Online shopping is becoming more and more common in China, and many Chinese have commented on their online shopping. However, some Chinese consumers find that they have problems such as poor quality and not meeting expectations after receiving online shopping products. If they make a negative review on the online shopping platform, they may cause a lot of trouble.
Mr. Zhang from Yinchuan City, Ningxia recently bought a pair of sports shoes online. After receiving the shoes, he felt that the shoes were too different from the previous propaganda of the business. There were also problems with the quality of the shoes. Several times of communication with the business were to no avail. Mr. Zhang gave a bad review. Unexpectedly, the merchant carried out a “phone bombardment” on him. He could make more than a dozen calls a day. When a number was added to the blacklist, he changed to another mobile phone number to make the call, repeatedly asking Mr. Zhang to delete the bad reviews and change it to Praise. “If the things I bought are not good, can’t I give a bad review?” Mr. Zhang was very angry at the merchant’s practice.
With the popularity of online shopping in China, consumer evaluation has become an important criterion for measuring the quality of goods and services. Therefore, Chinese businesses are particularly concerned about the negative reviews given by consumers. However, some businesses do not reflect on the problems of their own product quality and service attitudes. Instead, they resort to entanglement and harassment of consumers, and even threaten to intimidate consumers. This phenomenon has gradually increased in recent years and has attracted the attention of the Chinese public.
Ms. Li from Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province bought a piece of clothing on an e-commerce platform. After receiving the goods, she gave a negative review because of the poor quality. As a result, the seller repeatedly asked Ms. Li to delete the negative reviews. Ms. Li believed that the situation was true, so she did not agree. She did not expect the merchants to call and harass every day and send abusive text messages repeatedly, threatening to delete Ms. Li’s name and name if not deleted. Personal information such as age and residential address are posted on the Internet.
The reporter found in interviews that when harassed by merchants, most Chinese consumers think that rights protection is time-consuming and costly, and “for a little thing is not worth it”, they adopt an attitude of calming things down and consider themselves unlucky.
“In fact, the harassment of businesses has violated the legal rights of consumers. At this time, the best way is to save the evidence, report the case to the police, and use the law to protect your legal rights,” said Wang Danni, a lawyer at Beijing Weiheng Law Firm. Once infringements occur, consumers should be brave enough to take up the weapons of the law, and rights protection can be directed at e-commerce platforms or specific businesses.
After experiencing telephone harassment, Ms. Jia from Chengdu, Sichuan immediately sent screenshots and other evidence to the e-commerce platform. “Shortly after I complained to the platform, the platform fined the merchant and restricted the merchant’s credit rating. After negotiation, the merchant not only returned the goods to me, but also compensated me to some extent.” Ms. Jia said.
In addition, Chinese consumers can also complain to the market supervision department. “We will carry out investigations after receiving consumer complaints. Once verified, we will impose administrative penalties on merchants in accordance with the law. If the circumstances are serious, we will also cancel business qualifications.” said Zhang Li, chief of the report and complaint section of the Yinchuan City Market Supervision Administration of Ningxia.
After the occurrence of harassment, consumers have many ways to defend their rights, but how should similar things be prevented? In online shopping, the business has mastered the consumer’s phone number, address, name and other personal information. If there is no corresponding supervision and regulation system, this information can be easily used by the business. In this regard, Men Jinling, an associate professor at the School of Law of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, suggested that on the one hand, consumers should be protected. E-commerce platforms should protect consumers’ information when formulating rules and prevent consumers from being maliciously harassed when they make bad reviews; On the other hand, the platform should also improve the evaluation principles, formulate an evaluation basis, and refine evaluation standards, so that every evaluation of consumers is justified, fair and just.
“Finally, it will come down to the improvement of the reputation evaluation system. It is necessary to protect consumers’ right to truly evaluate the quality of goods and services, but also to improve the standard of malicious negative reviews. For example, it can increase consumers’ rights before giving negative reviews. Negotiations must be made with the operators about the prerequisites such as return and exchange.” Men Jinling believes that the platform, as an intermediary between consumers and merchants, should actively assume the responsibility of communication and coordination, and create a fair, harmonious and orderly environment for online shopping.
At present, some Chinese e-commerce platforms have made some attempts to clearly list items such as “harassing others” on the “apply for complaint” page, and mark examples of vouchers in detail to facilitate consumer complaints. “Regulatory departments and e-commerce platforms should work together to fully protect consumers’ right to freely evaluate.” Men Jinling said. Source