Extorting money from businesses in the name of cracking down on fakes
"Professional bad reviewers" trample on the market credit system urgently need to be rectified
□ Our reporter Han Dandong
□ Su Xinyu, our newspaper intern
According to media reports, recently, Zhao, who opened a store on a food delivery platform, said that he had encountered a "professional bad reviewer". Most of the bad reviews were related to food hygiene. The other party asked for 1,800 yuan to delete the bad reviews but failed. His new store was maliciously negative for half a month , Resulting in a sharp decline in sales and ratings.
At the same time, a shopkeeper in Guangzhou was also blackmailed by a "professional critic" and eventually paid 1,300 yuan to Xishiningren.
As the name implies, "professional negative reviewers" refer to people who rely on negative reviews to make a living.
They are active on major e-commerce takeaway platforms, or use merchants’ fear of negative reviews to carry out large amounts of extortion; or form organizations to help competing merchants "swipe orders" to suppress stores.
The motive of these behaviors is not to purify the market, but to make profits through the so-called "rights protection", which has caused serious adverse effects on the market order, and made many businesses "dumb eat coptis, and there is hardship to tell."
Use bad reviews to blackmail money
The victimized business has miserable words
On October 22, Zhao found that his store received 7 consecutive negative reviews in one day.
These negative reviews are mostly related to food hygiene. Some customers said that they had cockroach legs, the beef was smelly, and the eggs and green vegetables were all raw, etc.
Zhao was quite surprised by these bad reviews, because he paid special attention to the newly opened store and strictly controlled the hygiene quality.
That night, a stranger added him to WeChat and sent a screenshot of the "bad review", threatening to "delete all 1200" without transferring the account.
So far, Zhao knew that he had encountered a "professional bad reviewer."
"Professional critics" will extort money from merchants for profit after purchasing goods on the grounds that the goods are defective.
The content of the comments is often wrong and fictitious, and even more falsified "evidence" to prove the credibility of the bad reviews.
The takeaway merchant Zhang said that recently he also encountered a "professional bad reviewer". After buying their buns, the other party falsely claimed that his teeth were damaged, and presented a hospital test report, asking for 800 yuan for medical expenses.
After seeking the professional judgment of the doctor, Zhang found out the clues-this disease is caused by long-term development rather than food.
Coincidentally, the takeaway business Mr. Zhou said that he was often blackmailed by "bad reviews" and had the most reasons for "physical discomfort".
This kind of reasoning is difficult to verify, and it is highly harmful to the reputation of the merchants, forcing many merchants to spend money to keep their stores.
Negative reviews were originally a weapon for consumers to defend their rights, but they were used by lawbreakers to create the absurd profession of "professional negative reviewers".
"Professional bad reviewers" use bad reviews to impose charges on businesses due to selfish desires, and extortion money through intimidation and threats, which is essentially an illegal act.
Such cases have been handled by the police before.
In March 2017, Taobao shop owner Tong received a strange negative review.
The buyer did not accept various solutions such as refunding and returning the goods, allowing the other party to reimburse the repair costs with a ticket.
After some communication, the other party asked for a "compensation" of 8888 yuan, without returning the computer.
Since then, the other party has repeatedly blackmailed Tong, and Tong finally chose to call the police.
Later, Shenzhen Longhua police arrested Zeng and other 7 suspects who used bad reviews to blackmail businesses.
"According to the Consumer Rights Protection Law, if only the quality of the product itself is negotiated on an equal footing with the merchants, so as to obtain compensation within a reasonable range, their behavior can be understood as legitimate rights protection and should be supported." Communication University of China Culture Zheng Ning, director of the Law Department of the School of Industrial Management, said that if "professional bad reviewers" extorted money from merchants in the name of cracking down on fakes and threatened them with bad reviews, complaints, lawsuits, and sending false lawyer letters to merchants, they could extort property. , The illegal purpose of occupying one's own, its behavior constitutes the crime of extortion.
Dr. Wu Xumeng from the Law School of Guizhou Normal University said that “professional critics” obtain illegal benefits through extortion, which has broken the bottom line of the law: exaggerated and out-of-the-box behaviors destroy the reputation of businesses and are suspected of illegal; the amount of money extorted reaches a certain level. Suspected of extortion.
