SINGAPORE: A week after the end of China’s largest online shopping bonanza, one issue is starting to rear its head: The rise of product returns, with some womenswear shopowners seeing return rates of up to 90 per cent.
Originally a 24-hour online shopping event on Nov 11, Singles’ Day or “shuang shi yi” – double eleven in Mandarin – has grown into an annual blockbuster period for retail. This year, discounts were dangled from Oct 14, three-and-a-half weeks before the date.
While product returns are not a new trend, the rate has been especially heightened this year, according to local news reports. Irate e-commerce retailers have also complained on social media, drawing further attention to the issue.
At the same time, consumers have clapped back, saying that they did so because the quality and fit of their purchases were not up to scratch.
“PLEASE STOP RETURNING YOUR GOODS”
There is no official count on the tally of returned products across the Singles’ Day shopping period. However, checks by CNA found numerous online posts complaining about this phenomenon.
Xiao Feng, a user on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, posted a photo on Oct 29 showing a massive pile of returned packages containing women’s clothing.
“Please stop returning your goods! This is the first wave of Singles’ Day returns and there were so many,” the user grumbled. “I sent out 20,000 packages and 10,000 were returned, among them were even parcels that were wrongly sent back.
“This is so horrible, who would even dare to sell women’s clothing?”
A post by another user Tian Tian on Nov 1 claimed that during the first wave of returns for Singles’ Day, out of the 2,000 parcels sent out, 1,500 were returned.
Another seller, A, showcased the pile of clothes that had been returned on her Xiaohongshu account.
“Returns on the left, parcels that are supposed to be shipped out, and this is probably only 50 per cent of it,” she wrote. “Fellow sellers, what are your return rates?”
