Taobao Mall Revises Rules in Response to Protests
DoNews, 10/17/11
Jack Ma, chairman of Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group, today announced newly revised rules for B2C e-commerce platform Taobao Mall.
Merchants who belonged to the platform prior to October 10 and have ranking in the top 90% in terms of customer service (a customer satisfaction score no lower than 4.6 points) can pay fees under the old rules from January 1 to September 30, 2012 on a monthly basis, after which they will pay fees under the new rules. New merchants will pay under the old rules until January 1, when they will begin paying under the new fee structure.
Alibaba Group will invest an additional RMB 1 bln in the consumer protection fund and cut merchants' 2012 consumer protection deposits in half.
Alibaba Group will also provide RMB 500 mln to guarantee loans to small merchants, and will also invest RMB 300 mln towards marketing and improvements to its technology service platform. The bottom 10% in terms of customer satisfaction, however, will receive no support. Merchants that will not or cannot remain on Taobao Mall will receive technical assistance to transfer their stores to the Taobao Marketplace platform.
Editor's Note: For more information on this topic, please see "Taobao Mall Tightens Rules for Merchants," MD 10/10/10 issue.
Keywords: Jack Ma e-commerce Internet B2C Alibaba Group Taobao Mall