Online shopping a hotbed of city complaints

Shanghai's consumer council received more than 160,000 complaints last year with online shopping, tourism, education and training, Internet games, and long-term renting either the hotbeds of complaints or witnessing a surge.

The council said on Tuesday there were 160,997 complaints between December 21 in 2019 and December 20 last year, with 38.8 percent about commodities and the rest about services.

Clothing and shoes, home furnishings and home appliances topped the list of commodities complaints, while the largest numbers of complaints about services related to transport, education and training, and culture, entertainment and sports.

After-sales services accounted for 66.2 percent, while the remainder were about contracts and quality, the council said.

Online shopping was the subject of 37,630 complaints, the majority about clothing, home furnishings, home appliances and food.

Online promotions such as webcasts were gaining in popularity, triggering an online sales boom and also a spike of complaints, the council said.

Quality problems, cancellation of orders, delays in refunds and slow response of customer services angered consumers, it said.

Exaggerating products' effects, bad quality, failure to fulfill promises, and poor after-sales services were found in webcasts, which affected the shopping experience, said Tang Jiansheng, the council's deputy secretary-general.

Another 22,799 complaints related to tourism, accommodation, and transport disputes triggered by delays or cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the council said.

There had been a surge in short-distance tours with the pandemic under control in China, accompanied by a growing number of disputes about failure to make reservations of already paid orders, unsatisfactory tour experiences and slow customer services, the council said.

Failure to reach customer services, extra charges for refunds and delays in refunds following cancellations because of the pandemic were major problems in the transport sector.

There had been a 17 percent rise in complaints, to 12,921, about education and training, the council said.

Customers complained about fake promotions, class delays, shortened classes, frequent changes of faculty, unsatisfactory education quality and refund disputes.

The council received 4,716 complaints about Internet games last year, a 78.5 percent rise from the year before, with blocked or stolen games accounts, lost eSports inventory and loss of virtual assets.

Many children were addicted to Internet games and spent a large amount of money to upgrade their inventory without informing their parents, leading to difficulties in refunds, Tang said.

Another 4,637 complaints regarded housing rental services, a surge of 50.8 percent from a year earlier.

Some long-term rental service providers cashed in on the pandemic by pushing up rents significantly, leading to many complaints, the council said.

Some rental operators still charged service fees even if tenants could not live in their apartments due to the pandemic, and delays in returning deposits, slow repair services and poor hygiene management also led to complaints.