improve user experience.

Pinduoduo launched the "refund only" policy a few years ago, and e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Douyin and Kuaishou also began to follow suit.

In the eyes of many consumers, “refund only” is a further protection and inclination of consumer rights by major platforms, and is also the result of competition in the e-commerce industry.

But recently, a "siege" about "refund only" has been unfolding. The core point is that "refund only" is encouraging "freeloaders" and will be detrimental to merchants' profits in the long run.

At present, this silent war is intensifying. Is "refund only" reasonable? Who is hurt? And who is trying to stop "refund only"?

1. An organized business plot?

As long as you search for "refund only" on the Internet, you can find a lot of relevant information, and there are endless criticisms. The core point is that "refund only" seriously damages the interests of merchants and encourages the malice of "freeloaders".

Merchants hope that the platform will abandon the "refund only" service because they believe that "refund only" will spoil users and allow some users with ulterior motives to take advantage of merchants, thereby damaging the interests of the merchants.

Interestingly, there are also some practitioners who are "attacking", and their demand is to ask a certain e-commerce platform to announce the rules and algorithms of "refund only". After all, this e-commerce platform was the first to launch the "refund only" service.

Why are these people attacking "refund only"?

"If you think these are the real demands of businesses, then you are naive." Internet practitioner Mark bluntly stated that this is an "organized business conspiracy."

Mark revealed that on social platforms, there are many "private domains" related to "refund only", or even "organizations". These "organizations" are managed by dedicated people to guide everyone on how to "create topics", how to "promote the offensive", and "how to fight against the platform and resist 'refund only'."

Among the screenshots provided by Mark, one is about the "Pinduoduo Refund Only Group". Judging from the data, Mark has joined at least dozens of similar groups.

According to Mark, most of the members in the group are merchants and some e-commerce platform operators. There are a large number of them and the group is very active. Their common goal is to denounce "refund only".

"This is a very obvious organized and premeditated attack, and many of the participants are even practitioners of the black and gray industries." Mark said bluntly, "Do you think it is really to protect the rights of merchants? Actually, it is not."

In fact, similar content can be found everywhere on social platforms, such as "Merchant Collection", "Teach You How to Protect Your Rights", etc. In the comment section of these contents, if someone asks how to contact the author, the author will reply "private chat".

2. Who hates “refund only”?

So who did the “refund only” policy offend? Why did it attract such a large-scale “siege”?

Since the beginning of this year, especially after the 618 event, more and more merchants have begun to complain about the difficulty of making money. Some merchants have "crying" on social media that the return rate during the promotion was too high, not only did they not make money, but they also suffered losses.

Merchants believe that there are two main reasons why it is difficult to make money. One is that they are harmed by the low-price competition of e-commerce companies, and the other is that they are "harassed" by users with ulterior motives.

In the view of merchants, the reason why users are becoming increasingly difficult to serve is mainly because the platform launched the "refund only" policy, which allowed some users to take advantage of the loophole, so merchants hate "refund only".

Is “refund only” really so hated? In order to find out this question, "Hearing Tech" consulted many businesses and found a lot of relevant data on social media.

Judging from the results, there are indeed many returns regardless of which e-commerce platform, and the return rate is showing an increasing trend, but the proportion of "refunds only" is very low.

Some of the jokes about "refund only" in the public opinion field mostly come from small speculators, that is, middlemen.

However, some brands, factory-type merchants and large merchants are not greatly affected by the "refund only" policy and rarely speak out online.

This is not difficult to understand. Some regular factory-type manufacturers have relatively low product costs due to their large shipment volumes and strong supply chain capabilities.

If such manufacturers sell low-priced products of around ten yuan, the cost may be only one or two yuan.

If users are not satisfied with the products after purchasing, these manufacturers would rather accept direct refunds from users, which is simpler and more cost-effective than asking users to return the products through after-sales service. After all, after-sales service also requires costs.

Some middlemen are different. They need to get the goods from the factory, which is more expensive. If the user refunds the goods but does not return them, it will affect their profits, so these middlemen are clearly opposed to "only refunding".

3. What is the real intention of the siege of "refund only"?

Judging from the after-sales data of 618 this year, the impact of “refund only” is not as great as imagined. For example, Pinduoduo, which was “besieged” and was the first platform to launch “refund only”, performed better in after-sales service.

Judging from the reactions from all parties, several well-known e-commerce platforms are actually not opposed to “refund only” - if they did not agree with this service, they would not have launched “refund only” together.

In Mark's opinion, what these e-commerce platforms really care about is that Pinduoduo has implemented the "refund only" policy since 2021, and the platform rules, algorithm logic, and emergency mechanisms have long been perfected.

In comparison, other platforms only started to implement it this year, and they were somewhat hesitant in the implementation process, and will only be left further and further behind by Pinduoduo.

Mark believes that some people deliberately confuse public opinion and make everyone hate "refund only", and they want to force Pinduoduo to disclose its algorithms and rules to facilitate "copying homework".

This kind of dishonorable means adopted for commercial competition is not uncommon and has been practiced in many industries, such as food delivery and online ride-hailing.

Of course, there are also those who are truly opposed to "refund only" in their hearts, such as some e-commerce platforms that are mainly self-operated. Since the self-operated model relies on "gross guarantee", it is difficult to implement low-price competition and cannot follow up on "refund only", so they are naturally hostile to "refund only".

In Mark's opinion, this type of platform is the main force in this wave of siege on "refund only".

4. Is it difficult for merchants? It is even more difficult for consumers to return goods and get refunds!

It has to be admitted that malicious "refund only" users do exist, but they are a minority after all.

Many users told "Hearing Tech" that "if you are not satisfied with the goods you receive, you will generally choose to return them. If you apply for a refund, the goods will be returned to the merchant. It would be unbearable to refund without returning the goods."

But this is precisely the weakness of consumers. Although merchants always complain that the return rate is too high to bear and that many users choose to refund rather than return the goods, in reality, it is still difficult for consumers to refund or return the goods.

The China Consumers Association recently released the "2024 "618" Consumer Rights Protection Public Opinion Analysis Report". Public opinion monitoring found that due to the influence of multiple factors such as merchants seeking breakthroughs, changes in the market environment, and a decline in consumers' willingness to buy, this year's complaints are no longer focused on old problems such as "doing math problems" for promotional discounts, but have derived new topics such as selling inferior products as good ones, returns and exchanges, and price insurance.

Data from relevant institutions also show that the top ten types of online consumer complaints nationwide in the first half of 2024 are: refund issues accounted for as high as 28.31%, and the rest are: online fraud (9.19%), product quality (8.78%), unfair terms (8.78%), after-sales service (6.51%), etc.

Although all major e-commerce companies have launched controversial "refund only" services, user refund issues still account for nearly one-third of online consumer complaints across the entire network.

Compared with safeguarding the interests of businesses, protecting consumer rights is a longer and arduous task.

(Mark is a pseudonym in this article.)

Author: Chu Ke

Source: WeChat public account "TingtongTech"