Chinese short video player Kuaishou announced on November 28 that it will be discontinuing its refund-without-return service for merchants on its e-commerce platform, effective December 2.
The decision follows a strategic business realignment aimed at refining the platform’s after-sales services and comes after consistent complaints from merchants that the policy made it too easy for customers to request a refund without returning the goods.
Why it matters: The decision reflects Kuaishou e-commerce’s growing emphasis on protecting merchants, attempting to reduce the financial losses they have faced due to what they see as inconsistent and unreasonable refund policies that have favored consumers. By discontinuing the policy, the Douyin rival seeks to curb the negative impact on businesses and better balance the interests of both consumers and merchants.
Details: Merchants can proactively cancel the service before December 2; if they do not cancel by the deadline, the platform will automatically terminate the contract. For existing orders, the system will continue to process them according to the original terms.
- Kuaishou introduced the refund-without-return policy in November 2021, allowing buyers to request a refund without returning goods. In certain cases, if the return shipping cost is relatively high, issuing a “refund without return” is seen as a more suitable after-sales solution than insisting on the return of the product.
- Kuaishou has clarified that it is not abolishing its “Refund Only” policy. While the refund-without-return policy allowed buyers to get a refund without returning items, “Refund Only” is a more stringent policy that still requires merchants’ consent, with refunds granted only if certain conditions are met.
- Under the new rules, if a merchant does not ship the goods on time or fails to respond to a refund request within a designated timeframe, the system will automatically issue a refund to the consumer. If the item has already been shipped, merchants have a 36-hour window to process the refund request; otherwise, the system will automatically grant the refund.
- The “Refund Without Return” service has been misused by fraudulent consumers, such as so-called “sheep-shearers” (a Chinese slang term for customers who took advantage of the policy to exploit merchants). These issues resulted in significant financial losses for merchants and sparked dissatisfaction within the e-commerce industry, where platforms were seen to favor consumer interests at the expense of business profitability.
- According to the 2024 China E-commerce User Experience and Complaint Monitoring Report released this July by the eCommerce Research Center of China’s Internet Economy Institute, in the first half of this year, refund issues accounted for as much as 28.31% of the top ten types of online consumer complaints nationwide.
Context: The refund-without-return mechanism was first introduced by Amazon, aiming to provide consumers with faster and more convenient after-sales service. In the Chinese e-commerce market, Pinduoduo adopted the model as early as 2021. To attract more users, other platforms quickly followed suit, with Taobao, JD.com, Douyin, and Kuaishou all launching similar models since then.
Related
