House decoration has always been a headache. Over the years, decoration accidents have occurred one after another, so much so that the public image of the decoration industry has become "rotten" in the hearts of the general public. "It's unreliable to find acquaintances for decoration, and even less reliable if you don't find acquaintances." Even the "human relationship" with Chinese characteristics cannot be used for decoration. You can imagine how bad the reputation of decoration is.
Since it is not reliable to leave the decoration to others, then "do it yourself and have enough food and clothing". Decorating by yourself does not mean that you directly do the work of a decorator, but you must find a decorator and find channels to buy materials. In this process, not to mention whether you can find reliable decorators who are crucial to the quality of decoration, just purchasing materials is a lot of trouble.
01
Small store
Fake goods are prevalent
Shanxi Evening News reported that Mr. Zhang from Taiyuan, Shanxi recently renovated his house. After his family carefully compared styles and colors, they finally selected a certain brand of antique bricks. Mr. Zhang compared the prices in different stores and considered the convenience of transporting goods, so he purchased this ceramic tile from a decoration company near his home.
After the arrival of more than 50 pieces of antique tiles, the tiling master discovered that the surface flatness of the tiles was so poor that it was visible to the naked eye that the surface was uneven. The master told Mr. Zhang that it was impossible for genuine ceramic tiles of this brand to have such a situation. He probably bought "fake products", that is, ceramic tiles not produced by the original factory in Guangdong.
The quality of the product was so poor that Mr. Zhang would definitely quit, so he asked the decoration company to exchange the product. However, the decoration company insists that the bricks delivered are genuine. If the bricks must be exchanged, Mr. Zhang needs to bear the return shipping costs - the shipping costs are more expensive than the material cost.
Originally, according to the principle of "whoever is at fault" in the "Consumer Rights Protection Law", the merchant should be held responsible for ceramic tile quality problems. However, the low flatness of the ceramic tiles is not an obvious quality defect. It requires inspection by a professional organization to prove that there are quality problems in this batch of ceramic tiles. If Mr. Zhang chooses to find a third-party agency for testing, the cost of time, manpower and money he needs to invest will be higher than the freight. Mr. Zhang was in a dilemma and could only choose to re-purchase the tiles in a regular place.
Regarding Mr. Zhang’s experience, Wang Haifeng, general manager of Tubatu Supply Chain Empowerment Center, said that fakes of large-scale building materials such as ceramic tiles, paints and other products directly sold by manufacturers have appeared.Not many, because direct sellers pick up the goods directly from the factory and have complete inspection procedures; most non-direct brand agents sell a variety of brand products, and the probability of fake products is greater than that of directly operated stores. Generally, the samples displayed by agents in stores are purchased from the original factory, so consumers cannot tell the difference. However, during the actual transaction, agents are likely to switch products. Then what consumers get is no longer original products, but branded goods or branded goods.
Because of the current market situation, brand merchants have promised genuine materials in sales contracts. Major shopping malls and online shopping platforms have gradually established genuine material guarantee systems with authenticity, traceability, price, quality, delivery, after-sales service, etc. as the core. . Wang Haifeng reminded consumers to keep their eyes open when purchasing, choose regular places to purchase bulk building materials, and not to buy blindly because of low prices.
02
Big shopping mall
Miscellaneous goods are looming
A reporter from Shanxi Evening News visited shopping malls such as Easy Home and Red Star Macalline and learned that the situation of tampering with products is very rare in large formal home furnishing markets. Because first-tier stores have long-term cooperation with first-tier home building materials brands at home and abroad, and have screened the brands on site, most of the merchants who have settled there are directly operated or regional general agents.
In addition to screening the resident brands, there are relatively benign contracts and management constraints between the resident brands and the mall. If a store receives complaints from consumers, the mall will impose heavy fines on the merchants. However, if consumers buy products from second- and third-tier stores or from decoration companies, the situation of "cross-selling" is difficult to control. This is also the main reason why the same brand and the same product have different prices in different categories of home furnishing stores.
