Since when has online shopping become a matter of morals?

When shopping online, you often see notes in the courier boxes offering cashback for good reviews, with the words written on them as if the store will go bankrupt without your good review. When you have clicked "Confirm Receipt", your online shopping is not over yet, because the customer service will privately chat with you to give her a good review, otherwise you will not be able to complete the sales for this month. I don't know when it started, but moral kidnapping became popular in online shopping.

Online shopping platforms are becoming more and more standardized, there are fewer fraudulent stores, and large stores are afraid of the threat from the platforms and dare not cheat customers at will... As a consumer, what do you think of the current online shopping experience?

Consumer rights are improving day by day, and the general public is happy, but some people are not satisfied.

Sellers and buyers are a contradictory combination that has common interests but also conflicts of interest.

How did consumers’ rights improve? They were won back from sellers!

In the past, shopping online was a thrilling journey:

• After paying, you have to worry about whether the seller will deliver the goods and whether your money will be wasted;
• After the goods are delivered, you will worry whether the express delivery contains the goods, and don't send it with a bunch of waste paper;
• When the goods arrive, check carefully to see if there are any problems, in case the merchant refuses to admit the quality problem;
• If there are defects, you have to negotiate with the merchant patiently, and you also have to worry about the merchant disappearing after the goods are returned...

Now, with legal regulations and platform constraints, ordinary online stores dare not use these tricks.

However, they may not be willing to do so.

The more they deduct from users, the more they can earn. The less they pay users, the less they lose.

After his previous illegal methods could no longer be sustained, as shrewd as he was, he began to use methods on the edge of the rules - using moral kidnapping to infringe on the interests of users.

1. Moral kidnapping is also kidnapping

There are many acts of moral blackmail around us.

For example, a person who is disrespectful to the elderly forces others to give up their seats for him; for example, someone uses the family card to PUA his relatives.

Some online businesses have also absorbed a lot of nutrients and learned a lot of essence from the bad culture.

1. Moral blackmail to prevent returns

One obvious sign of the gradual strengthening of consumer protection is the gradual increase in the return rate.

On the one hand, when consumers encounter after-sales problems, the platform has more detailed and strong rules to protect them, allowing legitimate returns to be completed in more cases, unlike the early days of online shopping, when merchants could deny it by saying "this is not a problem, no refund" or "there was no problem when the product was shipped."

On the other hand, since the 7-day no-reason return rule was promulgated, consumers can purchase goods with greater confidence without having to worry about difficulties in returning the goods if they are not satisfied.

Although this is a rule to protect consumers, the prosperity of the e-commerce industry has also benefited from it. Without such strong protection, all stores can only buy but not return, the number of people willing to shop online will definitely decrease greatly, and the frequency of online shopping will definitely be greatly reduced.

However, merchants only care about how much they can earn, and rarely show any gratitude to the industry and the environment. Therefore, customer returns are always regarded as a burden by them.

After all, if one more person returns a product, it means more cost and less profit.

The rules are to protect returns, consumers have a need to return goods, and merchants want to reduce returns. In this case, moral blackmail-style anti-return measures are born.

Judging from the language alone, the merchant seems to be very pitiful. The goods are just OK, the profit is very low, the delivery fee is very expensive, and he keeps apologizing sincerely... It's as if the buyer is bullying him.

But if you stand in the consumer's shoes and buy something that is broken when it arrives, wouldn't that be unfair?

The merchant says it does not affect the use, but who would use a new phone case if its appearance is damaged?

The so-called profit is very low. The merchants do not give consumers a cent when making a profit, so why do they ask consumers to share the loss when they incur a loss?

As for the fact that express delivery is more expensive than mobile phone cases and the profit is only 1 yuan, that is just a random number. The actual situation may not be higher, but it is not as low as described by the merchants.

However, these sales pitches that merchants have long prepared have been carefully considered and tested many times.

If you are a soft-hearted consumer, you may be infected by the pleading. Or you may fall into the logical fallacy created by the merchant during the communication. Or you may be put on a high position by the merchant's rhetoric and find it difficult to say anything harsh, so you can only give up the return and claim.

When you think you have been a magnanimous and good person, you turn around and find that:

Bought a piece of junk that is unusable and still have to pay for it!

There is a return guarantee, but I don’t use it!

Is this kindness or stupidity?

The wolf will not be grateful to Mr. Dongpo. Perhaps across the Internet, merchants are laughing at you for being easily fooled.

2. Moral kidnapping and changing the approach

Similar rhetoric can also allow consumers to change the intensity and means of complaints during the refund and claims process.

From "quality issue" to "7 days no questions asked".

On today's e-commerce platforms, the reasons for returns are divided into very detailed categories.

Through such classification, the platform system can understand in more detail whether a merchant's products have common quality problems, or whether the merchant's services are often disclosed.

When pushing again, the weight of these merchants may be affected.

Precisely because they are afraid of being "returned due to quality issues" by buyers, which would lead to a decline in their store traffic, some merchants will beg consumers to choose a 7-day no-reason return policy when they want to return products.

Some consumers were influenced by the pre-written sales pitch, and since they felt that it would have no impact and they could return the products and get a refund anyway, they accepted it.

From the perspective of a single transaction, consumers do not suffer any loss. However, in the long run, this will allow bad merchants to continue to control higher traffic, causing more consumers to suffer.

For consumers who have switched to the "7-day no-reason return policy", there are still some losses. For example, users who return too many products without reason will be disliked by insurance companies, which will lead to an increase in the price of freight insurance, or even prohibition of purchasing freight insurance.

