East Buy, through its official account on the evening of August 13, announced that the company had detected a significant number of abnormal orders under the 'refund only' policy, involving substantial amounts of money that are suspected of being part of organized criminal fraud schemes. The company has now secured evidence and reported the matter to public security authorities, leading to a suspect surnamed Zhang being taken under criminal coercive measures for fraud. This is not the first domestic criminal case related to the 'refund only' policy, but as a leading e-commerce company publicly reporting such an incident, it carries significant symbolic weight.

The mechanism, originally designed to improve the consumer experience, is now being distorted by criminal operations. Yu Minhong has chosen not to settle the matter quietly this time, directly bringing the industry's hidden practices to the public eye. From backend monitoring data, the abnormal characteristics of these orders are clear: highly concentrated shipping addresses, interconnected ordering accounts, and highly synchronized refund application times, all pointing to refunds without returning goods. Such consistent batch behavior is not typical of ordinary consumer after-sales requests and clearly indicates organized, scripted gang activity.

In the past, most merchants faced with malicious 'refund only' cases chose to endure and compromise. The loss from a single order is limited, but the time and legal costs of lawsuits and rights protection are high; when appealing to platforms, merchants often encounter judgments that prioritize consumer experience, making 'paying to avoid trouble' a reluctant choice for many small and medium-sized businesses, inadvertently encouraging the trend of malicious refunds. By proactively reporting the case, East Buy has torn off the industry's fig leaf, serving as a warning to speculators: exploiting rule loopholes for freebies is no longer just a clever trick, but could very well cross the criminal red line.

The 'refund only' policy was born out of rational logic. Online shopping involves information asymmetry, such as discrepancies between products and descriptions or defective items. Traditional return procedures are cumbersome, involving return shipping costs and long waits for review and refunds, leading many consumers to abandon claims for low-value items. In 2021, Pinduoduo first piloted the 'refund only' mechanism in the fresh food sector, where items are highly perishable and cannot be resold after return. Consumers could directly get a refund without returning goods if they could prove quality issues, adapting to the business logic of the fresh food category. Subsequently, the mechanism rapidly expanded from fresh food to all categories, with review authority delegated to the system, allowing automatic refund approval if merchants did not process within a set time. From late 2023 to early 2024, major platforms like Taobao, JD.com, Douyin, and Kuaishou successively launched this feature. At the time, public opinion widely viewed it as a major victory for consumer rights, but few anticipated the costs merchants would bear from the imbalance in rules.

Research data from NetEase Economics shows that in 2024, only 1.06% of merchants had never encountered malicious 'refund only' issues, with 89.05% opposing this policy. In the first quarter of 2026, complaints about abuse of the 'refund only' mechanism accounted for 34.39% of total merchant complaints, ranking first for multiple consecutive quarters. What truly damages the industry ecosystem is the industrialization of malicious refunds. Initially, it was just scattered individual acts of freebie-grabbing, with limited destructive power. But when criminal operations sensed profit opportunities, a complete gray industry chain took shape. Upstream, 'refund only tutorials' are sold on social media platforms, ranging from tens to thousands of yuan, promoting batch ordering with multiple accounts; midstream, a large number of verified accounts are purchased to place orders in a dispersed manner to evade platform risk controls; downstream, the fraudulently obtained goods are liquidated through second-hand platforms and offline channels, with a clear division of labor and exponentially increased efficiency.

Real-world cases are numerous: a man in Hunan used multiple accounts to order high-priced fruits, used AI to forge fake images of rotten ingredients to apply for refunds without returning goods, and resold the intact items for profit, committing over 100 offenses in four months and receiving a one-year prison sentence. A Shanghai criminal gang recruited underlings to order genuine skincare products, swapped them with fakes, and faked videos of breakage to obtain refunds, then sold the genuine products at a discount, illegally profiting nearly 200,000 yuan. A group of eight targeted limited-edition sneakers, replacing genuine items with cheap fakes for resale, involving over 3 million yuan in more than a year. According to a Threat Hunter report, in 2025, e-commerce fraud attack intelligence accounted for 20.5% of all online fraud, with the 'refund only' mechanism being a key pathway. The proliferation of generative AI has further lowered the barrier to fraud. In the past, forging evidence of damage required physically damaging goods or using photo editing software; now, AI tools can generate highly realistic images of spoiled or damaged goods in bulk, easily fooling machine audits. It is difficult for merchants to verify the authenticity of evidence, and platform risk control updates cannot keep pace with the evolution of cheating methods. When technical defenses fail, criminal reporting becomes the last line of protection.

While leading companies like East Buy have the capacity to report and defend their rights, small and medium-sized merchants face a more difficult situation. A merchant in Guangzhou suffered 225 malicious 'refund only' orders, resulting in a direct loss of 54,000 yuan. Some criminals have placed over 2,700 malicious orders over three years, harming more than 900 online stores. Even if merchants do not ship the goods, they still bear platform service fees and prepaid logistics costs. Some regions, due to a high volume of malicious refund behavior, have been flagged by platforms as high-risk areas, affecting even ordinary local residents' online shopping. This crude risk control reflects the severe reality of rampant malicious refunds.

Industry-level corrections have already begun. In November 2024, the State Administration for Market Regulation summoned six major e-commerce platforms, directly pointing out that the excessive expansion of the 'refund only' rule was squeezing merchants' survival space. The Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Internet Trading Platform Rules, implemented in February 2026, clearly state that platforms cannot force merchants to offer the 'refund only' service. Guided by policy, major platforms have gradually adjusted their rules, weakening automated system refunds, returning after-sales review authority to merchants, and implementing tiered, category-based application. Protecting consumers' legitimate rights does not mean ignoring the legitimate interests of merchants. Once rules tilt too heavily toward one side, the entire ecosystem will suffer backlash: merchants may raise prices to offset fraud losses or cut costs by reducing product quality, ultimately passing the cost onto ordinary consumers. East Buy's report is a landmark event in the context of this rule correction, signaling that the cost of illegal activity related to malicious refunds is rising.

At its core, the 'refund only' policy itself is not wrong; its original intent was to lower the barrier for ordinary consumers to assert their rights. The problem lies in the failure to clearly define boundaries when the rules were abused. A good system should not rely on human self-discipline, but on clear rights and responsibilities and reasonable costs for illegal activity to constrain behavior. Overly loose rules can breed wrongdoing, while overly strict controls can harm normal consumption. Finding a balance tests the entire industry. Yu Minhong's report targets not ordinary consumers, but organized criminal groups. This confrontation benefits not only the company itself, but also the countless conscientious merchants and law-abiding ordinary consumers. No one should pay for the greed of others; commercial trust is never built on unilateral concessions.

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