Author Susnan

The 2026 Double Eleven shopping festival is currently underway, and many consumers are taking advantage of the big promotion to place orders and stock up, hoping to use the "grass planting" products as soon as possible. However, what awaits them may be a series of "levels":

To endure the long pre-sales that often take 15 to 45 days, the mismatch of products under live streaming filters, and the hidden shrinkage of the same product but different materials. Some women's clothing buyers may have to remove the 2.4-meter anti stripping ribbon nailed to the collar or cut off the giant hang tag larger than their face after receiving the goods, and they may lose their eligibility for returns and exchanges if they are not careful

At the annual battle report conference after Double Eleven, various dimensions such as transaction volume, order volume, and the number of brands exceeding one billion are stacked layer by layer, but there is no trace of return rate. This data is carefully stored in the background, like an elephant in the room that should not be mentioned.

In reality, the return rate has become so high that it cannot be ignored. Why did the return occur? Who will bear the promotion, performance, and after-sales costs already incurred after a transaction is cancelled?

Anti rubbing wear, clothing tags are getting bigger and bigger

On Baidu Baike, a new consumer culture term has emerged - 'wear and tear'.

This term refers to the benefits obtained by consumers who try on clothes and return them using e-commerce platform policies. It is a form of "shearing wool" behavior that often leads to losses for businesses.

An article in the People's Daily pointed out that with the popularization of rules such as "7-day no reason return and exchange", it is more convenient for consumers to return and exchange online shopping products. However, a small number of people like to take advantage of loopholes, either using new clothes as "disposable props" for travel photos, or immediately returning them after wearing them on important occasions, or even sending back clothes that have been worn for several days.

Extreme cases are not uncommon. According to media reports, on November 3rd, Mr. Wang, the owner of an online store, posted online that his store had been "ripped off" by students from a vocational and technical college in Guangzhou, involving 22 students who purchased choir performance costumes online. After completing the performance, they initiated a centralized return and refund (one of whom returned the clothes due to quality issues). "The returned clothes were covered in sweat stains and stains and could not be resold, and some students even verbally abused and provoked them in online communication.

In January of this year, a netizen posted a video on social media claiming to have seen a woman wearing a down jacket without a hang tag in Mohe. It is reported that some consumers take advantage of the loophole of the "seven day no reason return" policy by filling in the tourist destination as the shipping address when shopping online, wearing the tags directly after receiving the goods, and applying for a return before the end of the trip. As a result, the actual time occupied by the product exceeded 14 days (7-day return period plus 7-day return buffer period).

The response of merchants is constantly upgrading. According to a report by New Yellow River, in order to prevent this situation, many businesses will make new clothes tags the size of A4 paper by 2025. These tags are large in size, hard in material, and eye-catching in color, increasing discomfort and visibility when worn. According to China Youth Daily, some e-commerce women's clothing merchants have also installed disposable anti tamper ribbons. Some ribbons can reach a length of up to 2.4 meters, with eye-catching colors that cannot be hidden, and clearly marked as "removed, not returned, not replaced".

In March of this year, a consumer posted on Xiaohongshu that the clothes they bought had a "Big Mac" tag on them, which was so big that it could "randomly slap a passerby".

The effect is there. According to Yangcheng Evening News, after the implementation of giant tags, the malicious return rate of online stores has significantly decreased from 42% to 18%. Of course, even giant hang tags cannot eradicate the act of wearing them. Some netizens left comments, and their colleagues chose to take advantage of the situation and use clips to clip the tag inside, forcing a piece of clothing with a giant hang tag on for several days.

However, who will ultimately foot the bill for these constantly increasing defense costs?

The "Economic Operation Analysis of China's Clothing Industry in the First Half of 2026" released by the China National Garment Association shows that the average return rate of women's clothing online channels is in the range of 50% to 60%, and the comprehensive cost of a single return is about 16 yuan.

If the return rate is entirely attributed to the "wool pulling" behavior of some consumers, it will conceal a bigger problem. The main reason for returns is the deviation between the expected product and the actual product.

Consumers who are keen on placing orders, when they open the package, only have shattered commercial filters and disappointment. In the live broadcast room, the delicate silhouettes on the models became loose and messy; Refine the texture fabric on the picture, making it cheap and rough to the touch. This practice is also known as selling "AB goods" in the industry, which means promoting one set of high-quality products while selling another set of substandard materials.

In addition to the mismatch between the goods, there are also more subtle differences in specifications between the products. Last winter, a consumer named Xi Xi opened the men's and women's detail pages of a short down jacket from the same brand side by side. The numbers on the screen surprised her: the maximum size of the women's jacket was labeled as 120 grams, while the minimum size of the men's jacket was 195 grams; Men's styles that use more than 60% more materials are actually cheaper by tens of yuan. This is not an isolated case. On a down vest of a certain brand, for the same size, the women's version is filled with 25g of down, while the men's and children's versions are filled with 38g of down, and the prices of the three are the same. The explanation given by most merchants for the difference between men's and women's styles is that "women's designs should pay attention to beautiful lines, and adding too much velvet will make them appear bulky".

