A large number of professional sellers of idle fish pretend to be individual sellers, invading on a large scale, and repeatedly challenging platform supervision.
Original title: Idle fish tastes bad: professional sellers "invade" ash production on a large scale and repeatedly challenge platform supervision.
Source: Investor Network
Liang Xiao
Recently, Jiangsu Consumer Protection Committee held a centralized interview with 12 second-hand trading platforms, which aroused great concern in the industry, and the second-hand trading platforms also fell into the whirlpool of public opinion.
According to the latest Consumer Survey Report on Second-hand Trading Platforms released by Jiangsu Consumer Protection Committee, more than 93% of consumers said that they encountered various problems such as selling fake goods and fraud in second-hand transactions. Among the 12 second-hand trading platforms involved, there are platforms with deep qualifications such as idle fish, turning around and patting. Among them, due to the huge traffic backed by Ali, idle fish attracted relatively more attention.
According to Alibaba’s 2020 financial report, the number of online sellers of idle fish has exceeded 30 million. As of March 2020, the number of monthly users of idle fish has reached 82.34 million. In addition, the GMV (total platform transaction) of idle fish has exceeded 200 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 100%.
However, at the same time of rapid development, a series of problems, such as poor platform supervision and breeding of gray transactions, have also appeared, and have been criticized by many users. Now the idle fish seems to be running counter to the original intention.
Professional sellers "invade" idle fish and taste bad.
Idle fish started as a second-hand transaction, whether it is daily necessities, electronic products, clothes and shoes, etc., it can be bought and sold on it. Under the premise of good quality, reasonable price and open and transparent commodity information, every user can trade.
The dual attributes of buying and selling idle and socializing are deeply supported by the younger generation, and the registered users of idle fish are also increasing, among which the post-90 s have become the main force in buying and selling second-hand goods. According to the data of Analysys Qian Fan, the users of idle fish are basically under 40 years old, among which the post-90s generation accounts for 46.1%, and 80% of them have medium and high consumption capacity.
To a certain extent, the birth of idle fish effectively solved the pain point of people dealing with second-hand goods and excessive consumption, and cultivated the habit of selling idle and reasonable consumption.
However, many users have found that many products on idle fish today have words such as "brand-new" and "postage", and the price of the products remains to be verified.
A post-80s idle fish user told Investor.com that it is difficult to use idle fish to find second-hand goods now. Ask a few words and you will know that professional businesses are selling goods. The influx of professional sellers broke the C2C model originally advocated by the idle fish, and the speculative behavior of many sellers made the transaction between buyers and sellers complicated. More and more users say that it is difficult to buy favorite goods on idle fish nowadays. For a long time, the platform supervision of idle fish has been too loose, and with more than 80 million monthly activities, huge traffic can not help but be regarded as a diversion tool for Tmall and Taobao merchants.
Another 90-year-old idle fish user said that when she bought things on idle fish, she would find many brand-new products with low prices, but when she clicked into the products, she found that she needed to copy the secret order to Taobao to complete the purchase, and after jumping to Taobao, the price of the goods was not the low price before the idle fish.
In addition, on the black cat platform, there are a large number of users’ complaints about sellers’ alleged fraud or false transactions. As can be seen from the descriptions of these users, with the "invasion" of a large number of professional sellers and the opportunism of some sellers, many users call out: idle fish has gone bad.
According to the analysis of people in the e-commerce industry, because Taobao stores are becoming more and more strict, and the number of users in micro-stores is too small, this idle fish platform with a large number of users and relatively loose review has become a "paradise" for many sellers, and bad sellers even take the opportunity to make and sell fakes, or play the edge ball of "gray industry".
Poor supervision of ash breeding platform
According to MobData’s "2018 Second-hand E-commerce Industry Research Report", in 2018, the annual transaction volume of second-hand idle goods in China reached 742.01 billion yuan, an increase of 30%. In 2019, the transaction volume reached 964.6 billion, and in 2020 it rose to 1,254 billion, which has reached the trillion scale.
The huge market turnover reflects the great potential of the second-hand trading market. However, due to poor supervision or loopholes in the rules, counterfeit and shoddy products frequently appear on second-hand trading platforms, and a gray area has emerged.
According to the survey on the consumption of online second-hand trading platforms conducted by Jiangsu Consumer Protection Committee, 17.1% of consumers in second-hand trading platforms encounter the problem of "fake goods and piracy" and 10.2% of consumers encounter the problem of "issuing fake appraisal reports".
A user who asked not to be named said that he once bought a children’s watch on idle fish, and the price was cheaper than that in official website. However, he didn’t know that he bought a high imitation until he asked if it was genuine, which was equivalent to buying a high imitation product at a price higher than that of second-hand. The user wanted to return it, but the seller politely refused. For this reason, the user can only complain on the black cat complaint, and has not received feedback yet. In addition, there are many complaints about the sale of fake fish by the seller of idle fish, the malicious exchange of bags by the buyer, and the dispute over return.
In addition, the platform is also full of personal privacy, pornographic and vulgar content, and what’s more, it not only sells pornographic and vulgar goods online, but also provides on-site related services. In addition, sensitive contents such as pirated resources and banned drugs have repeatedly appeared on the idle fish platform.
In response to such "commodities" of idle fish, lawyer Jin, a legal professional, told Investor. com that idle fish is not strict enough in the sale of imitations, information monitoring, content review, etc., and the punishment is not strong. If most accounts are sold, the number is not particularly huge, just give a warning. Sellers will also adjust their strategies at any time to avoid platform censorship by changing keywords and bypassing anti-spam systems.
Lawyer Jin added that according to the Tort Liability Law, online platforms should fulfill their reasonable censorship obligations and take necessary, reasonable and appropriate measures to prevent acts of infringing intellectual property rights and unfair competition. However, in the face of huge transaction volume and users, it is difficult to completely eliminate this phenomenon. On the other hand, the time cost and economic cost of users’ rights protection are too high, which is one of the reasons why the platform has not been able to eradicate this phenomenon.
In addition to trading, idle fish also has an obvious feature, that is, everyone can tell stories on it to create a person’s design, with strong social attributes. All kinds of goods are often filled with corresponding copywriting. For example, those who sell maternal and child products will set themselves up as caring mothers, while those who sell cosmetics, clothes and bags are all kinds of copywriting such as "I can’t use it when I break up" and "I bought it by licking a dog".
In order to improve the exposure and run the store well, the sellers even explored a set of "operating system", which in turn led to the training business. Among them, many merchants sell internal training on the platform, including the process of opening a store and writing a copy. It can be seen that idle fish seems to be evolving from a second-hand trading platform to a small "Taobao" that attracts traffic.
According to the official data of idle fish, at present, about 1 million people post idle personal items on idle fish every day, and the number exceeds 2 million. Idle fish also said that in the future, idle fish bases will be established in 20 cities across the country, and idle fish stations will be distributed to more than 50 cities, and idle fish markets will also be extended to 30 cities.
However, if the quality of the goods is worrying, the information is opaque, and the price does not match, consumers are fooled by non-compliant means, and even the gray products are allowed to breed and spread, the future of idle fish may become a "salted fish" in the hearts of users.
Regarding the above-mentioned professional sales of fake goods, illegal sales and breeding of various kinds of ash products, Investor.com tried to verify with the idle fish, but the other party did not reply.
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