Text: Li Yan, Yilan Business
Editor|Xue Xiang
Keeping up with the footsteps of Pinduoduo, Taobao and JD.com have also opened "refund only".
On December 26, Taobao issued a public notice to change the relevant rules for dispute settlement on the Taobao platform, which will take effect immediately.
On December 27, JD.com added a new non-returnable implementation standard for refunds in the "JD Open Platform After-sales Service Management Rules", which came into effect on December 29;
It's worth noting that One View Business found that Taobao and JD.com's refund-only are different from Pinduoduo.
The change in Taobao's rules is that when a buyer returns a product, Taobao will evaluate the merchant's past behavior trajectory based on the platform's big data capabilities, and if the merchant has too much negative information in the past, the platform will directly make a quick return refund or refund only support for the buyer's after-sales service.
JD.com's rule change is that consumers do not need to return the original product in the independent after-sales process, while merchants can refund consumers through "no return and refund only". Once the refund is completed, the service order status will be directly entered into the provisional state, avoiding further return processes.
Pinduoduo's refund process page does not describe the merchant and users too much. It was only mentioned several times that "Pinduoduo has the right to shorten the processing time for merchants at its sole discretion based on factors such as user applications, user complaints, or after-sales service of stores." ”
Taobao's refund-only is mainly based on negative information such as store quality indicators and customer complaints of sellers, and if it meets the relevant scenarios, it will directly support refund-only; JD.com states that "JD has the right to handle or support consumers' refund-only and return refund claims according to transaction Xi." ”
Judging from the description, Pinduoduo and JD.com consider more user past behavior data, while Taobao combines user behavior data and merchant operation data to judge.
So how to behave in the actual operation process? Some netizens place an order for a product on Pinduoduo and consult customer service, if you apply for a refund only, what conditions need to be met. Pinduoduo quickly replied: Pinduoduo identified that the merchant did not handle your problem well and has intervened to deal with it for you. Pinduoduo can help you get a full refund, and you can handle the goods yourself, can you see it?"
On Taobao, Yilan Business will only refund a courier that has not been received due to abnormal logistics, because the author is an 88VIP member, and it is only refunded due to abnormal logistics. So the platform's statement is: support gives you a refund first.
Jingdong customer service told the author that the specific conditions for refunds are still subject to after-sales review.
In fact, in September this year, Douyin e-commerce has also updated a refund-only related explanation in the "Merchant After-sales Service Management Specification": "If the praise rate of the product is less than 70%, the platform has the right to take measures to support the after-sales application of the product transaction order to support consumers to only refund and return the refund package freight, and the praise rate of the product can be lifted if it recovers to more than 70% for 7 consecutive days." Obviously, Douyin uses the metric of "merchant praise rate" to determine whether it meets the refund-only criterion.
Obviously, compared with Pinduoduo, Taobao and Douyin are based on more judgment bases on the refund-only mechanism." It is not only to "become Pinduoduo", but also to "surpass Pinduoduo".
So, why did Taobao and JD.com also start to launch refund-only?
From the user's point of view, refund-only is undoubtedly a measure conducive to "returning to the user" and protecting the rights and interests of consumers.
This year, Jack Ma came forward twice to express his views on Alibaba. For the first time in late May this year, Ma Yun said at a small-scale communication meeting of Taotian Group: The next opportunity is Taobao instead of Tmall, and Ali e-commerce should "return to users and return to Taobao".
For the second time, when Pinduoduo's market value surpassed Alibaba, Ma Yun congratulated Pinduoduo on its past decision-making in Ali, and said at the same time, "Everyone has been bullish, and those who reform for the sake of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow are respectable organizations that are willing to pay any price and sacrifice." ”
Coincidentally, Liu Qiangdong also said on Jingdong's intranet this month, "Jingdong must change, otherwise there is no way out." ”
Keywords such as "user" and "change" can be seen that Taobao and JD.com, in the face of Pinduoduo's strong offensive, are determined to drive user growth.
From the perspective of the platform, the refund mechanism alone can indeed effectively regulate the products and services of merchants to a certain extent. After all, no matter where the e-commerce platform is, there are inferior merchants who love to sell some products that "do not match the description". By only refunding them, the platform can restrict the operation of such merchants to a certain extent, and enhance the shopping experience of consumers from this perspective.
Of course, this move will inevitably bring some risks.
On the one hand, if some netizens exploit the loophole of the mechanism to get wool, can the platform determine and accurately determine the malicious only refund? Even now, you can still see the strategy of "how to get wool by refunding only" on various content platforms. As early as March this year, Pinduoduo broke out about a large number of self-operated stores being maliciously ordered by users and applying for a refund only.
On the other hand, refunds alone are a controversial policy in and of themselves. From a legal point of view, it is illegal for the buyer to receive the goods and return the goods without the consent of the merchant. Therefore, merchants can appeal against such transaction disputes, and Taobao's user base itself is larger than Pinduoduo's user base, and more merchants may face such transaction disputes, which is both energy-consuming and loss-making profits.
In the final analysis, the problem is that even if the refund only of the e-commerce platform is determined based on big data, whether it can achieve fairness has not yet been proven.
In 2023, whether platforms, merchants, and users can form a reasonable balance determines whether each e-commerce platform's initiative can be carried out as expected. After all, each merchant constitutes a platform, and if it hurts its emotions with the merchant in order to catch users, the gain outweighs the loss.