Just looking at the information on the page, how can you feel at ease when you buy groceries on the Internet?


   The quality of fruits and vegetables is uneven

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  General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that food is the most important thing for the people, and strengthening food safety work is related to the health and life safety of more than 1.3 billion people in our country, and we must pay close attention to it.

Party committees, governments and relevant departments at all levels must do a good job in food safety work, adhere to the most rigorous standards, strictest supervision, strictest penalties, and most serious accountability, strengthen the uniformity and professionalism of food safety supervision, and effectively improve food safety supervision. Food safety supervision level and capacity.

  In recent years, various localities and departments have adhered to the implementation of the "four strictest" requirements and strengthened food and drug safety supervision. Political and legal authorities have continued to increase punishments for food and drug violations and crimes, and actively explored the implementation of a punitive compensation system for civil public interest litigation. The pain is so painful that they dare not re-offend”, and promote the establishment of a sound food and drug safety management system, and the overall situation of food and drug safety has been significantly improved.

  Although my country's food and drug safety situation is generally stable and improving, there are still many potential safety hazards, especially with the rapid development of the Internet and e-commerce platforms, the food safety problems of Internet celebrities, the old problem of fake and inferior health products, and the problem of adding contraband to diet pills It has become a prominent problem in the field of food and drug safety, and the masses have reacted strongly.

  In order to further promote food and drug safety work, explore multiple governance systems, and defend the "safety on the tip of the tongue" of the masses, the Law Jingwei Edition will open a column of "Food and Drug Safety, Legal Protection" from today, and publish a series of investigative reports, so stay tuned.

  ● With the rapid development and expansion of fresh food e-commerce platforms, this lifestyle of "delivering food to your door without leaving your home" is favored by consumers. However, at the same time, there are product quality defects, non-standard pricing and quantitative, and after-sales rights protection. Difficulty and other problems are also frequently complained by consumers

  ● Searching on third-party platforms with keywords such as “fresh food quality” and “grocery shopping quality”, there were more than 1,000 related complaints involving many different fresh food e-commerce platforms. It's bloody shrimp, sprouted potatoes, etc.

  ● Fresh food e-commerce operators shall, in strict accordance with relevant laws and regulations, fully, truthfully, accurately and timely label product or service information to protect consumers' right to know and to choose.

At the same time, the quality of fresh commodities is their life and is an important criterion for consumers to choose a platform. The quality of commodities should be strictly controlled from the commodity supply chain, sales and distribution to provide consumers with reliable quality commodities.

  □ Our reporter Zhao Li

  □ Sun Tianjiao, a trainee reporter of this newspaper

  Before leaving get off work, I place an order through the fresh food app on my mobile phone, and the food I bought when I get home also arrives. For Liu Ling, an office worker in Beijing, it saves time and effort, and "no longer has to worry about grocery shopping."

In the past, because she was too busy with work to buy vegetables every day, she could only fill up the refrigerator on weekends. Now, when she buys vegetables through the Internet, she can receive fresh dishes in half an hour.

  Like Liu Ling, there are not a few people who use and gradually rely on the Internet to buy vegetables.

The 25 Beijing residents interviewed by the "Rules of Law Daily" reporter recently, including many elderly people over the age of 60, have had the experience of buying vegetables on the Internet, and said that they will continue to use the fresh food app as a daily fresh food procurement channel.

  Behind the popularity of Internet grocery shopping is the sudden emergence of fresh food e-commerce in my country.

According to the "Research Report on Market Prospects and Investment Opportunities of China's Fresh Food E-commerce Industry" released by China Business Industry Research Institute in April this year, in recent years, the transaction scale of my country's fresh food e-commerce industry has maintained steady growth as a whole, and fresh food e-commerce transactions in 2021 The scale reached 465.81 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.92%.

