(Yicai) Dec. 28 -- Chinese online marketplaces Taobao and JD.com are allowing customers to apply for a ‘refund only’ if they are not satisfied with their purchases, which will enable them to receive their money back without returning the goods, in order to match rival Pinduoduo’s popular rules and reduce customer losses.

Taobao will use Big Data to evaluate goods sold by merchants on its platform, such as the nature of the product, the store quality, the type of complaints and issues with shoddy products, in order to support ‘refund only’ requests from buyers, the platform run by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding said on Dec. 25.

“Refund only” can be the fastest and lowest-cost way to deal with the after-sales needs of consumers, an analyst said. Pinduoduo sells a lot of fresh produce and cheap items, and sometimes it can cost more than the value of the goods to return the product, and the fresh produce might have gone bad by this time, he added.

JD.com, which has had a form of ‘refund only’ service since 2014, and Hangzhou-based Taobao will decide whether to support buyers’ requests for ‘refund only’ based on their assessment of vendor behavior, and will set up a fast channel to deal with appeals from merchants that are made within 7 days and 30 days of the refund, respectively.

Editor: Kim Taylor