Online seller sends burial garb as payback

An online shop was banned from search results for 12 days after its owner mailed burial clothes to a buyer who left a negative comment about the shop.

Li Fen, 25, a student at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, bought a skirt for 119 yuan ($18.80) from a shop on taobao.com on April 21 but said the lining of the skirt was longer than what the shop had described online.

But the shop owner in Dezhou, East China's Shandong Province, refused to exchange the skirt, and Li said the owner's "bad attitude" during negotiations prompted the student to give the lowest rating to the shop on May 7.

She received a parcel three days later containing blue burial clothes for children. A frightened Li called police.

"Since I received the parcel on Thursday, I can't rest," she said. "I'm just scared."

Burial clothes are regarded as ominous and insulting if sent to people who are alive.

The owner of the shop, who was identified only by his online moniker "zunjuege," did not reply to questions e-mailed by China Daily.

"We have decided to ban the shop from our search engine for 12 days, among other punishments," said Chen Luoan, an employee who deals with complaints at taobao.com.

"Our investigation has found that the shop owner did send the parcel."

Comments from the police in Wuhan were not immediately available.

Similar to eBay, Taobao adopts a rating system to evaluate shops. Negative feedback from buyers can harm shops' rating, a benchmark used by many buyers to decide whether a shop is reliable or not.

Liu Honghui, a Beijing-based lawyer specializing in online disputes from Yingke Law Firm, said Li can sue the shop owner.

"Li has the right to ask the owner to stop the harassment and apologize," said Liu. "If the woman suffers physically or psychologically due to the harassment, she can also sue the owner to get compensation."

Other buyers have said they were harassed by shop owners after giving low ratings to shops.

"The owner (of an online shop) called me many times in a week and sent text messages after I gave her a negative comment in 2010," said Liu Qin, a postgraduate student in Hunan University.

Recently, several similar cases have been reported of shop owners sending malicious gifts to buyers. A bag of feces was sent to a woman in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, on April 23 after she left negative comments on an online shop.

Some shop owners, however, said the online rating system has been abused by some buyers.

A few buyers threatened to give low ratings to sellers simply to get discounts or exemption from postage, said Ling Yujia, an online clothes seller at Taobao.

To ensure her shop has a good rating - what Ling called the "lifeline of her shop" - she sometimes pays the postage or refunds buyers to have them delete negative comments and upgrade ratings.

"In these cases, I don't make any money, but I have to do it," she said.