Consumer complaints rise 25% through April

Shanghai's consumer watchdog handled 39,909 complaints over the first four months of 2014, up 25 percent from the previous year, the organization said.

The majority of the complaints, 57 percent, dealt with services. The rest dealt with specific products, according to a press release from the Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Committee, a government-sponsored consumer rights organization.

Complaints about appliance repair service surged fivefold to 637, the most of any kind of consumer complaint, the committee said.

Most consumers complained about repair technicians who failed to identify the problem with their appliance, forcing customers to repeatedly call technicians back to their homes.

Others complained about a specific kind of fraud in which technicians used refurbished parts to complete a repair, but charged customers as if the parts were new.

The committee said the increase in repair service complaints suggests there is a dearth of qualified appliance repair technicians in the city.

Appliance vendors often outsource their after-sales service and have little incentive to make sure repair technicians are qualified and provide good service, the committee said.

The committee has also received more and more complaints about online purchases, which accounted for 42 percent of the complaints.

Those complaints also focused on poor after-sales service, according to the press release.

Most consumers complained about the complicated process of exchanging or returning goods, many of which had flaws or differed from what they saw on the vendor's website.

The number of complaints about food products also increased by 38 percent year-on-year to 654 cases, the committee said.