Recently, Ms. Sun of Shenzhen told the surging quality reporting complaint platform (https://tousu.thepaper.cn) that between December 2021 and January 2022, she booked three homestay orders on a membership-based accommodation platform called "Rucheng" and paid a total deposit of 5840 yuan. The platform mainly provides the service of "paying the annual fee to stay at the platform partner hotel for free", and promises to refund the deposit after check-out. However, since the end of December last year, Ms. Sun's three booking deposits have been delayed by the platform.
Ms. Sun has made three reservation reservations for homestays and paid a total deposit of 5840 yuan.
Ms. Sun contacted the customer service of the above platform many times, and the other party did not reply to the exact refund time. Ms. Sun requested the platform to immediately refund the deposit in full.
In this regard, the official customer service staff of the "Rucheng" platform replied to the surging news that the deposit is uniformly scheduled by the company's system to process the refund, and the specific refund time cannot be informed, please be patient and wait for the arrival.
Consumer complaints
Ms. Sun said that the "Rucheng" platform provides a membership-based special resort reservation service, and members who recharge their annual passes can enjoy unlimited free stays within one year. "Now it costs a few hundred yuan to stay in a hotel, but as long as you become a platform member, staying in the homestays and hotels they (such as Cheng) cooperate with is free, so it is still quite attractive at the beginning." So Ms. Sun began to purchase annual passes in May 2020 and became a "free member" of the platform.
Introduction to the official website of "Rucheng".
According to the official website of "Rucheng", users can become members after paying the annual fee, and can book in advance within one year and stay in the partner hotels of the platform for free. The rules for the use of membership rights and interests displayed on the official website of the "Rucheng" platform say that when booking, the room rate needs to be prepaid as a deposit, and the housing deposit will be refunded to the bank card paid by the member within 3-5 working days after the check-out process is completed.
Ms. Sun said that since May 2020, she has purchased two annual passes and booked a homestay through the "Rucheng" mini program, and there has been no problem. However, between December 28, 2021 and January 24, 2022, Ms. Sun booked and stayed in the homestay three times through the "Rucheng" platform, paying a total deposit of 5840 yuan, but the deposit for these three orders has not been refunded so far. "The deposit was refunded immediately after the room was returned, but since the end of December last year, my deposit has not been refunded."
Ms. Sun said that she repeatedly contacted the customer service staff of the "Rucheng" platform to confirm the time of the deposit refund, and the other party replied that the deposit would be refunded in the order of the order of the order. "If you wait as they say, I don't know when." The answer of the customer service staff made Ms. Sun unacceptable.
Ms. Sun said that on March 17, when she inquired about the "Rucheng" Mini Program, she found that the pending deposit in the account was used for consumption deduction for shopping in the mall without her knowledge. The breakdown of the expenses she provided showed that on March 14, there were three records of expenditures for "shopping in the mall" in the account, totaling 4,512 yuan. The order details page shows that the amount of all three expenses is deducted from the deposit.
Ms. Sun said that the three expenses were not operated by herself, and she did not know why the pending deposit in her account was used to offset the consumption. She said that after discovering the problem, she tried to communicate with the platform customer service at the first time, but she could not contact the customer service due to the excessive number of queues in the system.
The surging news noted that when opening the "Rucheng" Mini Program, the system will prompt before jumping, "The Mini Program has recently been complained about by a large number of users and may be suspected of transaction disputes." Ms. Sun told The Paper, she browsed on the Internet and found many people who had similar experiences with her, "My deposit is thousands of yuan, and many members have tens of thousands of deposits in this platform." Ms. Sun believes that the platform's behavior of delaying consumers' payments is bad in nature, and she demanded that the "Rucheng" platform immediately refund the deposit, and said that it would call the police to deal with it.
Prompts before the system jumps.
Business response
On March 18, the official customer service staff of the "Rucheng" platform replied to the surging news that the deposit was uniformly scheduled by the company's system to process the refund, and the specific refund time could not be informed, so please be patient and wait for the arrival. Regarding the reason for the platform's delay in refunding, the customer service said that the specific cause of the relevant problem was not notified by the company, and he was not aware of it.
As for why the deposit to be refunded in Ms. Sun's account was used for the consumption deduction of shopping in the mall, the customer service staff explained, "If the user does not operate, we will certainly not automatically redeem it, and there is no behavior that induces the user to click." The above-mentioned customer service said that Ms. Sun may have clicked the "one-click exchange" button in the Mini Program at that time, so the system will automatically exchange the deposit balance for related products in the case of sufficient deposit.