You're listening to Roundtable with myself, He Young.
I'm joined by Yu Shuan and Yu Shan in the studio.
Coming up, China's home repair industry is one of the most convenient in the world.
Book a technician online and they'll come to your home at a fraction of the cost you pay in many developed economies.
But a recent investigation revealed that some platforms have been exploiting this trust, exaggerating faults and overcharging customers.
We discussed how to overcome these hurdles possibly, and is it possible to restore faith in this platform?
And life's best moments, from the soundtrack of your heart to little things that make you smile.
Join us at Roundtable's Happy Place!
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We are game. Send it over to roundtablepodcast .com.
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Now on Roundtable, as we move on to the next topic of discussion today.
China's home repair industry is booming.
Expected to reach nearly a trillion yuan by 2027.
But behind this massive market, maintenance platforms are under fire.
for a price manipulation and misleading consumers.
The biggest online maintenance platform has been exposed recently for inflating costs sparking public outrage.
We explored the business model behind online repair platforms and the possible solutions to restore trust. So let's give everybody a recap on how this big online platform that apparently is under fire right now.
Well, let me start by asking you this.
Let's imagine turning on and fixing your order tab and charge you 100 yuan just for the labor fee.
Or another question, exchanging a 21 gas stove igniter for more than 250 yuan.
Well, yes, you're hearing this correctly.
That's all that's been revealed during the annual China Central Television 3, we call it 315 gala.
That's the gala held on March 15.
That's why it's called 315.
That one leading domestic home repairs platform, perhaps one of the country's biggest of their kind, required their technicians to falsely report the faults and change parts that are not necessarily to be changed in order to increase their repair fees.
So here's the tea, you guys, I'm going to spell the tea.
So after the gala reported the incident, the platform immediately issued an announcement over its Weibo account, stating that it would establish a special investigation team as soon as possible in order to conduct a thorough inquiry into the reported issue.
And it also promised to disclose the investigation results upon completion, but of course, the consumers did not buy it at all.
And instead, people flooded to their comment section of that post with demands for a refund.
And of course, this had pushed the platform's WeBull account to publish another announcement saying that it would thoroughly rectify the problem.
And here's a bit more details if we look at the data from the platform itself, as the number of their registered maintenance technicians nearly tripled from 2021 to 2023.
And in the meantime, the platform's revenue has also increased by 2 .52 times during the same period.
So my question would be where they get that money, right?
They gained a lot, right.
But through all of these comments, we can see it's obvious that for a long time, that kind of door -to -door maintenance industry has always been complained by a lot of consumers about unreasonable charging or bad repairing service and the internet platform boasted about its transparency, but it still faces the same problem for quite a long time.
According to a recent article by Tech Media 36 KR, there are over 6 ,100 complaints about the platform on service complaint.
Service -complained platform BlackCat, and many consumers telling their bad experiences on social media platforms like Weibo and Retnote sharing their experiences on having these kind of bad maintenance services.
I don't know how you feel about this but I kind of have mixed mixed feelings.
On the one hand, having lived in China for more than 30 years, I've seen how this kind of maintenance of home appliances has improved in its service in recent years in a decade or more since we've had these online maintenance service providing platforms, as well as all these companies which sells home appliances usually have their own repair team.
Yeah, so with the latter, then you don't even need to go on these online platforms. You just call up a number.
Basically, you save up the customer complaint help line, not help line.
customer service number from that company, maybe you purchased your air conditioner or air purifier from, and then just keep it and then call up the company when you have issues of repair.
And usually they do come up to your apartment and provide good service.
And then because you'll need to, because usually there will be a review system.
the company will call back via the phone to you and then you'll need to give a review.
And it acts as a powerful deterrent for the repair personnel to follow the rules and provide good service.
And usually it does come with a fee if it's after the fee -covered period.
But usually that's how business is conducted.
and while this is more of a personal experience, but also asking around, it seems like this kind of business model usually works quite well and even with the online platforms that you guys have mentioned, because just like your food review or your other review platforms online, because there's a review system and everybody will see it.
So, and also online, supposedly, there should be more of this transparency because a lot of platforms do cite, like from, let's say 50 yuan to 150 yuan this kind of problem will be fixed.
So what kind of surprised me a little bit here is it seems like the online platforms, which usually appears as an app on your smartphone, has its faults as well, and the so -called transparency has not always descended.
So what do you guys see as, you know, the biggest issue here, or what needs to be fixed?
Yeah. What you mentioned, Huyam, before is what a kind of legitimate and well -regulated company will have. Actually, we do have some of these platforms that they will list out all of these like charging fees that you will have, no matter it's about the technicians coming to the door and they will actually already charge you that kind of fee, also the parts that you're gonna change or replace or they help you to repair something that is also gonna charge you something.
But that and from my own experience, that kind of platforms could be more expensive like what you said like call the hotline of this specific home appliance.
It could be I think, sometimes more expensive than a third -party platform that offer these kind of services.
