(Yicai) July 31 -- Alibaba Group Holding's e-commerce platform Taobao will give top-rated sellers greater freedom to turn down requests for refunds when the goods are not returned in a bid to curb the abuse of buyer-centric rules. 

Taobao will upgrade its recognition models to allow highly rated vendors to refuse ‘refund only' requests starting Aug. 9, as well as returns with missing items or counterfeit products, it announced yesterday. Merchants with high ‘experience points' will be given more autonomy to deal with such demands.

Both Taobao and JD.Com followed market newcomer Pinduoduo in offering returnless refunds from last December.

Analysts noted that the latest change shows that with the growing abuse of ‘refund only' requests, online marketplaces are optimizing their after-sales policies to reduce conflicts between platforms, merchants, and consumers.

Taobao’s move could encourage top-rated sellers to handle after-sales issues more proactively, improving customer satisfaction and repeat purchase rates, and potentially boost Taobao's revenue and profit, said Zhang Yi, founder and chief executive of iiMedia Research. But lower-rated vendors could be impacted by the platform’s enhanced monitoring and intervention, he added.

The market regulator’s rules on unfair online competition will also come into effect on Sept. 1, stopping platform operators from taking advantage of service agreements and rules to impose unreasonable conditions or restrictions on transactions, prices, and trading between merchants. This will prompt more to change their ‘refund only' policies, analysts said.

Editor: Emmi Laine