The judgment is invalid! Big sellers get back the frozen funds on the platform

Chinese sellers who were branded as violators and sentenced to "death penalty" have finally waited for this day: they won their first battle by using legal means to resist the platform's arbitrary blocking of accounts and freezing of funds.

Recently, more than ten dealer accounts of Shenzhen's super-selling brands such as PTS , WT , and MD successfully recovered their funds and interests through judicial unfreezing , and the platform's terms and actions of arbitrarily freezing and confiscating sellers' funds were ruled invalid !

Chinese products are sold all over the world through cross-border e-commerce platforms, which not only makes Chinese sellers successful, but also benefits cross-border e-commerce platforms and payment platforms , as well as billions of consumers around the world. This is a win-win-win ecosystem. However, in recent years, the platforms have destroyed this ecosystem by arbitrarily blocking accounts and freezing funds of Chinese sellers on a large scale, causing a devastating blow to many Chinese sellers.

Just by receiving an email accusing the platform of violations, without receiving any evidence of violations, they were sentenced to "death" and executed immediately. Overnight, the sellers' accounts were blocked, sales revenue was cleared , and all funds in the accounts were frozen or even confiscated.

At the same time, sellers could no longer sell the goods in the platform’s warehouses and were required to move the goods immediately, resulting in huge cost losses.

Many sellers had no money to maintain company operations and pay suppliers, and they went bankrupt within a few months. A large number of employees were unemployed, which affected the development of the entire e-commerce industry and the local economy .

The platform claimed that these sellers violated the platform regulations. According to Article 3 of its agreement , the platform has the right to immediately block the account without giving any advance notice . In addition, according to Article 2 of its agreement , as long as the platform determines that the seller has violated the rules, the platform can permanently freeze all sales revenue in the seller's account and confiscate it as "loss compensation" claimed by the platform . The sellers had to accept this agreement when they joined the platform, but they were unreasonably blocked and their funds were frozen due to the "tyrannical" terms.

Account suspension has already caused irreversible impact on sellers, and the most terrible thing is that the income earned from hard work will be confiscated. Furthermore, if there is no evidence to prove the " violation " , it is a misjudgment, but the platform will "cut it off" for misjudged accounts without giving sellers any chance to appeal and prove themselves.

Fortunately, some of the big sellers in Shenzhen took on the responsibility after their accounts were blocked in 2021, raised funds on their own to pay the arbitration fees, and in 2022 commissioned the US law firm JS Law ( which had successfully helped US and European sellers to unfreeze their funds in 2020 ) to initiate arbitration litigation through judicial channels, demanding that the platform unfreeze the funds and return the sellers' payments.

Through in-depth research on millions of cases in the United States, JS Law's powerful team of litigation lawyers, including cross-border unfreezing lawyer Guo , arbitrators of the United States Arbitration Court , former New York State Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General, etc. , made a comprehensive defense to the arbitration tribunal based on the main argument that " even if some sellers violate the platform regulations, such as manipulating comment rankings , brand account association , and video failure in the second review, the platform can block the account, but it has no right to permanently freeze and confiscate all funds in the seller's account . "

Thanks to these efforts, there have been frequent successes in litigation in the past few months . Most accounts have won arbitration, with the arbitrators ruling that the platform's terms and actions of arbitrarily blocking accounts and freezing funds are invalid. The sellers not only unfrozen the funds but also received interest .

Considering that many sellers are unable to pay the arbitration fees, JS Law in the United States obtained support from a litigation fund.

In this fund advance payment model, the fund advances arbitration fees for sellers, and lawyers mainly act as risk agents and only charge fees if successful. Sellers do not need to pay any fees in the early stage. If they win , they get the money, and if they lose, they do not need to pay any fees. This model allows most sellers to protect their legal rights and interests through judicial channels to unfreeze funds.

This month, 200 seller accounts were filed through this model, requiring the unfreezing of account funds and payment of interest. The third round of judicial unfreezing of 200 seller accounts is now open for registration.

Chinese sellers are not silent lambs . The filing of a lawsuit also shows that sellers are unwilling to be arbitrarily slaughtered again. Once a seller’s account is blocked by the platform and the funds are frozen, the seller at least has the opportunity to seek judicial relief to unfreeze the account funds. And regardless of whether it violates the platform regulations, the seller at least has the right to get back the money that belongs to him!

Chinese sellers should comply with the reasonable terms and conditions of the platform. At the same time, Chinese sellers must resist and actively negotiate for a fairer and more reasonable platform operating environment. This is the way for Chinese sellers to develop and thrive in the cross-border e-commerce industry in the long term.

As David Schwartz, director of the New York-based Global E-Commerce Sellers Alliance (www.globalsellers.net) , former New York State Assistant Attorney and litigation attorney , said: "These platforms' overbearing terms and arbitrary account blocking and fund freezing have seriously infringed the legitimate rights and interests of platform sellers, small and medium-sized enterprises, and consumers. Sellers must unite to resist and restrict these terms and behaviors through legislative lobbying and judicial relief. The Global E-Commerce Sellers Alliance is a platform and non-profit organization that speaks for global sellers and will be committed to protecting the legitimate rights and interests of global e-commerce sellers through various channels!"

If any seller is in the predicament of having his funds frozen by the platform due to a mistaken identification of infringement, he can contact us via WeChat ID ennews8889 to learn more about the litigation process.

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