  With the rapid development and expansion of fresh food e-commerce platforms, this lifestyle of "delivering vegetables to your door without leaving your home" has gradually become known. Its convenience and product diversity have made online grocery shopping popular among consumers. However, at the same time, problems such as product quality defects, non-standard pricing and quantitative, and difficult after-sales rights protection are also frequently complained by consumers.

  Online grocery shopping is all the rage

  Quality complaints occur from time to time

  After the outbreak, "post-85" Yang Yang finally persuaded "post-50" parents to buy fruits and vegetables through the fresh food app.

  "Parents' thinking is more traditional, and they have a natural distrust of online shopping. They are always worried that the things they buy online are not fresh." Yang Yang said that until one time, she bought a box of oranges online, which were full of color and moisture, weighing less than 10 pounds. To 50 yuan, more than half cheaper than buying in the supermarket.

  After this time, Yang Yang's father no longer resisted online shopping for fruits and vegetables as before, and even started to try online shopping by himself. He browsed the fresh food section of some e-commerce platforms on his mobile phone and asked her how to fill in the address.

A few days later, my father "secretly" bought a box of corn and was very happy when he went to pick up the courier.

  Zhao Qi, who lives in Xicheng District, Beijing, is a loyal user of the fresh food e-commerce platform.

She cares about the freshness and quality of fresh food, the types of vegetables to choose from and the time cost of shopping, and fresh food e-commerce meets her needs. She buys fruits and vegetables almost online.

  "In the past, when buying vegetables, you needed to go to the vegetable market to pick and choose and bargain, but now you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables through the app, and you can get home half an hour after placing an order, especially during the epidemic, which makes people feel more convenient and safe." It's no surprise that it's becoming more and more popular.

  Internet grocery shopping and one-stop shopping have indeed saved consumers a lot of trouble.

However, since the end of last year and the beginning of this year, there have been more negative reviews about fresh food e-commerce.

  "Once due to a system problem, the delivery was overtime by one hour; another time because of the distribution problem of the stationmaster, it was overtime by more than two hours." Zhao Qi said that there are also differences in the prices of commodities on the fresh food e-commerce apps, and some price differences can More than twice as high.

  Zhao Qi has also encountered uneven quality of dishes: I bought a box of vegetables, except for the top layer of which was perfect, the bottom layer was full of small and wilted leaves; potatoes marked "4kg per bag" on the page were The big chunks are full, and the small ones below are shriveled.

  Zhou Zhou, a Beijing resident, said: "Some fresh food platforms are often out of stock. When the app was opened at 4 p.m. two days ago, there were only a few kinds of green leafy vegetables left."

  Some respondents reported that food quality problems were prominent.

The reporter used "fresh food quality" and "grocery shopping quality" as keywords to search on third-party platforms, and there were more than a thousand related complaints, involving many different fresh food e-commerce platforms. Bloody shrimp, sprouted potatoes, etc.

  In January this year, Shanghai regulatory authorities issued a fine to a grocery shopping platform for the production and operation of pathogenic microorganisms, pesticide residues, veterinary drug residues, biological toxins, heavy metals and other pollutants, as well as other substances that endanger human health. The content exceeds food safety standards Limited food and food additives.

  Different operating models

  Pricing Quantitative Lack of Standards

  The reporter's investigation found that problems such as "distribution can't keep up", "out of stock" and "quality not up to standard" have a certain relationship with the operation mode and supply chain of the fresh food e-commerce platform.

  The existing fresh food e-commerce platforms have various operating modes, including front-end warehouses, store-warehouse integration, O2O platforms, and community group purchases.

  The front warehouse model usually relies on the community-based warehousing points that integrate warehousing, sorting and distribution to shorten the distribution chain and improve distribution efficiency; the store-warehouse integration model is only adopted by individual fresh food e-commerce companies, integrating “in-store consumption”. +Online shopping + instant delivery”, providing an integrated online and offline consumption experience; the O2O platform model is to provide consumers with fresh home services through cooperation with offline supermarkets, retail stores and convenience stores; while the community The group purchase model mainly meets the needs of users in the sinking market, and provides product supply chain logistics and after-sales support through the group purchase platform. The head of the group is responsible for community operations, and users pick up products in the community.

