Group purchase expired, a knife-cutting requirements are not conducive to group purchase industry 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.

A knife-cut expiration is not conducive to the development of the industry

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.

The personage discloses to the reporter, the Group purchase website limits expiration condition, mainly for three aspects consideration.

First, the merchant does not want to have too many refunds. Merchants tend to be based on the number of sold to reasonable estimate a shop to the proportion of consumption to prepare, but if the "expired" applicable radius is too large, but also lost the original intention of cheap and more sales, hurt to continue to do group buying enthusiasm and effect 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 purchase products, if not sold 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 expiration of the rules, 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.

In contrast, the domestic group buying site, for the expiration of the provisions of the broader, generally speaking only four cases are not expired: physical products (logistics delivery of products); Ticketing products (including physical and electronic tickets); Mall vouchers (including physical and electronic shopping malls) The website clearly identifies products or services that do not support expired approval.

It is clear that Groupon is more specific and meticulous in terms of refunds than the domestic buying station rules. Groupon refunds are paid in the same way as the payment method, but most domestic group buying sites are refunds to the group Buy website account.

and domestic group buy website only support "Return to the website account", do not support "the original paragraph returns" the group purchase website is abundant existence. Yuanpeng, vice president of the Millennium Network, said that the "return to the site account" of the user's unused money in the financial statistics will still be considered as the site's income, which is part of the group buying site does not support the "Return of consumer bank accounts" the main reason.

Whether it must expire is inconclusive

So, group buy should not support expired refunds?

According to the reporter understands, the law does not have the clear stipulation to 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. ”

In the past year, many group buying stations, including the American network, have followed the policy of overdue refunds to cater to and follow up on the needs of consumers. But in the specific consumption will encounter a variety of special circumstances, can only stones.

According to Tencent Science and Technology survey, the State administration of Industry and Commerce issued a few group purchase management opinions of a few group purchase site standards.

"If the requirement must expire indefinitely, then there are two problems, one is all group buying site can not do, the second is on the policy, there are countermeasures, group purchase website may let expired." "A group buying industry personage says.

Experts suggest that the purchase site on the one hand, according to their own circumstances to determine whether the expiration, at the same time the expiration of the 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. "(Source: Changjiang Shang Pao Yin Lei)