under the auspices of ministries
According to the Ministry’s Telegram channel, the Ministry of Digital Transformation stands for “transparency in market affairs”. They also announced that they are monitoring the situation at Wildberry.
“We support the improvement of arbitrage services and feedback from market recommended site partners. Wildberry is struggling with substitution of expensive goods processed by attackers at its ordering points. But we believe that such a control system should be transparent to marketplace partners and have the potential to be challenged.”
The Ministry of Digital Development stressed that the marketplace “will not issue new penalties” while the system is “complete”.
The ministry also pledged, together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, that they will continue to keep the situation under control so that “the interests of all participants in electronic commerce are respected and ordinary buyers are not harmed”.
Viktor Evtukhov, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, told reporters that the ministry pointed to Wildberries the urgent need to strengthen feedback with employees and partners.
“Of course, in addition to internal control to prevent fraudulent activities, any marketplace (which is a specialized retail format) needs to constantly develop and improve its services and tools, paying special attention to the effectiveness of sellers and buyers, as well as feedback channels. managers and partners”, – he said.
He also hopes that Wildberries can resolve “all controversial issues”.
In response, Minister of Labor Anton Kotyakov told reporters that the Ministry of Labor is also trying to resolve the situation.
“There is now a lot of interest in Wildberry from Rostrud, troop aides and the Ministry of Industry and Trade,” the official said.
According to him, Wildberries does not legally fall into the category of platform employment – they have “traditional working relationships.”
First concessions
On Thursday, the second day of strikes in Russia, Wildberries canceled more than ten thousand wrongful fines for goods substitution, a company representative told RIA Novosti.
He said the marketplace evaluates about 3,000 requests a day for problematic situations. According to him, the company strengthened the arbitration system and improved feedback on testing the mechanism to strengthen control over the substitution of goods by the owners and employees of the pickup point.
“In the near future, the company’s employees and partners and feedback system will be updated, so the ticket processing speed for problem situations will increase severalfold,” Wildberry promised.
The company added that they have tightened controls “for a few days” to prevent possible fraudulent activity.
“On the other hand, we are temporarily freezing the mechanism to cancel substitutions from the owners of the ordering joint points and the managers of the pickup point, in order to resolve all disputed situations,” the marketplace said.
mass strike
On the eve, dozens of private Wildberry distribution points stopped working in Moscow, the Trans-Baikal Territory, the Urals, Irkutsk, Bratsk, Angarsk, Chita, Buryatia, Vladivostok and Blagoveshchensk – a strike of workers of the collection point began throughout Russia. system of fines introduced by the marketplace management.
The action was organized by Wildberries’ business partners in the “MEGA riot” public chat that brought together more than 11,000 employees of the collection point.
According to the new rules set by Wildberry management, if the buyer returns due to marriage or the package contains the wrong product, the employees of the distribution points will collect the full price of the product. At the same time, the company referred to a particular algorithm, for which the collection point is responsible in 98% of cases in such cases.
The participants of the action demanded that the marketplace management cancel all marriage and substitution debts, as well as reduce the PVZ’s penalties for returning goods to the previous 25%.
However, Wildberries refused to comply with the collection point owners’ requirements. The company stopped cooperating with the striking distribution points due to the “threat”, and couriers specially sent to these places began to pick up goods belonging to the marketplace and enterprising vendors.
The state had to intervene. The conflicting parties were invited to a meeting in the State Duma. However, representatives of Wildberry did not appear, as a result, a meeting was held with the participation of distribution point owners, representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and members of the State Duma committee on control and protection of competition. The parliamentarians promised to introduce a bill under which companies cannot unilaterally change the terms of their contracts.
On the eve of the second attempt, the market place representatives nevertheless met with the lawmakers. Wildberrys companies have relayed all the requirements of the owners of the pickup points and oblige the organization to respond to each of the points by March 17. The prosecutor’s office near Moscow has also launched an investigation into the situation.
A total of 33,000 Wildberry collection points operate in Russia, of which 13,800 are joint collection points.