Published: 4:41pm, 14 Aug 2025Updated: 4:42pm, 14 Aug 2025
Hong Kong’s consumer watchdog recorded some 17,000 complaints linked to online shopping last year, accounting for about 40 per cent of all cases, with issues including the inability to return products, delays that caused fines, and loss of packages.
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The Consumer Council on Thursday also revealed that 148 online shopping complaints related to logistics services were received between January and July, which nearly doubled to 279 this year over the same period.
One such complaint involved a defective computer monitor, valued at 1,650 yuan (US$230), that could not be returned, despite the mainland Chinese e-commerce platform advertising a local return service in Hong Kong.
The complainant initially brought the product back to the logistics provider’s service point in Fo Tan as per the local return policy and received her HK$72 delivery fee refund. But she was told to retrieve her product as it was “ineligible” for the local return service.
She filed a complaint with the platform, which said the product was ineligible for the local return service. Upon the intervention of the council, a refund was issued, with the whole process taking two and a half months.
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Another complaint was due to a lag between the sending and receiving times of a mobile text message, which resulted in a late fee for the customer despite collecting the package from a self-pickup locker within the designated time frame of 24 hours.
The council said the complainant received a text message from a courier at 12.27pm on January 1 to collect her package that she picked up at 12.14pm the next day but was still charged a late fee of HK$10.