Optimize trading rules to protect consumers' right to know During the epidemic, the number of online consumer complaints increased by 300% month-on-month

● During the epidemic, the number of complaints from online travel consumers increased sharply. On the one hand, there was a surge in demand for withdrawal and reform; on the other hand, some online travel companies did not take effective measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers when they encountered regulatory disputes.

● In a very period when the number of complaints has risen sharply, the problem of insufficient protection of consumers' right to know by online travel platforms is more prominent than usual. For example, the response to the ticket refund cycle is not timely and accurate, which can easily aggravate users' anxiety

● This epidemic is a test for tourism companies. It is recommended that related tourism companies optimize transaction rules, write down the platform's withdrawal and modification rules in a prominent place on the webpage, and promptly publicize relevant policies and processing progress to protect consumers' right to know

□ Our reporter Zhang Wei

During the epidemic, the impact on the tourism industry is self-evident. Air tickets and train tickets were refunded on a large scale, and all travel agency groups were stopped, followed by complaints from consumers.

Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Law Society's Consumer Research Association and executive dean of the Beijing Sunshine Consumer Big Data Research Institute, told the Legal Daily that during this period, online travel consumers encountered many difficulties in reverting their itineraries. Related The number of complaints has reached a record high compared with the same period of previous years.

The Beijing Sunshine Consumer Big Data Research Institute analyzed the relevant data from January 20 to February 29 and found that during the period, the domestic online travel platforms need to respond to a conservative estimate of 100 million person-times. All The platforms have ushered in an unprecedented scale of reform. The number of complaints also increased, and consumer complaints in February increased by more than 300% from the previous month.

According to analysis, during the epidemic, the number of online tourism consumer complaints increased significantly, on the one hand, the surge in the demand for withdrawal and reform, and, on the other hand, when some online tourism companies encountered regulatory disputes, they did not take effective measures to protect consumers' Legitimate rights and interests. "In a very period when the number of complaints has risen sharply, the problem of insufficient protection of consumers' right to know by online travel platforms is more prominent than usual." Chen Yinjiang said.

Demand for itinerary rescheduling soars

Complaints increase more than triple

For the tourism industry, the Spring Festival holiday should have been a bumper season. Institutions have long predicted that the number of people traveling in the Spring Festival in 2020 will exceed 450 million, an increase of 8% over the Spring Festival last year, and the market size is about 550 billion yuan.

However, a sudden epidemic made the tourism industry fall into "hell" instantly. Wu Bihu, director of the Tourism Research and Planning Center of Peking University, told the reporter of the Legal Daily that if the optimistic estimate is that the three-month closing period is reduced by 60% and the three-month recovery period is reduced by 30%, the loss of the national tourism industry this year is expected to be close to 3 trillion yuan.

On January 24, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a notice. From now on, national travel agencies and online tourism companies will temporarily suspend business team travel and "ticket + hotel" travel products. All localities should guide the tourism enterprises in their jurisdictions to obey the overall situation of services, and properly handle the reasonable demands of tourists' adjustment of itineraries and refunds of tours.

The notice of the Civil Aviation Administration of China requires that from 00:00 on January 24th, if passengers who have previously purchased civil aviation tickets voluntarily refund their tickets, each airline and its ticket sales agency shall handle the refund free of charge and shall not charge any fees.

The railway also stipulates that from 00:00 on January 24th, passengers who have previously purchased national railway train tickets at various stations such as stations, 12306 website, etc., who want to refund their tickets if they change their schedule voluntarily, the railway department will not charge a refund fee and purchase railway passengers Personal accident insurance is also applied. In addition, the regulations on highways and waterways are also largely the same.

"In the short term, the unprecedented scale of itinerary reform and outbreak needs to be concentrated. The entire travel industry's customer service system has entered an extreme operating state, and online travel platform companies with a large number of users are facing tremendous pressure." Chen Yinjiang said.

Relevant data from the Ministry of Transport shows that from January 10 to February 18, the country's railways, roads, waterways and civil aviation sent a total of 1.476 billion passengers, a decrease of 50.3% over the same period last year. Among them, 210 million passengers were sent by rail, down 47.3%; 1.211 million passengers were sent by road, down 50.8%; 16.891 million passengers were sent by water, down 58.6%; 38.39 million passengers were sent by civil aviation, down 47.5%.