But this statement is unacceptable to consumers: "Why do we buy less velvet for the same amount of money

From this perspective, the crux of the matter lies in the goods, not in the people.

Who facilitated the order and who is responsible for the return?

The formation of a high return rate cannot be separated from the push of various links. And the e-commerce influencers who are considered to know how to turn "want" into "must" are precisely disconnected from the return rate.

In most live streaming sales agreements, commissions are settled at a certain percentage of the transaction amount, and the settlement node is usually set after "confirming receipt", which is often based on logistics signing or system automatic confirmation. This means that as long as the clothes are signed for, even if a return is applied for the next day, the anchor or MCN's pit fees or commissions have already been collected and will not be returned to the merchant.

According to a report by New Yellow River, in March of this year, running brand Macondo signed an agreement with Qingdao Free Seal Script Krypton Culture and Technology Co., Ltd. (Free Seal Script Krypton Company) to commission artist Batu under the Free Seal Script Krypton Company to promote the agreed upon products through online live streaming on his account "Batu&Bogu". After the live broadcast started, excluding the cost of goods and express delivery, the brand owner Macondo directly invested more than 2.25 million yuan, including pit fees, streaming fees, live broadcast room lucky bag fees, commissions, etc. But the result was not as intended by Macondo, with a return rate of 65.65% and a direct loss of over 800000 yuan.

This settlement logic of "selling and winning" has caused influencers to lose their cautious motivation in product selection and display, and instead tend to use exaggerated language to stimulate orders, because every impulse consumption is an instant receipt of income, and the consequences of the impulse are jointly digested by the merchant and the consumer.

Merchants are the most direct bearers of the consequences of returns.

The cost of returning goods borne by merchants in reverse is often higher than that of forward shipping, with scattered return packages, non-standard packaging, low sorting efficiency, and high damage rates. Every returned piece of clothing needs to undergo a series of manual processes such as quality inspection, ironing, folding again, and changing tags. The labor cost of these processes will double during the Double Eleven period due to overtime pay. In addition, merchants may also face inventory depreciation and cash flow issues: if they return goods and miss the peak sales season, they can only offer discounts, resulting in meager profits. Seasonal clothing can even become a backlog of inventory, occupying storage resources.

For small and medium-sized businesses, they not only have to bear the depreciation of the returned goods themselves, but also the punishment of platform traffic decline, forming a vicious cycle of "the more they sell, the more they lose, and the harder it is to sell".

Consumers may not necessarily be winners.

In 2024, Ms. Chen, a consumer in Shanghai, reported to a reporter from China Consumer News that she had selected a photo frame in the live broadcast room. At that time, the anchor promised to return it without reason if she was not satisfied, and there was also shipping insurance. Ms. Chen confidently placed the order. When receiving the photo frame, Ms. Chen found that the frame, which weighs only one kilogram, was wrapped in thick foam plastic. Ms. Chen was not satisfied with the photo frame, so she applied for a return. However, the courier who came to pick up the package said that the weight of the frame and packaging is 2 kilograms, but because the volume exceeds the standard, it needs to be charged at 9 kilograms, and the total shipping cost is more than 50 yuan.

Tang Jiansheng, Deputy Secretary General of the Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Committee, stated that merchants use "shipping insurance" as a selling point during live broadcasts, and most consumers understand it as a cost free return. If the return shipping cost is much higher than the "shipping insurance" afterwards, the merchant is suspected of misleading consumers. This behavior violates the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and is also suspected of unfair competition.

The original intention of the seven day no reason return rule is to protect consumer rights, but the boundaries of rights and responsibilities are blurred at the enforcement level.

In some cases, a small number of users have turned it into a tool for "free short-term borrowing", while merchants have high and difficult costs of providing evidence for clothing stains and other situations, low costs of dishonesty, and unequal rights and responsibilities between both parties.

At the same time, in the recommendation logic of the platform, whether the product is accompanied by a main image or short video, and how the evaluation reputation data is, are important references that affect the exposure weight. Many small and medium-sized businesses are unable to invest in paid promotion, and the focus of competition has shifted to competing for platform recommendation positions that do not cost money. For some speculative merchants, using AI to create exquisite renderings and short videos, or obtaining traffic through grey production brushing to get positive reviews, is much cheaper than compliant operations.

If the platform cannot simplify the dispute proof process for merchants and establish a governance mechanism that takes into account the rights and interests of both parties, such as incorporating the return rate into the two-way credit evaluation between merchants and influencers, and linking commission settlement with actual returns, then this "mutual prevention" trading environment will continue to deteriorate, ultimately damaging the healthy development of the entire e-commerce ecosystem.

The return rate should not be a secret, it records the quality of goods, describes the authenticity of goods, logistics experience, and rule loopholes. Rules cannot let honest people suffer losses, nor can they let speculators benefit. Only by delineating the boundaries of rights and responsibilities, and binding commissions to real transactions, can the e-commerce ecosystem move from "mutual vigilance" to "mutual trust".

(The author of this article is a researcher at the Jingguan Research Institute)