Produced by One View Business.
Written by Li Yan.
Edited by Wooden Fish.
Keeping up with the footsteps of Pinduoduo, ** and JD.com have also opened "refund only".
On December 26, ** issued a public notice to change the relevant rules of dispute settlement on the **platform, which will take effect immediately.
On December 27, JD.com added a returnless refund implementation standard in the "JD Open Platform After-sales Service Management Rules", which took effect on December 29At the same time, the "General Provisions for the Settlement of Transaction Disputes on JD's Open Platform" also added content to support users to refund only, which has taken effect today.
It's worth noting that OneView Business Discovery** and JD.com's refund-only are different from Pinduoduo.
The rule change is that when the buyer returns the goods, the buyer 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 only refund 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 limit of the merchant at its sole discretion based on factors such as user applications, user complaints or after-sales service of stores." ”
The ** refund only is mainly based on the seller's store quality indicators, customer complaints and other negative information to judge, if it meets the relevant scenarios, it will directly make a refund only support;JD.com stated that "JD.com has the right to deal with or support consumers' claims for refunds only, returns and refunds according to transaction habits." ”
Judging from the description, Pinduoduo and JD.com consider more user past behavior data, and ** combine user behavior data and merchant operation data to judge.
So how exactly does it behave in the actual operation process?Some netizens placed an order for a product on Pinduoduo and consulted customer service if they applied 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?"
In **, One View 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, both ** 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, ** and JD.com, why did they 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 step is the opportunity of ** instead of Tmall, and Ali e-commerce should "return to users, return to **".
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 ** 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, 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 only refunding" 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 on such transaction disputes, and the user base itself is larger than Pinduoduo's user base, more merchants may face such transaction disputes, which is both energy-consuming and loss-of-profits, and whether merchants will make up for it through the way of "bad money drives good money", which is also a problem.
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.