Online purchase of home appliances is difficult to subsidize

Buying home appliances online can enjoy a convenient shopping experience, but it is diluted by poor services at the time of receiving energy-saving subsidies. The reporter’s investigation yesterday revealed that many online malls have complex procedures for subsidizing energy-saving appliances. Even after the three ministries issued notices requesting that the energy-saving subsidy conversion procedures for household appliances be simplified, so too. "The same household appliances, colleagues bought in physical stores, got 15 days of energy-saving subsidies, but I have waited for 24 days, and now have not yet gotten." Readers Mr. Chen told reporters.

Such complaints are not rare. The “China E-Commerce User Experience and Complaint Test Report for the Third Quarter of 2012” recently released by the China Electronic Commerce Research Center shows that energy subsidies in the third quarter of this year have become a new hot spot for complaints by e-commerce companies.

In mid-October of this year, the Ministry of Finance and other three departments even jointly issued a document requesting that the procedures for simplifying the payment of energy-saving subsidies for home appliances should be required. Relevant companies should sell the subsidy funds to consumers at the time of sale, and must not require consumers to return to the shopping mall after the purchase. subsidy.

However, since the policy of simplifying energy-saving subsidies and payments is mainly based on offline sales, the reporter found in the article that it did not provide detailed provisions on online shopping for home appliances. It is this omission that has led to delays in e-commerce energy-saving subsidies. The reporter dialed Jingdong Mall, Suning Tesco, Gome Online Mall and other major e-commerce customer service phones and found that the process of receiving energy-saving subsidies after online shopping for home appliances did not change significantly, and still needed to send copies of ID cards and confirmation letters of subsidies through express delivery. Important information, such as bank account numbers, is sent to businesses. Waiting for review is still a must. After the audit is completed, the merchant will then remit the money to consumers' Alipay payment platforms or bank accounts.

In addition to courier services, at present, there is a similar subsidy collection process after the online shopping mall uses online shopping. In other words, after consumers shop online, they still need to take all kinds of confirmation information to return to the physical store to receive a subsidy. Since the customer data is collected and submitted to the manufacturer, when the payment depends on the speed of the manufacturer, the process cycle may still be longer.

In the interview, most e-commerce companies also expressed their difficulties. They said that e-commerce is not the same as physical stores, and the only one who comes into direct contact with consumers is delivery personnel. Therefore, given the security issues, the issuance of energy-saving subsidies will certainly require more links. However, in the eyes of more people, e-commerce companies can fully use their online platforms to develop corresponding platform tools, so that online shopping consumers can complete online submission of related voucher, and timely receive energy-saving subsidies through third-party settlement methods.