Buy expired one knife cut bad buy development

March 16 News, on the purchase of consumer expired not consumption should refund, the State administration of Industry and Commerce recently issued guidance, "opinion" clearly stipulates that the group buy site operators may not set overdue prepayment, or limit the amount of money can only be returned to the site account restrictions.

In this respect, a number of group buying site insiders secretly revealed that the domestic group buying site competition is too intense, leading to group purchase sites have set out to agree to expire, but in fact a knife requirements must expire in favor of group buying industry development.

Why should expiration be limited to a lot of conditions?

A group buying website industry personage points out, buy coupons is a kind of special "preferential right", the consumer is equal to buy a preferential privilege, itself is the reciprocal trade, cannot because oneself give up the opportunity, want money to return to the hand. "This analogy is that a person buys a concert ticket and has confirmed the best position, but finally gave up the good position did not go, whether the performance party should refund to him?"

The personage said to the reporter, the group buying website limits "expire to retire" the condition, mainly for three aspects consideration.

First, the merchant does not want to have too many refunds. Merchants tend to make a reasonable estimate of the proportion of their purchases to the store based on the amount they have sold. However, if the "expired" applicable radius is too large, then the behavior of consumers become unpredictable, but also lost the original intention of cheap and multiple sales, hurt to continue to do group buying enthusiasm and effectiveness evaluation.

Second, from the interests of the site, some of the ticketing groups are group buying site to ensure the minimum sales. For example, movie tickets and other product group buy station and the hospital signed the package sales commitment, the money will be according to the commitment to the amount of votes and the hospital settlement, so the group purchase station must make this part of the cash earned back, to fill in the underwriting of the gap. If you can expire at will, the group purchase site is difficult to ensure that profits and merchants buy preferential prices.

Third, "No consumption expired refunds" will be more biased towards consumers, in some cases obviously not applicable. For example, there is a clear supply time limit, if no consumption within the validity period, the merchant can neither postpone sale nor resell to other consumers.

In addition, unilateral tilt of the side of the transaction, will also create new problems, such as lead to the popularity of group buying scalpers. "Scalpers can quickly use a lot of cash to buy the most popular group purchase products, and then on the internet to sell, if sold to make a difference, if not sold out can be full expired without consumption refunds, so there is no loss." This is also the damage to consumer rights. ”

Groupon Split Expired

According to the reporter understand, the originator of Groupon in the "expired" provisions, nor all merchandise support expired.

Groupon believes that the value of the coupon includes two parts, the amount paid and the promotional value. The former never expires, the latter can expire. And there are three key notes in Groupon's description of "expiration".

First of all, for the traditional form of daily sale of buy coupons, once the effective date, the promotional value of the part of the failure, unless the law is prohibited. But the paid amount never expires. Second, for Groupon now (a time based group-buying application) class purchase coupons, once the coupon on the use of the date and time, promotional value immediately expired. Third, the coupon only makes a refund request before midnight of the purchase date; The event is rescheduled and a refund request is made.

By contrast, domestic group buying sites, for the "expired" provisions are more broad, generally speaking only four cases are not expired: physical products (logistics delivery products), ticketing products (including physical and electronic tickets), shopping malls vouchers (including physical stores and electronic mall); The website clearly identifies products or services that do not support expired approval.

In addition, Groupon refunds are paid in the same way as payment to return the amount paid, but most of the domestic purchase site is a refund to the group purchase site account.

In this respect, one industry personage pointed out that the domestic group buying website under the high pressure to "expire" in set many limits, in fact, the situation is widespread. "Because of the outdated public pressure and peer pressure, many group buying site to play out the flag of expiration, but the expiration of a lot of restrictions, there are many cases of undeserved." ”

Whether it must expire is inconclusive

So, group buy should not support expired refunds?

It is understood that the law does not have a clear provision for this. At the same time, there is no qualitative description of the consumer association.

Chen Haiyang, a senior partner at the Shang law firm in Beijing, said that if the group bought the deal before the "no refund", the consumer also recognized and bought, then the two sides should comply with the transaction contract. "Group purchase website if expired, must have the obligation to express the consumer is not a refund of consumption, otherwise it can be regarded as damaging consumers ' right to know, involved in the deliberate concealment of consumers; but if the group buying site and buyers reached an agreement, the two sides established in the Agreement on the basis of the expiration of the transaction, it is the two sides No violation of relevant laws and regulations. ”

Experts suggest that the group purchase site on the one hand according to their own situation to decide whether "expired", while the "expired" conditions need to express to consumers, in order to avoid unnecessary disputes. "Group buying is a new business model and there is no need to require every uniform to launch a service." Each site as long as the target users to identify themselves, from the interests of their target users to consider services to go long. "(Jiangnan times)