In this case of the Yuanqi Forest pricing error, the consumer who squeezed 41,000 boxes of wool alone was the most eye-catching because it would take him 1,300 years to finish the drink alone., Vitality Forest can be honest with this consumer, I just watch you drink it, and are not allowed to sell it outside.
Yuanqi Forest Announces Free Drinks to 140,000 Orderers, Lawyer: Defects may not be effective
Author/Xue Jizhi Editor/Li Ya Typesetting/Zhongrui
In the early morning of October 26, many netizens shared their achievements in Taobao’s official Taobao store on social platforms, 6 yuan for 12 bottles, 3 boxes of 36 bottles, the original price is 216 yuan, and the actual payment is 10 yuan after the superimposed discount. To 0.3 yuan, rounding up is equivalent to not spending money for nothing. This price is really outrageous, and a large number of orders flocked in an instant.
According to the “Letter from the Yuanqi Forest E-commerce Team to Users” recently released by the Yuanqi Forest Official Account, a total of 140,500 users placed orders on the same day, with an order value of tens of millions. Among them, there were 451 orders for more than 50 boxes, the largest The order is 41,000 boxes.
In this case of Yuanqi Forest’s pricing error, the consumer who smashed 41,000 boxes of wool alone was the most eye-catching because it would take him 1,300 years to finish drinking by himself. Yuanqi Forest can be true to this consumer. I just look at it. If you drink it, you are not allowed to sell it outside.
The painful lesson of Yuanqi Forest this time is not the first time in the history of Chinese e-commerce, and it will not be the last. Such things will continue to happen in the future. How to solve this problem fundamentally so that everyone is on a safe boundary Internal consumption may be something worth thinking about.
The vitality forest fleece is obviously human.
Consumer judgment
Let me talk about consumers first, I don’t want to miss this kind of wool.
Many netizens posted their own record of over a dozen orders, and called friends to study and discuss the cheapest way to place an order. They spent time researching and disseminating the bug mechanism, and naturally they didn’t want to give up easily, in an attempt to actually ship the goods. Of course, there are also professional wool parties who have dropped tens of thousands of boxes, expecting that it will not be possible to deliver them. They are just waiting for a compensation.
While everyone was struggling, a screenshot of the chat records of the Yuanqi Forest spike group was circulated wildly. One claimed to be Zhang Along, the official store operator of the Yuanqi Forest. He sent a message in the group to play an emotional card, saying that he was setting up a store spike activity. There was a mistake at the time, which caused the company to lose 2 million yuan. I implore the buyer to return the goods. This picture has aroused extensive discussion on the whole network, and platforms such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Zhihu all have how to view the discussion of the vitality forest being smashed.
Everyone showed a two-sided camp. On the one hand, they expressed their understanding of the enterprise, and they should be forgiving and forgiving. They should return the goods to Yuanqi Forest. On the other hand, there are many people who claim to be operators, saying that when setting discounts, they will be reminded of less than a few discounts. It is difficult for operators to make such mistakes. Under this rhythm, many netizens were led off the track, believing that this incident was a self-directed and acted performance by Yuanqi Forest. They advertised that they pretended to make a mistake to create a topic, and then made a wave of enthusiasm and directly squeezed the wool in the opposite direction. Many consumers have also found corresponding laws, believing that Yuanqi Forest should pay for their mistakes. Yuanqi Forest was sent to the hot search again in the discussion.
On October 29, Yuanqi Forest officially responded that it would give 140,000 orders to each user a box of drinks, and dispelled the rumors of the chat screenshots of the so-called operating students. This topic has been read by 190 million so far, and once again rushed into the top ten in hot searches. Many real practitioners in the e-commerce operation industry have expressed their strong empathy. Doing operations is really a busy process at large promotional festivals. The center of the process is frightened. If something goes wrong, you need to bear the loss yourself. Fighting the workers is really a burden. Sorry.
Many consumers said that the vitality forest is very atmospheric. Paying one box per person does not completely cancel the order. This wave is already very interesting. There is no need to continue to embarrass. After all, the economy is in recession. Do it, everyone takes a step back and broadens the sky. However, there are still people who stand on the moral high ground, thinking that this incident must be a marketing that has repeatedly rushed to the hot search. If something goes wrong, it has earned popularity, and now it is hypocritical to pay.
Everyone shouts that morality is supreme, but when encountering such a thing, those judgments are twofold, and the essence of human nature is also exposed.
Enterprises cry out grievances and struggle to start a business
In its official response, Yuanqi Forest summarized the context of the accident in detail: “At 0:00 on October 26, the operating students made a mistake in the discount setting operation for participating in the daily activities of the platform. At that time, they did not pay attention to the low price reminder. , Resulting in ultra-low prices for all products in Taobao stores, and the price of the products is not even as good as the cost of express delivery. Half an hour later, the operation team found an abnormal order and immediately corrected the wrong setting. However, due to the influx of a large number of users, the order volume has skyrocketed, exceeding the third party Store management ERP system load capacity, channel congestion caused inventory deduction delays, resulting in the failure of all product quantity restriction functions, so that the order far exceeded the physical inventory.”
As the sensitive period of e-commerce promotion is approaching, and there are many similar precedents of “fake accidents”, many consumers are full of doubts about their claimed operational errors, thinking that this is the reason why Yuanqi Forest is marketing and taking these millions of dollars. After several days of hot searches, the publicity effect was instantly full.