The merchants you sympathize with will never come forward to share such losses with you.

3. Ask for positive reviews

It is even more common for e-commerce stores to ask for positive reviews.

Usually in the express boxes, we always see those 5-star positive reviews with cash back promises of 3 yuan or 5 yuan.

For consumers, such positive reviews can at least bring some feedback.

But there are also businesses that have learned to use moral kidnapping to manipulate consumers and make them make the comments they want.

Create a pitiful operation personality, who, because of the store's assessment requirements, can only beg consumers to give positive reviews.

The logic is rigorous and reasonable, and negative reviews are not enough to appease public anger.

I even believed it the first time.

Then, a few days later, when I wanted to buy it again, he used the same trick again and started the "last day assessment". All I could say was, stop insulting my IQ.

It was bad enough to beg on the platform, but for a while, I frequently received text messages from merchants using similar rhetoric asking for good reviews, which was very annoying.

This situation was finally alleviated after virtual account protection was popularized on e-commerce platforms.

4. Begging for goods

What's worse, some people even use these methods of complaining and complaining to sell goods.

When you buy a product and the merchant is able to communicate with you, he or she will start by telling you how poor they are, how low their profits are, and how their other products are also very good, so that you can buy something else as well.

These merchants generally have multiple versions of their statements.

Chinese people are generally kindhearted and cannot bear to refuse directly. They will often find an excuse to decline politely. They will immediately use the next line of speech to block your excuse for rejection and make it extremely embarrassing for you not to buy.

2. Don’t talk about business when doing business

Various forms of moral kidnapping have been refined and become increasingly perfect through the joint efforts of one business after another.

The fact that it has been effective and has been used to this day requires a lot of strategy.

1. No violation

If you often watch legal programs, you will definitely hear the host repeating the two different phrases "legal punishment" and "moral punishment".

A person may not be punished by law but may be condemned morally. This shows that some behaviors within the moral boundaries are beyond the legal boundaries.

This is exactly what happens to e-commerce stores. When the platform sets more and more rules that are like laws, merchants will be punished for obvious violations. So they start from the gray area and use some means that do not violate the rules but can achieve their goals.

Moral kidnapping, this concept is very vague.

What kind of words are considered moral kidnapping? What is the punishment for moral kidnapping?

Even national laws are difficult to judge rigorously, let alone e-commerce rules.

2. Indirect

The indirect approach, like water dripping through a stone, makes it difficult to guard against.

If the merchant sternly refuses your complaint right away, no one would be able to give up easily.

However, this form of moral kidnapping often begins with empathy and apology.

First comfort the consumer and show a good attitude to let half of the consumer's original anger dissipate. Then, when you start discussing the problem, you will encounter much less resistance.

Then, we use persuasive words to move forward step by step, either making consumers admit that "this is a small problem" or making them sigh that "it's really not easy for you."

After a few words were spoken, another one came:

Since it's a minor problem, you can use it, right? Then there's no need to refund.

Since you know that it's not easy for me, don't force me to refund the money, otherwise you will be a cold-blooded executioner.

When you realize it, you have fallen into the trap.

3. Understand human nature

In a business negotiation, if it is a contest between two companies' negotiation teams, there may not be any morality involved. Everyone is used to dancing on the sword of rules.

However, most consumers do not have this awareness, and even when faced with transactions, they view it from the perspective of normal life.

Therefore, the merchants’ choice of this method that targets human nature can be regarded as the right remedy for the disease.

Use emotional cries to make consumers empathize and imagine the pitiful scene of the merchant in their minds, thus becoming soft-hearted.

They use fake personalities and put themselves in a weak position, allowing consumers to understand how difficult it is for them.

The logical traps make it difficult for consumers to justify their normal rights protection claims. After falling into the logical fallacy, even though they clearly feel it is wrong, they don’t know how to refute it.

But no matter how eloquent they are, in essence, after all the means have been used, consumers' problems have not been truly solved.

When consumers realize what has happened afterwards, or encounter similar rhetoric again, they will feel uncomfortable with their situation at the time.

Therefore, when faced with blatant moral kidnapping, there is no need to put yourself in a difficult position.

3. It is better to seek in the straight path than in the crooked path.

No matter how compassionate a person is, they should not be exploited at will.

Our patience and kindness are limited.

Faced with this kind of moral blackmail, there is no need to empathize with him or feel the same way. Instead, we should pay more attention to safeguarding our own consumer rights.

The method is very simple, two points, one, stand firm and two, be simple and direct.

The so-called standing firm means being clear about what you want and not changing it easily. Goods with quality problems should be returned; there is no need to buy things you don’t want to buy extra; there is no need to give a good review for things you are not satisfied with. Stick to your original intention.

The so-called simple and direct means directly stating your requirements, or handling it directly in the platform's return system, without saying unnecessary words or giving merchants the opportunity to deceive you.

If the merchant continues to use moral blackmail, then you might as well expose him directly: If you use moral blackmail again, I will file a complaint.

4. Both bad and good

From another perspective, in fact, the various means of moral blackmail used by merchants are actually a reflection of consumer rights.

Because they cannot use force and robbery, merchants will turn to study how to "stab people with a soft knife";

Precisely because it is impossible to use an overbearing and unreasonable attitude, businesses choose to use a tactful and soothing attitude to package the means of moral kidnapping.

As consumers become more familiar with these tactics, they will gradually lose their effectiveness and become less well-known.

Of course, by then, merchants will definitely develop new dosages.

However, consumers will not give up their rights, and new countermeasures will emerge.

Happiness is achieved through struggle.