  In March of this year, a Dingdong shopping site was exposed to problems such as using dead fish to pretend to be live fish, recovering vegetables from vegetables that have exceeded the best selling period, "turning over bags" to change labels without authorization, and daily disinfection being a mere formality. .

The Beijing Haidian District Market Supervision Bureau then interviewed Dingdong to buy vegetables, filed a case for investigation, and guided the company to conduct a comprehensive self-inspection of the front warehouse.

  This is considered to once again reveal the inherent pain points of the front-loading model.

As a kind of fresh food e-commerce operation mode, the front warehouse mode first stores fresh products in a warehouse close to the community, and then uses this as the origin to complete the "last mile" distribution. The front warehouse is a "dark warehouse", not a "dark warehouse". Offline stores only undertake the function of cold chain storage.

  On April 7, the reporter came to an offline store of a fresh food e-commerce company in Chaoyang District, Beijing. The main model is the integration of store and warehouse.

The reporter saw at the scene that the store is mainly self-service shopping, and there are few shopping guides to guide shopping.

Some distribution personnel carry distribution equipment and wait for the sorter to sort the goods in a certain area, and then sort them separately according to different orders.

  A delivery staff at the scene told reporters that the fresh food e-commerce platform has an exclusive distribution chain, and the delivery staff are all contracted riders under the platform.

Recently, due to the epidemic, their order volume has increased significantly, but the manpower is relatively limited, so sometimes the delivery time cannot be guaranteed.

"Usually, the delivery can be guaranteed within half an hour, but now most of them are delayed. In the case of frozen fresh products, there is no way to guarantee the delivery on time. It is true that the product may deteriorate due to the delivery time."

  Because online grocery shopping cannot observe and select products offline, some consumers pay special attention to the traceability and qualification of products on online platforms.

  Zhao Lin, who lives in Hedong District, Tianjin, has two years of online grocery shopping experience. She believes that it is very important to improve product quality inspection information and clarify product qualifications. "It is convenient to buy vegetables online, but product quality must come first. In the case of not being able to choose, we can only understand the product through the product information on the page, so we prefer to choose a platform with clear source and quality inspection information, at least it seems to be much more reliable.”

  However, the reporter's investigation found that on some grocery shopping apps, the traceability and quality inspection information of fresh products is not "standard".

For products such as meat, eggs, poultry, fruits and vegetables, some platforms will publicly provide consumers with product quality inspection information on the product page, recommended by buyers, and even have special test reports showing that standards such as veterinary drug residues and heavy metals do not exceed the standard; but some platforms Only public product parameters, lack of traceability information or professional quality inspection information.

  In addition to product traceability and quality inspection information, Zhao Lin also paid attention to the lack of standardization of fresh food e-commerce platforms.

She had purchased the same "Imported Cherry JJJ Grade 450g" on a fresh food e-commerce platform many times, but the products she received were obviously different, either the same package with different weights, or a single cherry There are significant differences in size.

  Zhao Qi also had a similar experience.

She bought grouper 3 times on the same fresh food e-commerce platform in a week. On the product page, the weight of the grouper was displayed as 600g, and the fish she received was smaller each time, "The first time was about 15cm long, barely 14cm the second time and 11cm the third time."

  The reporter noticed that in response to the shortage of fresh food, many platforms have adopted the mode of refunding the price difference, but the platform will not inform consumers of how many jins are missing.

  "Due to the lack of standards on the platform, there are obvious differences in the goods received, which not only affects the mood of consumers, but also makes consumers question the platform's ability to control product quality. Over time, it is undoubtedly 'pushing consumers out'." Zhao Qi said.

  After-sales service sucks

  Consumer rights are not easy

  What should I do when I encounter a shortage of jins and short liang, and the quality is not up to standard when buying vegetables?

A number of consumers who were randomly interviewed by reporters said, "There is no way but to suffer from boredom."

