Rough day for Jack Ma: state media attacks Alibaba for fake orders and Ele.me for fake restaurants

In the spring, a young CCTV reporter’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of scathing criticism. Isn’t that what Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote? Perhaps not, but it’s nevertheless true in China: on this year’s World Consumer Rights Day, state television broadcaster CCTV once again prominently featured allegations about some of China’s top internet companies.

Two of the biggest targets so far? Alibaba’s Taobao and Alibaba-backed food delivery startup Ele.me.

Alibaba was hit with allegations of fake orders being processed by vendors on its C2C platform Taobao. Vendors faking orders can inflate their apparent sales (sales numbers are displayed publicly on Taobao) and often get fake five-star reviews out of the deal as well. Taobao wasn’t the only platform criticized over fake orders; O2O giant Meituan-Dianping came in for considerable criticism as well.

In response, Alibaba officially thanked CCTV for calling attention to the problem, and called for a united effort to attack C2C ecommerce fraudsters. The company’s comments were in many ways reminiscent of Jack Ma’s emphatic exhortations about counterfeit and fake goods on Alibaba a few days ago.

Alibaba-backed food delivery startup Ele.me also felt the wrath of CCTV

But of course, whether the company actually effectively cracks down on either problem is an open question. Faked orders on Taobao have been a big problem for quite a while – so big, in fact, that they were actually made illegal last year – but CCTV’s report certainly suggests the problem is far from eliminated.

Alibaba-backed food delivery startup Ele.me also felt the wrath of CCTV recently, with reports alleging that the startup is offering food from unlicensed restaurants, some of them with disturbingly unsanitary kitchens. That’s a claim that Shanghai’s Food and Drug Administration also made last year after its own investigation, but apparently in the interim the startup hasn’t managed to resolve the problem.

Ele.me’s official response to the CCTV report states that it has already formed a new task force to investigate, and it will delist and and all illegal restaurants.

Neither report is likely to do any serious damage to Alibaba – the company is certainly not the first to weather the PR storms CCTV flings in all directions each March 15th. And CCTV’s scathing attack on Apple three years ago hasn’t done much to hurt the company’s China sales. Still, it’s worth noting that both Alibaba and Ele.me have been criticized for established, longstanding problems that the companies have apparently failed to rectify. Apple did change its highly-criticized warranty policy in China after the CCTV attacks. Whether anything will actually change at Ele.me or Taobao remains to be seen.