Onus on online platforms to regulate their clients or face consumer backlash

FOUR MAJOR domestic airline companies recently announced they were canceling their cooperation with qunar.com, a domestic airline ticket booking website, because of customer complaints. That should be a lesson to all online platforms, says a comment on Guangming Daily:

For a long time there have been complaints about qunar.com and similar companies, which range from being overcharged for tickets, bundling tickets with insurance without pre-notice, as well as canceling flights without telling passengers. The website failed to deal with these complaints properly, which finally led to the airlines deciding to end their cooperation with it.

That reflects the difficulties facing domestic websites. Like all of them, qunar.com provides a platform for ticket agents to serve passengers, and it is this mode that helped the website win a third of the domestic market for flight bookings. However, this mode requires the website to well regulate the service providers on it and any neglect or failure to supervise them will ruin its reputation.