South Korea’s e-commerce companies TMON and WeMakePrice are facing backlash due to delays in settling payments to sellers and issuing refunds to consumers. Both sellers and consumers are expressing growing frustration as settlements and refunds are not handled properly, with some even being conducted without clear principles. Despite WeMakePrice’s announcement on July 25 that it would prioritize consumer refunds, actual refunds have been slow to materialize.
In response, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) formed a joint task force to conduct an urgent on-site investigation of TMON and WeMakePrice. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business have also gathered cases of affected small businesses.
Approximately 60,000 vendors operate on these platforms, including many small-scale sellers. A travel industry representative said, “Just as we were recovering from the pandemic, this crisis threatens to lead to widespread bankruptcies among small businesses.”
The FSS reported that TMON and WeMakePrice’s unpaid settlements amount to 170 billion won. As more people became aware of the issue through media reports, the 1372 Consumer Counseling Center received over 2,000 complaints related to TMON and WeMakePrice on July 23 and 24.
On the morning of July 25, around 700 people gathered outside WeMakePrice’s headquarters in Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Many consumers had purchased travel products for summer vacations but demanded refunds and settlements from the platform.
One consumer, Han, age 43, said, “I received a notification that my hotel reservation for the following Monday, July 29, was canceled, but I haven’t been refunded, so I came here.”
WeMakePrice began processing refunds manually on-site but stopped at 10:30 a.m. due to safety concerns and directed people to use a QR code for online processing.
At the same time, affected TMON customers gathered at the company’s headquarters in Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, where employees were working remotely, to express their complaints.