  "There's not much money, forget it." After unsuccessfully communicating with the customer service of a fresh food e-commerce platform for many times, Zhao Qi finally gave up the idea of ​​rights protection.

  In July last year, Zhao Qi purchased a 400g jiwei shrimp on a fresh food e-commerce platform at a price of more than 200 yuan.

At that time, she noticed that in the product information introduction, the positioning of this product is "chilled aquatic products", and the recommendation language clearly reads "the seafood that has just been taken out of the water is kept fresh by refrigeration, that is, it is chilled. Buyers carefully select Careful selection, whole-process cold chain transportation, to ensure freshness and safety.”

  An hour later, Zhao Qi received the goods.

When she opened the bag, she was dumbfounded—the dead shrimp were soaked in bloody water, giving off a foul smell, and the Jiwei shrimp was very small, only about 6 centimeters, "it's not worth the price at all".

  She immediately contacted the customer service to give feedback on the small size and staleness of the prawns in Jiwei, but the other party replied: "Although the size of the prawns is relatively small, but the weight is sufficient, then there is no problem. For the stale prawns, the platform sells the Chilled products, not fresh products, are originally dead shrimp.”

  After several communications, the platform proposed to "return coupons", but refused to refund.

  Li Yang, who lives in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, also encountered difficulties in defending his rights.

He once bought bananas on a fresh food e-commerce platform. After receiving the goods, he found that several bananas were smashed and stale. He asked the platform for a refund and was rejected; I bought a bottle of soy milk with a shelf life of 3 days, but it solidified and deteriorated the next day after being refrigerated. The reply he got after reporting to the platform was that "no refund will be given due to improper storage."

  After the same experience, Li Yang "discovered the rule": shopping on the fresh food e-commerce platform, unless there are obvious defects in the product, such as mildew on the product, which can be intuitively reported, the other party may be more straightforward Refunds, other feedbacks such as "smelling", "not fresh" and "not feeling well after eating" without direct evidence are usually not accepted by the other party.

"Over time, I am too lazy to pull back and forth with customer service for these trivial matters, and I can only admit that I am unlucky."

  The reporter noticed that it is not uncommon to complain about the difficulty in safeguarding shopping rights on fresh food e-commerce platforms.

On the Heimao Complaint Platform, a search was conducted with the keyword "fresh food e-commerce platform", and 1903 complaint results were obtained.

Among the top 20 complaints, 16 involve "customer service does not refund" and "platform does not handle".

  Zhao Qi was indignant about this phenomenon: "The marketing advertisements of some fresh food e-commerce platforms are overwhelming, and they boast themselves in the advertising slogans, but they are extremely perfunctory about food quality and after-sales service. I hope to improve consumer rights protection channels, Protect our legitimate rights and interests, so that we can really buy with peace of mind while enjoying the convenience of online grocery shopping."

  Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Association of the China Law Society, suggested that fresh food e-commerce operators should strictly abide by relevant laws and regulations, and comprehensively, truthfully, accurately, and timely label product or service information to protect consumers' knowledge. rights and options.

At the same time, the quality of fresh commodities is their life and is an important criterion for consumers to choose a platform. The quality of commodities should be strictly controlled from the whole link of commodity supply chain, sales and distribution to provide consumers with products of reliable quality.

  In response to the difficulty of protecting consumers' rights, Chen Yinjiang believes that a multi-channel customer service system should be improved to effectively improve after-sales service capabilities.

"Actually, consumers' consulting experience with intelligent customer service is not good, and intelligent customer service cannot solve many more practical and details-related problems. To this end, fresh food e-commerce platforms should establish and improve manual online customer service, manual telephone customer service, Smart customer service and other multi-channel customer service systems are interconnected, enabling consumers to make independent choices according to their own needs.”

  (Liu Ling, Yang Yang, Zhao Qi, Zhao Lin, and Li Yang are all pseudonyms in the text)

  Comics/Li Xiaojun