Online shopping complaints rise 87%

An advertisement for the Alibaba Group's online shopping site Taobao.com at a metro station in Shanghai, Nov 12, 2014. [Photo/IC]

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) said on its recent report that online shopping attracted 145,800 complaints last year, up 87.3 percent year-on-year, according to a report by Beijing Business Today.

Accounting for the largest part of service consumer complaints for two consecutive years, the number of complaints received in regards to online shopping is 77.67 times what it was at the end of the 11th Five-Year period.

The most prominent complaints were related to poor product quality and false advertising. Problems such as counterfeits and unqualified products, false promotion as well as a seller's violation of the "seven days free return policy" also led to consumer complaints, according to the SAIC.

Beijing Business Today says the open complaint channel and consumers' enhancing awareness of rights has contributed to the surge in consumer complaints. Online shopping is experiencing such a faster growth in complaints than the market scale reflects, that there are some realistic problems in the e-commerce market's development.

In addition, among online transaction complaints, the O2O service sector, involving food, travel, car rentals and ticket services, has received a significantly larger number of complaints. Mobile social e-commerce has also become the new grey zone among transactions, having problems with selling counterfeits, no delivery after charging and losing contact.

The SAIC said they would introduce rules and regulatory documents and set standards of internet transaction's cross-regional cooperation to offer Administration for Industry and Commerce nationwide and market regulators more powerful legal supports to carry out internet market supervision.