- The call comes after its staff made 54 purchases during a trial
- Out of the 47 times they applied to return goods or obtain refunds, only 23 requests were successfully pursued
Online shopping in Hong Kong might not be as convenient as it seemed when it came to making claims on returning goods, the consumer watchdog said on Tuesday, after achieving less than 50 per cent success rate in its purchase trials.
The Consumer Council had shopped with various online shopping platforms " Amazon, ASOS, Big Big Shop, Gmarket, HKTVmall, PChome, Rakuten, Taobao, Tmall and Zalora " between August and September and made 54 purchases.
But it said that out of the 47 times its staff applied for goods to be returned or to obtain a refund, only 23 requests were successfully pursued, while the services offered by the platforms varied a lot.
The council criticised e-commerce platform Big Big Shop, owned by the city's biggest television broadcaster Television Broadcasts (TVB), for being non-transparent about applications for goods return.
It said there was no explanation or links for such a procedure in the user's account, while consumers could only refer to the page of "frequently asked questions" to find some details.
"Many pages showing products sold in Big Big Shop do not list out any information on returning goods, changing goods or claiming refund, only a minority of product pages listed out the emails of product suppliers for contact," it said in the monthly CHOICE Magazine.
The council said if consumers had not made screenshots of the product pages when making the purchase, then they might miss out the information.
"In the test, the council staff could only seek help from the customer service department of Big Big Shop via phone or email in the end, it's very inconvenient."
Gmarket and Rakuten also did not detail out the application procedures and customers could only do it through email with the platform or product suppliers, and follow the procedures listed in the email reply, it said.
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The Post has reached out to the three platforms for comment.
Gilly Wong Fung-han, the council's chief executive, said the platforms should make the process easier because online shopping could not allow consumers to check the goods before purchases.
"It is very important to have a very friendly refund policy, with very clear terms and conditions and guidance (for) the consumers … to follow. The simpler it is, the more friendly it is to consumers," she said.
The council noted that three shopping platforms among those tested would not offer any service to help local consumers in arranging to send the products back or would require consumers to bear the shipping costs.
"The redress process was cumbersome."
The redress process was cumbersomeConsumer Council
It advised consumers to read the product webpage carefully to ascertain who would be responsible if something went wrong.
Consumers also should check and verify the details in the confirmation email listing out the product information and the total costs, it added.
Meanwhile, the watchdog tested 15 wireless chargers and 13 were found to require a longer time to charge the phones than the original wired phone chargers. The worst-performing model had only 55 per cent of the efficiency of the original wired one.
The council said while some wireless charging models which were Qi-certified " tested according to the standards set by the Wireless Power Consortium " were generally more expensive, some might be more inferior than other products which were not Qi-certified in charging speed and efficiency.
"Consumers should not purchase the product based solely on its price," it added.
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