Although the relevant departments have clear withdrawal regulations, it does not mean that the relevant operations can be successfully completed-the huge workload has almost collapsed the relevant platform.

According to the analysis of Beijing Sunshine Consumer Big Data Research Institute, according to the predictions of the relevant departments before the start of the Spring Festival Transport, the predicted passenger flow of the Spring Festival Railway in 2020 is 440 million, and the forecast value of civil aviation passenger flow is 79 million. According to this forecast value, the demand for train tickets and air ticket refunds during the Spring Festival should be around 270 million. Among them, there were 230 million train tickets and 40 million air tickets.

According to the research report of iResearch and other organizations, the penetration rate of the domestic OTA industry in the air ticket market is close to 90%. In the early days of the outbreak, the OTA industry alone had to face at least 36 million person-times withdrawing and changing workloads. Data from the Civil Aviation Administration show that since the implementation of the free refund policy during the epidemic, domestic and foreign airlines have handled a total of 20 million free refunds, involving a total face value of more than 20 billion yuan.

In terms of tourism and vacation, according to the forecast before the Spring Festival, the number of domestic outbound tourists during the 2020 Chinese New Year Golden Week is estimated to be about 450 million. If the demand for outbound tourism and the two weeks after the holiday is counted, the number of tourists is expected to be about 500 million . In view of the fact that the group ban issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the temporary closure of scenic spots across the country, the number of tourists during the Spring Festival is basically cleared. Therefore, if calculated based on the penetration rate of about 15%, the workload of returning and changing the travel and vacation orders of the major online travel platforms during the Spring Festival is estimated to be between 70 million and 80 million.

Based on this, the Beijing Sunshine Consumer Big Data Research Institute believes that from January 20 to early February, the domestic online tourism platforms need to respond to a conservative estimate of 100 million person-times, and the amount of refunds is 30 million to 5000. Between Wandan (transportation + tourism), all platforms ushered in an unprecedented scale of reform and reform. With the surge in demand for chargebacks, the number of complaints has also increased, and consumer complaints in February increased by more than 300% from the previous month.

Ticket cancellation complaints

The withdrawal rules are inconsistent

The normal complaint channels are severely crowded, customer service calls are queued for a long time, and online complaints have no feedback for a long time ... From January 20 to February 29, complaints from online travel consumers involved almost every OTA platform.

During the epidemic, tourism complaints focused on issues related to withdrawal and reform. Relevant data from Beijing Sunshine Consumer Big Data Research Institute shows that from January 21 to February 29, about 59% of complaints related to ticket cancellations from major domestic online travel platforms, and about about complaints related to hotel cancellations 24.1%, complaints related to train tickets accounted for about 10.4%, complaints about bus tickets accounted for about 3.3%, and complaints about travel and vacation accounted for about 3.1%.

From January 20th to February 10th, the Baidu index of the keyword "refund" exceeded 1400, which has nearly doubled compared with more than 700 in the same period in 2019. Of the 30 companies on the "Black List" of the Sina Black Cat complaint platform that month, 12 were airlines, and the related complaints were basically related to refunds and refunds. According to the sample statistics of Consumer Network, Sina Weibo, Baidu Post Bar, Ju Complaint, Black Cat Complaint and related complaint platforms, the number of consumer complaints about air ticket refunds and refunds increased by 249% in February.

As for the specific content of consumer complaints, there are some differences between different products. Complaints about air tickets are mainly "refund dispute rules", "refund time", "flight cancellation".

The most frequent cases of disputes over the rules of withdrawal and modification are concentrated between January 20 and January 31. During this period, the refund policies of the General Administration of Civil Aviation and major airlines were frequently updated, and there were disputes as to whether to refund tickets for free.

"Especially before the full refund policy was issued, the order for voluntary refunds due to the epidemic situation, whether it is possible to request a refund of refund fees, etc., different airlines have different policies, resulting in a lot of complaints, which accounted for as much as 82.7%. "An expert from Beijing Sunshine Consumer Big Data Research Institute said that compared to domestic air tickets, international air tickets involve airlines from different countries and regions, and the refund policy requested by the Civil Aviation Administration cannot be covered, so a large number of refunds have also been generated. Rules dispute.

In terms of the refund time, the normal refund cycle is generally 10 to 15 working days, but during the epidemic, due to the sharp increase in the amount of refunds, a large number of refund requests timed out, and the refund period for individual orders exceeded one month. . These complaints accounted for 14.8% (including OTA platforms, media and third-party platforms).

