E-commerce sector complaints rising

By Yuan Shenggao | China Daily | Updated: 2018-03-22 07:56

Consumer complaints about online orders skyrocketed by nearly 50 percent in 2017 from a year earlier, setting a record high, according to a report released by the E-Commerce Research Center in mid-March.

The report shows a 48.02 percent year-on-year rise in online consumer complaints, with a surge in the second half of last year.

The marked growth in the latter half of the year was partially due to a string of promotional shopping events such as Singles Day, which falls on Nov 11, Black Friday, and Double 12, which falls on Dec 12, industrial observers said.

Retailers saw the most complaints, receiving 60.59 percent of the total, according to the report. The group came under fire for multiple reasons, including suspected fake goods, online fraud, product quality issues, false promotion, refunding difficulties, poor after-sales service and logistics.

In at second place were service provider portals focused on daily life sectors, including travel, food and beverage, tickets and education, representing 13.47 percent of total complaints in the year. Closely following was cross-border e-commerce, with related complaints accounting for 12.89 percent of the total.

The research center found in another report that China's cross-border e-commerce volume hit 3.6 trillion yuan ($568.6 billion) in the first half of 2017. That was an increase of 30.7 percent year-on-year, including 862.4 billion yuan in imports, in part fueled by growing middle-class consumers and their demand for overseas brands.

Complaints about foreign deliveries increased by 1.37 percent last year over 2016, according to the report. Fake goods, false promotion, product quality issues and poor after-sales service were the focus of complaints in this sector.

Commissioned by a contract division at the Zhejiang Administration for Industry and Commerce, the research center has investigated standard form contracts formulated by 38 major shopping portals in China, including seven that operate internationally, with input from legal experts.

The center found some e-commerce portal operators are exempting themselves from information safety guarantees in their contracts, or improperly collecting and using users' information.

Failure to exercise due diligence in checking and monitoring relevant information, abusive use of their right to withdraw services, and limiting or substantially eliminating users' right to resort to legal remedies are also among the problems identified in the standard contracts, according to the research center.

A survey on last year's Singles Day released by the China Consumers Association in February shows the e-commerce sector is besieged with counterfeits and piracy, with 16 out of 53 sampled goods suspected of being fake.

Although cross-border e-commerce is booming and the business environment is maturing, differing business models have left the consumer complaints settlement process in a mess, said Ma Ce, an e-commerce researcher at the center. He said importing by mail was just one example illustrating the difficulties in controlling quality.

This import method helps to increase domestic buyers' purchasing options, yet it is generally undertaken by individual trade brokers who have less control over the overseas supply chain, and therefore can expose end users to potential quality risks, Ma said.

Yao Jianfang, an analyst at the center, told Beijing-based Science and Technology Daily that domestic online buyers need to pay attention to overseas goods' expiry dates, individual brokers' reputations and fraudulent customs documents.