In today’s booming e-commerce era, Temu, as a well-known e-commerce platform, has attracted the attention of many merchants and consumers. For merchants, it is crucial to understand the various policies and fee structures of the platform. One of the core issues is whether Temu’s full hosting needs to be charged?
Recently, sellers have received messages from the Temu platform, requiring them to sign the “Customer Service Outsourcing Service Agreement” in a timely manner. This move has attracted widespread attention.
According to the content of the agreement, the fees that Temu began to charge sellers are mainly reflected in the customer service outsourcing service. Specifically, Party A (Temu) has the right to charge a service fee based on the actual amount paid by the user under the store order excluding tax × 5‰. This means that sellers need to pay additional fees to the platform in a certain proportion for each transaction.
It is worth noting that this charge is not optional, but mandatory for the platform. After all accounts enter the backend, sellers must first check and confirm the agreement, otherwise they will not be able to proceed with subsequent operations normally. This regulation undoubtedly puts a certain amount of pressure on sellers, because they must choose between accepting the charging policy and giving up the platform service.
From the specific content of the agreement, the following points can be summarized:
First, the fee is based on the “active” entrustment of the seller. The agreement clearly stipulates that Party B (the merchant) entrusts Party A (Temu) to provide customer service outsourcing services for Party B’s store, and Party A agrees to accept Party B’s entrustment. This seems to be a voluntary choice of the seller, but in fact, when the platform forces the signing of the agreement, this “active” is more of a formal expression.
Second, the fee is directly linked to the order amount. The service fee is calculated based on 5‰ of the actual payment amount (excluding tax) of the user. This means that the larger the order amount, the higher the service fee the seller needs to pay. For some sellers with higher sales, this may become a considerable expense.
Finally, the agreement also stipulates that the service fee must be paid even after the order is cancelled. In other words, if the seller encounters a consumer order cancellation, they cannot ask Temu to refund the paid service fee. This is undoubtedly an unfavorable clause for sellers, because in actual operations, order cancellation is inevitable, and sellers need to bear additional costs for this.
For Temu sellers, facing this charging policy, they need to carefully evaluate its impact on their own business. On the one hand, the customer service outsourcing service provided by the platform may alleviate the seller’s operating pressure to a certain extent and improve the quality of customer service. On the other hand, the implementation of the charging policy will inevitably increase the seller’s costs and compress the profit margin. Sellers need to comprehensively consider their own profitability, market competition and other factors to decide whether to continue to do business on the Temu platform.