On the surface, purchasing materials from large home furnishing stores is relatively safe and reliable, but what about privately? Whether it is a large home furnishing market, or a ceramic tile company's own directly-operated store or a regional general agent's store, there may not be incidents of cross-selling. On March 17, 2021, the consumer Mr. Li purchased a batch of tiles from a D brand tile store of Red Star Macalline. After the goods were delivered to his home, Mr. Li found that the batch of tiles were the same as the samples he saw in the store. The gap is very large, and the tiles are marked with the brand name "Wanxuan". In the subsequent official explanation, this "specialty store" in Red Star Macalline is only a franchise store of the brand, and is neither a regional general agent nor a directly operated store, and Mr. Li's matter will be handled by the Beijing regional general agent.
Although this is just a small thing and an example, it is not representative of the "problems" in the decoration industry.sex. Just combined with the official explanations given by Juran Home and Red Star Macalline to reporters above, it is worth pondering. Big Home Furnishing Store claims that it will screen merchants entering the market, so why does a brand store actually become a franchise store? After this incident came out, the person involved did not mention a word about the store's attitude towards the incident, which is very fascinating.
Large-scale building materials malls have clear contract management constraints with merchants, but the strength of such constraints is debatable - after all, building materials malls have to collect rent from merchants to survive. As for the mall will punish the tenants if there is an incident of counterfeit goods among the merchants settled there - the authenticity of this promise also needs to be verified, especially when the market situation of the building materials mall is deteriorating. The two industry giants, Red Star Macalline and Easyhome, have to sign up for group heating. You can imagine how difficult life is for other home building materials stores.
Of course, in comparison, large-scale home building materials stores are still more reliable than decoration companies and other channels, and the probability of getting fake goods is much lower than that of "roadside stalls".
03
Shopping for ceramic tiles online
No fakes
In recent years, as ceramic companies have awakened their awareness of rights protection, many ceramic brands have paid more and more attention to the maintenance of brand trademarks, patents, etc., and have also embarked on the road of cracking down on counterfeiting and safeguarding rights.
Since "roadside stalls" and "large supermarkets" are not very reliable, what about the online shopping channels preferred by those born in the 1980s and 1990s?
For the ceramic tile industry, the rampant COVID-19 virus in the past two years has not only brought "harm" to offline physical stores, but also initiated the transformation of ceramic tile manufacturers from offline to online live broadcast e-commerce. , but to this day, the results are not very satisfactory. At present, large e-commerce manufacturers mainly use online traffic to attract traffic to offline stores.
So, in theory, the ceramic tiles we purchase online through e-commerce platforms (purchased from officially certified flagship stores) are basically guaranteed to be genuine; if they are not genuine, we can directly contact the manufacturer for return or exchange. Companies are required to pay a deposit when entering e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD. This deposit is used to ensure that the products are not fake. It seems that when you buy ceramic tiles online, you don’t have to worry about buying fake ones. Everything looks so beautiful...
Online shopping can indeed guarantee that the ceramic tiles are genuine, at least on the surface, they are genuine. However, authenticity does not mean that the quality of the ceramic tiles must be good, and the after-sales service will most likely not be able to keep up.On August 11, a netizen complained that the squat toilet purchased at a Pinduoduo flagship store was damaged, but the merchant refused to return it; on July 26, someone complained that an order was placed during the D brand event, but the event ended No one contacted him about the delivery. On July 14, some netizens bought N brand ceramic tiles on JD.com, and the bulges fell off the wall less than a year ago. During this period, no one lived in the house.
The above cases all come from consumer complaints on the Black Cat Complaint Platform in July and August. Some of the problems in these complaints have been resolved, and some have not yet been resolved. China Ceramics Network will continue to pay attention to the resolution of the above cases, and welcomes consumers to complain to this website.
Through the above cases, we can realize that although the ceramic tiles purchased online are genuine, they may not bring peace of mind. The reason is that local offline stores are responsible for after-sales matters for ceramic tiles purchased online. It's just that unlike the agents mentioned above, most of these stores responsible for after-sales matters are directly operated stores or regional general agents.
As far as the current situation is concerned, no matter online shopping, home building materials stores or "roadside stores" can achieve the expected results of our purchase of building materials. Decorating a house by yourself is a process of constantly "stepping into the pit-climbing out-stepping into the pit-climbing out..." This process has always been painful and lasts until the moment the final decoration is completed. As the feeling of "happiness" arises. In the future, with the development of decoration, "check-in" may be able to solve our worries about decoration, but this also depends on whether the decoration industry will follow the old path of decoration.
(Author: No)
