Li Yingfeng
"19.9 yuan to use a Huawei mobile phone", "open the box, you must get an Apple product", "9.9 yuan to give a try, a bicycle becomes a motorcycle"... At present, blind box products are popular among young people, and there are many kinds of online blind box apps.
Media investigations have found that some online blind box applications have hidden mysteries, causing disputes such as induced consumption, false price quotations, and product fraud, infringing on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.
The blind box was originally an emerging market format, but it was used by some businesses as a fig leaf for dishonesty and illegal behavior.
Some merchants take advantage of the "blind sales" feature of blind boxes, take advantage of the trading advantages brought by the poor information of blind box sales, and use the techniques of black box operations to make false propaganda, false prices, sell fake and inferior products or incorrect products, formulate Articles such as unfair after-sales rules dig pits for consumers and plot against consumers, which also disrupts the ecology of the blind box market and reduces the integrity of the blind box market.
In fact, every time the merchants use the online blind box to "smuggle" consumers, they have accumulated a legal responsibility for themselves and buried a legal risk.
Reality and legality are the legal bottom line of marketing. Blind box marketing, like other traditional marketing methods, should also abide by this bottom line.
Merchants use the cover of blind boxes to sell fake and inferior products, three-null products or other unqualified products, and contraband, the illegal nature and consequences are the same as "clearly sold".
In the online blind box sales activities, if the merchant manually controls the drawout rate or winning rate of the relevant blind box products through the software background, so that the actual drawout rate or winning rate is much lower than the drawout rate or winning rate claimed by the merchant, which constitutes illegal promotion. , in severe cases constitute the crime of false advertising or fraud.
The relevant agreements of various blind box apps include “no return or exchange in principle”, “no support for 7-day unreasonable return”, “no refund once opened”, etc., which have the typical imprint of Bawang’s terms.
According to laws and regulations such as the "Consumer Rights Protection Law" and "Interim Measures for the Seven-day Unreasonable Return of Products Purchased Online", the exceptions to the seven-day unreasonable return of goods sold online do not explicitly include blind box products.
Article 3 of the Supreme Law's "Regulations on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Online Consumer Dispute Cases (I)" stipulates that: Consumers need to unpack and inspect the goods for inspection without affecting the integrity of the goods. The people's court shall not support the claim that the unreasonable return system stipulated in Article 25 of the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law does not apply on the grounds of unpacking, unless otherwise provided by the law.
If the consumer unpacks the blind box and finds that the product does not meet the quality requirements or does not meet the marketing promotion and commitment of the merchant, the merchant can completely ask the merchant to fulfill the obligation to return it.
Online blind box merchants use standard terms or notices, declarations, etc. to exclude or limit consumers' right to return goods, and reduce or exempt operators' responsibility for return, which is unfair and unreasonable to consumers, and has the characteristics of illegal standard contracts. legal validity.
The network blind box cannot be made into a "net pit blind box", and the network blind box cannot be a supervision blind spot.
At present, a few places such as Shanghai have carried out a systematic exploration of the restricted areas, extraction specifications, price system, after-sales guarantee and other matters of blind box operation by issuing compliance guidelines for blind box business activities. At the national level, there is no unified Blind box regulatory rules.
It is necessary for the legislative department and the regulatory department to formulate supervision rules for blind box marketing as soon as possible by amending the law, promulgating relevant rules, legal interpretations, etc. for the new format of blind box marketing. The scope of application, the types of methods, and the rights and obligations of operators and consumers, draw out the bottom line of blind box marketing, pull out the positive and negative lists of blind box marketing, and clarify the legal responsibility of operators for illegal marketing and the supervision responsibilities of regulatory authorities.
On this basis, the supervisory department should establish a long-term supervision mechanism, take consumer complaints as the guide, enrich supervision methods, strengthen supervision measures, improve supervision efficiency, eliminate dead ends of supervision, and force merchants to enhance their sense of integrity and law-abiding , abide by the legal bottom line.
Only by doing these things well can we regulate blind box marketing, eliminate blind box marketing infringements, and create an honest, transparent and fair blind box consumption environment for consumers.
Comics/Visual China