Ms. Wu booked a flight from Phuket to Hong Kong on January 26 through a platform. On January 24, Ms. Wu initiated a refund, but so far has not received a refund. The platform said for a while that the application information was incomplete, and that the airline would not refund it, and there was no refund. However, Ms. Wu found that the relevant airline had refunded the full price of the ticket to the platform on March 10.

In addition, a small number of complaints were caused by the cancellation of some flights, resulting in subsequent trips being forced to retreat and transformed into consumer losses, accounting for only 2.5%.

The complaint reasons for online travel train ticket services mainly include the refund process, refund fees and platform services. Among them, the complaints caused by the refund process accounted for 40.4%, and the complaints caused by the refund fee accounted for 39%. Complaints from platform services accounted for 20.5%.

In terms of hotel complaints, 89.2% of the complaints were caused by passive regression disputes caused by the epidemic. Specifically, it is mainly due to disputes over the rules of refund and cancellation caused by flight cancellation and pre-trip itinerary. There are discrepancies between the online travel platform and hotel policies (there are usually differences between the hotel direct marketing channel and the distribution channel refund policy). In particular, the January 24th notice of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism did not involve the mandatory requirements for free retreat, which made it difficult to find reference standards for the handling of some disputes in the early stages of the epidemic.

Urgent need to clarify platform responsibilities

Protect consumers' right to know

At the same time that consumers face various difficulties in retreating, the platform is also having a hard time. Relevant travel platforms said that due to the large number of orders being returned and changed due to the epidemic situation, there should be too much time to communicate, and some overseas resource parties were more time-consuming to communicate, leading to delays and negligence in some cancellation applications. At the same time, many businesses on the platform have difficulty operating and cannot refund consumers in a timely manner.

"In the very period when the number of complaints rose sharply, the problem of insufficient protection of consumers' right to know by online travel platforms is more prominent than usual." Chen Yinjiang said, for example, the response to the refund cycle of air tickets is not timely, accurate and easy. Increase user anxiety.

Chen Yinjiang analyzed that the reasons for the sharp increase in online travel consumer complaints during the epidemic were, on the one hand, the surge in the demand for withdrawal and reform, and on the other hand, some online travel companies did not take effective measures to maintain consumers in a timely manner when they encountered regulatory disputes. Legal rights.

At the same time, there is still a vague area in the determination of force majeure such as the new crown pneumonia epidemic, such as whether there is a force majeure clause applicable to overseas trips when there are differences between the domestic and overseas situations; whether the revocation that occurred before the epidemic response level increased could not There are also problems of different standards in handling, which also lead to more consumer complaints.

For example, most travel platforms consider the refund before January 24 as a breach of contract, deducting the corresponding penalty or actual losses, and many consumers believe that even if cancellation of travel orders during the epidemic before January 24, it should be force majeure , Should be refunded.

In this regard, Liu Junhai, a professor at the School of Law, Renmin University of China believes that the cancellation of the travel plan due to safety concerns constitutes a contract breach, but according to the relevant provisions of the Contract Law, if the contract cannot be performed due to force majeure, the liability shall be partially or completely exempted based on the force majeure . At the same time, for the case of lossy cancellation, the platform needs to provide consumers with relevant proof that the resource party has deducted the charge before the refund.

At the same time, the division of responsibilities between online travel platforms and suppliers is still not clear. There is a phenomenon that platforms and suppliers "play a ball" with each other, which is exposed in the relevant complaints in the epidemic. Standard differences and disagreements between platforms and suppliers can easily lead to damage to consumer rights.

The relevant person in charge of the Network Supervision Branch of the Xuanwu District Market Supervision Bureau of Nanjing City believes that the outbreak is a test for tourism companies. It is recommended that relevant tourism companies optimize the trading rules, write the platform's withdrawal and modification rules in a prominent place on the website, and promptly publicize relevant policies and Process progress to protect consumers' right to know.

"The surge in the number of withdrawals and complaints during the epidemic also exposed the inadequacy of online travel platform investment in customer service hardware, and insufficient technical redundancy for responding to extremes and emergencies, resulting in a large number of consumers unable to smoothly submit withdrawal requests. And reasonable complaints, legal rights and interests cannot be protected in a timely manner. "Chen Yinjiang said.