Shocked by the absurdity on Xianyu, Alibaba is drifting further away from its original aspirations.

I was completely shocked by Xianyu these past two days. It's hard to imagine that a company under Alibaba could be so shameless. Is the Alibaba group really that short on money? They're now resorting to all kinds of ways to take users' money.

Here's the background: I was selling an item on Xianyu, and the platform tricked me into enabling the "Xianyu Coin Discount" feature (they claimed it would increase exposure and that not enabling it would hurt visibility). Since most users don't have many Xianyu Coins anyway, people usually enable it. Both as a buyer and seller, I understood the rule to be that buyers use Xianyu Coins for discounts. For example, if a seller enables a 10% Xianyu Coin discount, for a 100 RMB item, the buyer can use up to 10,000 Xianyu Coins to deduct 10 RMB. I always thought the buyer needed to have Xianyu Coins to get the discount—otherwise, they'd pay the full price. I even checked with deepseek, and they confirmed it's the buyer who gets the discount.

Then came the jaw-dropping part. On May 9th, I sold an item for 1,800 RMB. The buyer paid the full 1,800 RMB without using any Xianyu Coins. But without my knowledge, Xianyu applied a 20% "Xianyu Coin discount," effectively taking a 20% cut (360 RMB) from my earnings—even though I had already paid the transaction fee. When I checked my past orders, I realized every single one had a 20% deduction. Since earlier orders were smaller, I assumed the buyers had used Xianyu Coins and didn’t notice. Turns out, Xianyu was pocketing 20% of the payment and giving me Xianyu Coins instead! This is outright robbery in broad daylight!

I called Xianyu’s customer service multiple times, but they refused to address the issue. When I asked to escalate the complaint, the agent arrogantly claimed their response was the "best solution" and that there was no escalation process.

Having dealt with their customer service before, I can confidently say Xianyu has the worst customer support—no competition! It’s unbelievable that this is a well-known company under Alibaba. I’ve criticized Alibaba’s "shareholders third" culture before, but now it’s clear their "customer first" slogan is also a complete lie. I’d rate Xianyu’s customer satisfaction at 0/10—even Taotian’s support is worse than Pinduoduo’s. A company that fakes its corporate culture—what investment value does it have? As you know, my Hong Kong stock portfolio is mainly Tencent and Xiaomi. In my private groups, I never recommend Alibaba. What has been its return since IPO? All they do is spin-offs and restructuring—no real progress. Meanwhile, Tencent stays focused, never splits, never plays accounting tricks, and is generous with buybacks and dividends. You might criticize some Tencent or Xiaomi products, but their founders and corporate integrity are solid. Without Jack Ma, Alibaba feels like a headless chicken—it’s lost its culture and forgotten its original mission. This Xianyu scandal might just be the tip of the iceberg. Alibaba is no longer the Alibaba we knew! $BABA-W(09988.HK) $Alibaba(BABA.US)