Also, for some of these home appliances or maintenance services, for example, WaterTap or like, your Sync, these kinds of things, they don't have a supplier to call, right?
And then, we may need these kind of third -party platforms. And in this way, some of these issues may come up.
of. One thing is, as you said, transparency of the price.
Also, some may say false reports of the false.
The technician can change more parts and also use poor quality parts as good ones to increase the fee.
But I haven't encountered this, but I have encountered some of the technicians overcharged me but as I required for a kind of, you know, receipt that what you gonna buy or cost me then he cannot.
Right. And then he, like, agreed to charge me 50 yuan and originally he were...
he was about to charge me like 150 yuan.
That's about like three times of the original price.
So it's important to be aware of some, you know, our consumer rights and also protect ourselves.
Right. And the issue here is, well, for a lot of us, because we are industry outsiders.
We simply do not know what is the reasonable price to be charged.
And we could feel the same when you walk into a 4S car dealership.
Usually when you go to these kind of services, when you're not sure how much is reasonable for a customer to pay for and that's where this gray area of pricing exists and that's where we could get scammed.
But Li Shun's example actually, his personal anecdote showed one important thing that is to have this kind of awareness and also to question when you see something smells fishy here and actually there is wiggle room of negotiations sometimes, okay?
Okay, but here let's look at this why have these online platforms become grading grounds for these problems?
Well, first of all, the example we raised at the very beginning of this topic, that one brand is just one fish of that bigger market, that that bigger pole.
So according to the the 36 core report, the data from China inside Consultancy revealed that China's home repair market was 715 billion yuan and that equals 99 billion US dollars in 2023 and that's based on total Transaction volume and it is still expected to reach 932 billion yuan in 2027 and that's roughly $129 billion and given that fear is competition, the whole rat race running in that in their industry, there's a lot of competition among self employed maintenance technicians and they tend to receive orders from platforms and companies.
And in the meantime, they try to well be managed as part of the company staff while try to earn a bit more.
So, that's just lying on this whole property management functions within those companies and brands and in the meantime there is the live service platforms as well as professional maintenance platforms that's also in the game.
In the meantime, we have small service providers.
As of 2023, the platform revealed by CCTV's Consumer Rights Gala was set to be the biggest online home appliance maintenance enterprise in China.
However, it might be one of the biggest, but it only took up 2 .4 % of the online market and 15 .7 % of both the online and offline platforms. So even with their expanded, say businesses, they only just take up a relatively smaller percentage of the whole market.
So that's a very big, say, competition, internal competition within the industry that's causing this, say, I wanna charge you higher through individual orders in order to get in more, say, income for their respective platforms. So, yeah, I think that's one of the major reasons, too.
This sounds like a really negative form of competition.
Because usually one, well, I wouldn't either say it's healthy per se, but one type of competition is when the service providers would actually try to keep the prices low to compete for more consumers and consumers benefit because the service providers want to attract more people and attract more customers and therefore they will lower the price and try to provide good service but here we're not necessarily seeing that but also I wonder how you feel about this pretty fractured market so it doesn't seem like a lot of the other markets here we see in China where there are dominant players, big companies
that have already taken major market threshold, market foothold, and therefore it's these big companies that are competing.
But with this, it seems like still, it's territory up for grabs because still it's very much the small businesses that are competing for your business.
So, what do you see as maybe ways to address these problems of the household house repair maintenance service area?
A regulation and standardization is, I think, something that we need in this kind of industry.
Of course, we mentioned that some online platforms we chose, or we have right now will inform upfront about any kind of potential fees when you place an order while their prices might be higher, at least they are transparent and that's how these kind of regulation worked.
Right. But that shouldn't be what consumers should compromise.
Right. And when we're comparing to like some international markets, I saw information from the UK repair company White Eagle Repair, their home appliance maintenance plans typically cost between $100 to $300 per year.
And some like, you know, in some other countries and regions, fees can be charged based on hourly on -site labor, which can be even more expensive and much more expensive than we have here in China.
Although China's prices are relatively lower in comparison, right, it will still be unreasonable to charge customers without any like regulation or justification, so of course regulations, the thing that comes to my mind.
I think it's also important for consumers themselves to realize, or rather to learn to avoid traps in the first place, because many industry practitioners have already been reminding people that home appliance maintenance is something that everybody cannot avoid, but you can definitely learn from through the different channels, the various channels like online, um, social media information.
There are a bunch of, say, topics we've discussed in previous sessions where, you know, there are, um, people telling females how to repair things or how to recognize the traps that's potentially given to you by technicians that's visiting your home, et cetera.
So there are all sources of information or past experience from other people that you can learn from in order to better plan ahead.
How much money should I Pay in theory for what I want to get fixed so and in the meantime, we also need to learn from you shouldn't write have the Have the awareness of self -protection and always be ready to negotiate when necessary Yeah have the skills and awareness.
I bought different types of screwdrivers myself actually Star -shaped flathead and hexagonal now I can actually change faucets, pipes and light bulbs on my own.
Oh wow, next time I have something to fix, how are you?
