April 27, 2024

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Complaints filed against AliExpress, the e-commerce retail platform of China's Alibaba Group, in South Korea nearly tripled in 2023 from a year earlier, a state-run consumer organization said Friday.

The number of complaints submitted to the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA) against AliExpress jumped to 673 last year from the previous year's 228, the KCA said in a statement.

Complaints involving Chinese e-commerce companies, including PDD Holdings' Temu, have increased sharply as they are aggressively marketing their products to gain a share in the Korean online shopping market, which is dominated by Coupang.

Major complaints are about product quality, late or missed deliveries, misdeliveries, lack of products, no reflection of order cancellations following delivery delays, and lack of tracking information on the delivery path and time.

The overall number of complaints related to direct purchases from overseas e-commerce malls rose 17 percent to 19,418 last year from 16,608 a year ago, the statement said.

Consumer rights groups have said the government needs to generate new rules to prevent damage to consumers from unfair market practices by multinational companies like AliExpress and respond to such damage.

Alibaba focuses on business-to-business transactions, while AliExpress is mainly a business-to-consumer marketplace.

The KCS, an organization under the Korea Fair Trade Commission, said it is in talks with AliExpress to set up a hotline to resolve consumer complaints. (Yonhap)