According to Zhao Zhanzhu, deputy director of Beijing Zhilin Law Firm, if a "professional bad reviewer" deliberately gives a false evaluation to a business in order to ask for money from the business, this is in line with the basic conditions for extortion, as long as it reaches the threshold prescribed by law. It involves the criminal offense of extortion; if a competitor employed by a business conducts malicious bad review and review, this is an act of unfair competition in business. Fair competition and joint liability.
The cost of malicious bad reviews is very low
The lack of supervision is chaotic
The takeaway merchant Zhang stated that there is a gang that specializes in "professional critics" in their area, and many large stores with high sales have been recruited and extorted a lot of money.
"A lot of them, like those relatively large businesses, have experienced this kind of extortion, paying thousands or thousands of compensation. It's impossible not to do business."
It is understood that the power of professional negative reviewers is huge, which can make the store ratings and sales of takeaway merchants drop off a cliff. Many takeaway merchants are helpless with such behavior.
Why let "professional bad reviewers" go unpunished?
Zheng Ning said that one is the influence of the evaluation mechanism of e-commerce platforms.
Since the performance of the business and the reputation of the store have a great relationship, consumers often use good reviews and bad reviews as the basis for their choice.
At the same time, the platform pushes through the reputation of merchants. In this era of "traffic is king", reducing push will greatly reduce the number of customer orders.
The second is the regulatory loopholes of the platform.
Due to the concealment of "professional bad reviewers", unless there are a large number of bad reviews, it is difficult for the platform to monitor them.
The takeaway merchant Zhou told a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily that he was maliciously criticized for a week before, and the number of customer orders was reduced by more than half.
Some customers order deliberately negative reviews in order to eat "Overlord Meal".
Since the comment could not be deleted, Zhou could only choose to swallow his words, but the restaurant was "touched" by various kinds of "porcelain".
Zheng Ning said: “Article 39 of the E-Commerce Law stipulates that e-commerce platform operators shall not delete consumers’ comments on the goods sold or services provided on their platforms. Although this guarantees that user reviews can be fully presented, some To a certain extent, it also allows some'professional critics' to find room for profit."
Takeaway merchant Zhang said that current "professional bad reviewers" are very "savvy" and write a bad review for a mobile phone number, which avoids the platform's monitoring of "bad ID".
It is even more difficult to prove that you have been "maliciously negative". The artificial platform to persuade "professional bad reviewers" is often fruitless, and in the end, you can only get a lower score for your own shop.
"For criminals, the cost of malicious bad reviews is low, and the lure of benefits is great." Zheng Ning said.
Improve platform supervision mechanism
Timely fight against wrongdoing
In Zheng Ning's view, "professional bad reviewers" threatened sellers and interfered with buyers with malicious bad reviews, harming the e-commerce business environment, trampling on the market credit system, and infringing on the interests of consumers.
Therefore, no matter how difficult it is to manage "professional bad reviewers", merchants and platforms should take responsibility to jointly maintain the "bad review" evaluation mechanism and the stability of market operations.
What should businesses do after encountering similar situations?
Zheng Ning suggested: “If businesses want to defend their rights through judicial means, the awareness of evidence is very important. If businesses encounter blackmail from'professional critics', they must actively collect and save relevant evidence through WeChat, customer service chat records, etc., and then Call the police."
Zhao Occupation suggested that as a victim, if there is relevant evidence that the "professional bad reviewer" or the organization behind it is employed by a competitor, the business can sue the other party and the bad review review agency for unfair competition, or to the market Reported by regulatory authorities.
In this regard, what responsibilities should the platform bear?
Zheng Ning believes: "The platform should improve the evaluation mechanism to help merchants to effectively appeal and report when they encounter malicious negative reviews, and use big data to focus on monitoring the centralized negative reviews or some abnormal centralized negative reviews in newly opened stores. For example, you can set the number of negative reviews in a period of time, and then freeze the comment function of the account, improve the accuracy of recognition, and block malicious negative reviews before the official release."
In Zhao Zhanzhu's view, the platform can impose penalties on related users, such as banning or suspending or restricting the use of accounts.
"Once the malicious bad reviews are verified, they should be blocked, and even the ID number used for the account registration should be blacklisted so that they can no longer be registered on this platform." Wu Xumeng said.
"In addition, it also needs the support of all parties in the society." Zheng Ning said that the market supervision department, the network information department, and the public security department should also strengthen the supervision of "professional bad reviewers" and crack down on illegal activities.
Relevant industry associations should issue industry standards, establish and improve the credit supervision mechanism of "professional bad reviewers", and put them on the blacklist.