Online purchases made on 11.11 are returned to sellers at a staggering rate. Some reports in China assert a startling 90 percent. Are the send-backs justifiable? What does it really say about selling cheap, and, perhaps, crucially, buying cheap?

In China, the recent 11.11 Shopping Festival is not making retailers happy. News reports and seller reactions on social media have pointed to an unusually high return rate for merchandise sold during the mega-sale event, mainly organised by e-commerce platforms. Known as 双十一 (shuangshiyi gouwujie or Double Eleven or Singles’ Day Shopping Festival), the bonanza festival is considered the most important retail event of the year in China—so much so that other nations are copying the markdowns and creating online activities more remarkable than anything seen offline. But this year, something is amiss in China. Retailers are bombarded with such a high number of returns that they are unable to process the refunds, with some urging shoppers to stop sending back what they have bought. While the exact number is not publicly available, majority of merchandise returned is reportedly womenswear.

It began in 2009 as a 24-hour online shopping event held on 11 November, first organised by Alibaba Group (namely through Taobao), and has since been held annually. Singles’s Day—believed to be started in the 1990s by four single male students from Nanjing University to allow unattached individuals to enjoy their singlehood—is now celebrated as a shopping carnival by more than one e-commerce platform, such as 天猫 (Tianmao or Tmall), 快手 (Kuaishou), 京东 (Jingdong or JD.com), 拼多多 (Pinduoduo) and social media platforms, such as 抖音 (Douyin) and 小红书 (Xiaohongshu). And rather than just that one day, it is now a protracted affair, beginning weeks earlier. This year’s frenzy began on 14 October (some sites apparently launched it as early as the 8th) and ended past the 11th, effectively setting itself up as a month-long event.

TMall’s promotional campaign for their 11.11 Shopping Festival. Image: Tmall

According to China’s Global Times, “Taobao and Tmall, run by Alibaba Group, reported a significant increase in sales as of 12 pm on Monday… with 589 brands exceeding 100 million yuan (or about in sales, representing 46.5 percent increase over a year ago.” Increased spending was apparently encouraged by many retailers’ “seven-day no-questions-asked” return policy. And shoppers have taken full advantage of that and sending back their purchases, to the extent that retailers are practically begging the halt of the returns. One Taobao retailer, 郑百万的小个子衣橱 (Zheng Baiwan Petite Cupboard), reportedly among the site’s top ten sellers, told the Chinese media that he intended to shut his business as the returns he received this year amounted to 70 percent of what he sold. He considered the situation untenable. One seller on Xiaohongshu claimed that out 20,000 parcels he sent out, 10,000 were returned. In exasperation, he said: “This is so horrible. Who would even dare to sell women’s clothing?”

Perhaps therein lies the problem: the state of cheap womenswear in China (and those the country exports). Many consumers hit back at the sellers’ frustration by claiming that the quality of the product they received were unacceptable. Some shoppers shared images of what the sellers availed online and what the former actually received. The disparity in many of the images were startling. If even the world’s largest fashion e-shop Shein suffers from similar problems, it is hardly surprising that smaller players on Tmall and the like cannot offer better merchandise. One close examination of Shein products on the rare occasion they set up a physical store showed that they did not match what was seen on their website. Additionally, deep discounting necessarily means that the merchandise won’t make the mark in terms of quality, whether in fabrication or make. And the situation is made worse when the sellers themselves know no better.

Illustration: Just So