Promos criticized before China online shopping spree

[Photo: from VCG]

Overly complicated promotions have recently aroused complaints among Chinese customers as the annual online shopping spree on Nov. 11, which is also known as "Double 11", approaches.

What started as a sort of "anti-Valentine's Day" celebration for singles in China has turned into the world's biggest online shopping day.

China is expected to see a billion packages during the 2017 shopping spree, which will be a huge pressure on the country's courier companies. 

However, many customers hesitated in front of the overly complicated promotion ideas this year, such as prelaunch, money-off, and price protection policies. 

Some of them complained that direct percent-off discounts are rare nowadays, and they have to spend hours on studying the different promotion methods. Some joked that you got to be a math talent if you want to participate in the shopping spree.

Last year, online transactions totaled nearly 121 billion yuan ($18.17 billion) within 24 hours on the shopping platform of China's largest e-commerce company Alibaba, a record amount in global retail for any single day, according to data provided by Alibaba.

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI.]