Yes, call me. Yeah, and actually a while ago we did a show on Roundtable about one genre of short videos that are becoming popular online is to teach people how to do these small -scale home repair things, and if you can do it yourself, DIY without having to call help, sure, you save up money and it's really rewarding a feeling once you finish doing so, but when you can't do that, then well you can always refer to the World Wide Web for some information and also get a quote from these online platforms might be helpful, as well.
And also, consumer complaint.
They are more powerful than what you might expect.
Coming up next, welcome to the happiest corner on the airwaves.
RoundTables Happy Place!
You shouldn't. What's your happy place?
I recently had an amazing experience of watching the musical, Singing In The Rain at the Beijing arts center, the whole night was just pure joy I would say, getting all the way to Tongjo district to wait out in the east of Beijing was a bit tiring but the venue was absolutely worth it.
The music itself was like mesmerizing.
The stage design, the music, the dance, the iconic tap dancing were all top notch I would say.
Everything just so perfect.
But at the end of the show, the audience burst into applause that went on for minutes, and it was clear how much everybody loved and appreciated the performance.
And also with the singing in the ring still playing in the background, the whole moment felt even more memorable to me.
And I think what made it even better was realizing that just how much China's art scene is thriving.
In the past few years, I've seen more and more international and also domestic local dance companies, theater groups, bands, and singers have been receiving great recognition from Chinese audiences.
And it's so incredible to see the growing passion for live performances here.
So the cultural scene is evolving fast and I really can't wait to see what's next they have to offer.
Oh, right! Do you mean that the venue has to offer?
The whole art scene.
Oh, I'm sorry! Got it!
Also, I'm contemplating whether I should get tickets to go see the...
Oh, what is it called?
Sunset Boulevard? Oh, yes!
That musical... Yeah, and it's Sarah Brightman, who is going to be performing.
Well, you know, you can still get tickets if you want to.
So, I'm still contemplating, but thank you so much for sharing your happy place.
And what about you, Yu -shan?
Guacamole! Please explain to our Chinese listeners who don't understand what guac is about.
So yeah, here's my happy place.
I learned to cook guacamole, which is a type of Mexican avocado jam that you use to put on corn chips and eat as a way – it can be a snack or staple food, depending on your own eating habit and diet.
But for me, cooking it was very fun because it was super easy but after the accomplishment that overall taste is so good because avocado on its own once smashed into just jam like a pile of green thing in your bowl.
A pile of ... okay.
It's slimy things. No I mean, its taste is very inviting.
It can just harbor all of the spices and tastes you put in afterwards and what I do is just Follow the simplest online recipe that includes just shredded garlic onion or diced tomato and some coriander, perhaps, and that's just taste amazing.
Totally recommended here for you to try too.
Yes, and you've pretty much given away 80 % of the recipe without giving away the secret sauce.
Very shrewd. Thank you for sharing your happy place.
And for me as spring unfolds in March, Yulanhua or Magnolia blossoms emerge like versus and paintings adorning the season with their ethereal beauty.
And that is pretty much my happy place.
The pristine white petals resemble freshly fallen snow and we had snow.
Was it last week? So maybe this would disrupt the blooming schedule of these flowers a little bit, but while the purple hues mirror the glow of dawn acting as gentle harrods that softly awaken the slumbering earth, I enjoy.
Spring is back. And though the magnolia's bloom is fleeting, it greets spring in its most radiant form, unafraid of the lingering chill it proudly unfurls with jade -like pedals excuding a subtle fragrance narrating tales of lives resilience and splendor each magnolia blossom is a heartfelt ode to spring and a gentle tribute to the passage of time and I love you to experience my happy place take a stroll to one of these Magnolia -filled corners around China.
If you happen to be in Beijing as well, here are two of my favorite viewing spots.
Number one, Summer Palace.
The Magnolias there are predominantly found around the Luoshuo Hall or Zhui and Longevity Hall and the Long Corridor area.
Their presence beautifully complements the ancient architecture of this imperial garden, especially the striking contrast between the white magnolias and the red walls, creating a powerful visual scene.
And also, my second place of recommendation is the Cheung An Avenue.
Lining this major thoroughfare, the tall and graceful magnolia trees when in bloom resemble clouds or freshly fallen snow and they harmonize with the bustling urban landscape, offering a rare and splendid springtime spectacle in the Capitol.
And spring does have this magical way of uplifting our spirits, doesn't it?
To contemplate and also to complement this refreshing ambiance.
Let's indulge in a track that captures the very essence of this season.
From his 2005 debut album, Soulboy, Feng Da at Hong's Chun Feng Chui, or Spring Breeze, is a soulful melody that resonates with the lightness and rejuvenation we feel during this time.
So as we wrap up today's show, immerse yourself in the harmonious tones of the forever soul -boy fang battle and let Trim Fong Trey be the soundtrack to your spring adventures and that brings us to the end of today's show thank you so much Yushu and Yu Shan for joining the discussion I'm He Yang enjoy the music enjoy spring and we'll see you next time