After searching the evidence chain, the IQ Tax Research Center found that this so-called operation Zhang Along was completely caused by the screenshot PS of other stores before, but the fermentation of public opinion was actually not connected with this screenshot, and many netizens were misled by the screenshot. , Do you think that the loss is only a little bit and still require a return, the Yuanqi Forest is so poor? Trade this loss for a textbook-level marketing, this wave is not a loss. However, according to the actual insider, the real loss of the operation accident was more than 40 million yuan.
As a startup company, it is not easy for Yuanqi Forest to have its current size in just a few years. As a star company in the bubble water circuit, it has been mixed in recent years. On the one hand, it is favored by capital and its valuation has risen repeatedly. , And the other side has not been able to completely get rid of the impact of the milk tea marketing rollover incident. It is really difficult to have such an accident again this time.
However, the IQ Tax Research Center believes that Yuanqi Forest may be really wronged this time. I would like to ask, if it really wants to use this marketing, why did the store not continue to operate normally but chose to temporarily close the store and remove all the products? This is undoubtedly detrimental to Double Eleven sales. You must know that most of Yuanqi Forest’s orders may be online. It chose to close the branch at the best time to make a profit at the end of the year. If it is not a real accident, why is it so? It doesn’t make sense to think about it.
The dilemma of handling and not handling
How can such a bug be solved? This is a big test for Yuanqi Forest. If you deal with it, you will inevitably suffer a reputation loss. If you don’t deal with it, you will have to bear a large amount of financial loss. This time, the Yuanqi Forest chose to charge back the order and give it to each user who placed the order. A box of drinks as a make up.
The IQ Tax Research Center was very impressed by the number in the response. The person who placed the most orders had 41,000 boxes at one time. According to a box of 12 bottles, if the person drinks one bottle a day, it would take more than 1,300 years to consume such inventory. So this person is definitely not for personal use, is it for giving away? It doesn’t feel realistic. In fact, there is no need to guess. He must be used for reselling. If the order is established, the person’s profit can reach about 3 million yuan. This is the rhythm of going directly to the well-off.
Yuanqi Forest dared to admit its problems and give a remedy plan. I actually think it is worthy of praise. After all, it did not blindly throw the pot, but also gave its own compensation plan. I calculated an account and a box of 15 bottles of vitality The market price of Forest Bubble Water is 75 yuan. If it is given to 140,000 users at a time, the total price of goods compensated by Yuanqi Forest is more than 10 million. This is not a small amount at all, but it has not completely calmed the excitement of netizens. .
In fact, there are many bug incidents like this. The e-commerce industry is highly dependent on the Internet to operate. It is inevitable that there will be situations, but the results of each company’s response are not uniform.
At the beginning of 2019, there was a major loophole in the marketing and promotion of Pinduoduo’s 100-yuan universal coupons. A large number of new and old users poured into the platform to receive 100 yuan without threshold coupons. Pinduoduo platform has accumulated losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.
After the incident, Pinduoduo immediately issued an official statement stating that a black-and-ash production group used the loopholes to make improper profits. It has reported the case to the public security organs and cooperated with relevant departments to crack down on the black-and-ash groups. The handling method other than the statement is that all physical orders in this incident will be refunded, and the virtual currency and phone charges charged by users are also frozen.
Some time agoSamsungThe mall once sold out 200-4000cell phoneCoupons, which means that you can buy the new 256G Galaxy 21 with more than 700 yuan. Samsung, as a chaebol group, obviously has a lot of money and wealth. It directly refunded the money paid by the buyer and directly compensated the 4,000 yuan “loss” of the purchaser.
The IQ Tax Research Center does not judge the treatment methods of each company one by one, but it can be seen that the nature of the bugs encountered by each company is not completely uniform, and it does not make much sense to put them together. After all, once this kind of incident occurs, it is necessary for the company to weigh and judge the loss of money and reputation. Which of the two is more important and which one to choose is an eternal problem.
What exactly is a positive solution
In fact, Yuanqi Forest has done so much to save face. If they follow the spirit of the contract, they will track the goods after all the goods are sent. They can actually see where the more than 40,000 boxes will go and the person who placed the order. Do they have formal sales qualifications? Is the sales channel officially recognized? If the Yuanqi Forest is really tracked down, I am afraid that half of the large single households with wool will have to be folded inside. Even if you don’t sell it for self-drinking, the goods will not be equivalent to being smashed into your own hands. It will take decades to digest, and that time would have already expired.
It is not the first time that problems such as Yuanqi Forest’s operational errors are on the e-commerce platform, and it certainly won’t be the last. How to avoid such incidents?
First of all, the business side must be the big head, and professional technical training should be done for the operating personnel. Carefully study the rules of each platform, set up inventory and price mechanisms in the background, especially in the promotion festival, increase manpower, prepare servers, and prevent risks in time.
Secondly, the platform can also be protected by related rules online. It’s just like the telecommunications fraud in the past, but later the bank launched a related traceability mechanism, which promptly reminds users of transaction risks when they encounter doubts about account funds, and even freezes and traces the funds within 12 hours. Protect the safety of users’ funds. The same applies to e-commerce platforms. Can a more targeted merchant transaction rule mechanism be introduced to prevent risks from occurring?
Furthermore, when it is raised to the policy level, in fact, the regulations and mechanisms for e-commerce merchants are still lacking. You can also work with e-commerce platforms and professionals to formulate special laws to define e-commerce platform transactions, such as when such operational errors occur. Who should be held responsible for the situation.
Finally, users can be more self-disciplined. In the Internet era, stalking wool has become a great pleasure, and many people even specialize in how to smash wool quickly and accurately. But although wool is good, it is not greedy. It is not a problem to occasionally see coupons and the like to take advantage. However, when the price is obviously too low, it is not necessary to take advantage of the danger.