First,“Refund Only”Function.

Although the after-sales service of “refund only” has sparked a lot of controversy since its emergence, there are still many e-commerce platforms that choose to adopt this service.

TikTok Shop has recently announced that from January 8, 2025, the platform will launch the “refund only” function. The specific announcement is as follows:

Currently, when a buyer initiates a return for a refund, the merchant needs to review the buyer's request, and if the merchant decides to refund the buyer directly, they will need to do so with a single order in the Seller Center. Starting from January 8, 2025, the platform will launch the “refund only” feature, which will help merchants to automatically agree to the buyer's refund request without the need to return the goods for refund requests that meet the appropriate conditions. The conditions that need to be met include, but are not limited to, the order amount being within the threshold specified by the platform. The policy adjustment update is only for Southeast Asia cross-border orders.

In addition, for after-sale orders that hit the platform's refund non-return condition, sellers are not required to do any additional processing. For other refund requests, sellers can still choose to refund the buyer directly without requiring the buyer to return the goods in the merchant's back-office processing of the return request.

This isn't the first time TikTok Shop has adopted a “refund only” policy - in 2023, the platform introduced a “refund only” policy in the US market, with three types of “refund only” programs depending on the situation. “There are three types of non-refundable programs depending on different situations, including the platform's non-refundable policy, sellers' self-configured non-refundable no-audit rules, and sellers' non-refundable feature for order-by-order processing.

Second, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Nowadays, TikTok Shop has blown the wind of refund-only from the U.S. to the Southeast Asian market, which means that sellers in Southeast Asia have to make appropriate adjustments to their after-sale policies.

On the one hand, the advantages of the refund-only non-return policy are:

1、Simplify the refund process, reduce the seller's return processing costs, so that the seller can put more energy into product operation and store development.

2、Enhance buyers' sense of security and trust in online shopping, and help sellers get more orders.

On the other hand, there are some problems with this policy: the main reason is that some buyers take advantage of the lenient refund policy to make malicious refunds, which not only seriously disrupts the market order and violates the intent of the “refund only” policy, but also makes the sellers' interests in the group between “efficiency” and “fairness”. It also makes the interests of the seller group waver between “efficiency” and “fairness”.

From this, we can see that in implementing the policy of “refund only”, we must take into full consideration the balance of interests of all parties. Only through scientific and reasonable management measures and technical means can we realize a win-win-win situation for consumers, sellers and platforms.