Life in China Everyday ChinaReference pages
How to complain about a company in China: the 12315 route
Which line takes which complaint, the clocks the market regulator answers on, the seven reasons a complaint is refused, and the money rules behind it.
Living page — numbers read from the sources on 2026-10-16, re-checked quarterly.
A company in China has your money and has stopped answering. The route that costs nothing and needs no lawyer is an administrative complaint, and for most consumer disputes it ends up at one door: the market supervision department, reached through 12315.
Two things decide the outcome before the facts do: which department has jurisdiction over the seller, and which clock it is running. Both are set in a rule in force since 15 April 2026, and most English-language advice about 12315 predates it.
12315 is five hotlines merged into one
The number 12315 and the national platform at 12315.cn are the market supervision system’s complaints channel, built by merging five hotlines. The platform’s own complaint notice lists them: the old industry and commerce line 12315, quality 12365, food and drug 12331, price 12358 and intellectual property 12330 became one number and one platform (complaint notice, read 2026-10-16).
The channel is now governed by the Market Supervision Complaint and Report Handling Measures, market regulation order 121, published 30 December 2025 and in force since 15 April 2026. Article 46 repeals the 2019 interim measure, order 20, on the same date (order 121 full text, State Council gazette 2026 no. 11; the same text on SAMR’s own site). Every clock below is read from that text, not from the 2019 version.
Article 2 draws the boundary that decides whether the platform will help at all: market supervision handles complaints and reports within its own duties, and matters that laws give to another department go to that department.
Complaint and report are two different procedures
A complaint asks the department to settle a consumer dispute; a report tells it that a company may have broken the law. They are filed separately, run on different clocks, and only one is about your money.
| Complaint (投诉) | Report (举报) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who may file | a consumer who bought or used goods or services for daily living needs (art. 3) | any person, company or organisation (art. 3) |
| What the department does | mediation, with both sides’ consent (notice item 6) | checks whether to open a case (art. 18, penalty procedure rules) |
| First clock | accept or refuse within seven working days of receipt (art. 15) | check and decide within fifteen working days, extendable by fifteen (art. 18) |
| Second clock | mediation ends if no agreement is reached within sixty days of acceptance (art. 23) | none published to the reporter |
| What you receive | a settlement, or a decision that mediation is terminated | usually nothing: the platform’s notice says the department does not inform the reporter of the result unless a law requires it (report notice item 7) |
One form carries one complaint: no repeats, no two companies in one form, and no report material inside a complaint (notice item 9). Consulting, information-disclosure requests and administrative review applications sit outside the measure altogether (art. 44).
The seven reasons a complaint is refused
Article 16 lists the grounds on which the department will not accept a complaint at all; a refusal has to cite one and point you to the other routes. The list reads: the matter is not the department’s duty or not within its jurisdiction; a court, arbitration body, another department or a consumer association has already accepted or handled the same dispute; the purchase was not for daily living needs, or you cannot show a dispute with that company; more than three years have passed since you knew of the harm; the required materials are missing or false; you refused identity verification or used someone else’s name; or another law bars acceptance (art. 16).
Two of those decide most foreigner cases.
The first is the daily-living test: a company buying from a Chinese supplier is not a consumer complaint, because the purchase was for business rather than living. The same facts can still support a report, which anyone may file, but the mediation route closes. What a business buyer can do instead is set out in Verifying a Chinese supplier.
The second is the three-year limit, counted from the day you knew or ought to have known of the harm, not from the date of purchase and not reset by asking the company again.
A refusal is not the end of the case: article 15 requires the department to give reasons and to point you to the routes in article 39 of the Consumer Protection Law — negotiation, a consumer association, another administrative complaint, arbitration, or a court.
What the platform wants from you first
Article 10 sets the materials: your own name, telephone number and postal address; the company’s name and address; and a specific request with the facts behind it. The department may also require identity documents to verify that you are who you say you are (art. 10).
Jurisdiction follows the seller, not the buyer. The county-level bureau where the company operates or is registered handles it; for an online platform operator that is its own registered address; for a seller on a platform, the address the seller publishes, and if that cannot be reached, the platform operator’s address (notice item 3). The company’s registered name and address, which the form asks for, come from the same registry that registering a company works through.
The platform itself is Chinese-only. Its footer carries an English name, National Platform of Consumer Dispute Resolution, and nothing else in English. The sign-up form I opened on 2026-10-16 asked for a username, a password, a mobile number, an image captcha and an SMS code, with the placeholder “use a frequently used mobile number” and no country-code selector on the form. That is consistent with the mobile-number friction that runs through almost every Chinese sign-up, described in SMS verification in China — but no official text I could find says whether a passport or a non-mainland number is accepted, so treat that as an open question rather than a rule.
Build the evidence before you file: the order number, the chat with the seller, the payment record, and the invoice if one was issued, which is what a fapiao is. The form is one page of text; the facts behind it are what the mediator reads.
The green channel: ten working days, if the company is on the list
Where a company is in the platform’s online dispute resolution list, the complaint can go straight to it, and the clock changes. The platform’s complaint notice states that the company will negotiate a settlement with the complainant within ten working days, that the settlement period does not count toward the department’s own clock, and that a failed settlement does not stop you from complaining to the department afterwards (notice item 8).
The ten-day figure comes from the platform’s notice, not the regulation: order 121 only encourages operators to build consumer service points, green channels, first-question responsibility, advance compensation and online dispute resolution systems (art. 6).
What the rules can put back in your pocket
The mediator can only help you reach a settlement; the amounts come from the law. In mediation you are arguing about what a court would award, so know the numbers before you write the request.
| Claim | Rule | Amount or clock |
|---|---|---|
| Goods or services that do not meet the agreed quality | Consumer Protection Law art. 24 | return within seven days of receipt where there is no national rule and no agreement; the seller pays the necessary transport |
| Online purchase, no reason given | art. 25 | return within seven days of receipt; made-to-order, fresh and perishable, opened digital goods, and newspapers or periodicals are excluded |
| Refund after a no-reason return | interim rules on seven-day returns, arts. 10 and 13 | tell the seller within seven days of receipt, counted from the day after signing for it; the seller refunds within seven days of receiving the goods back |
| The platform will not tell you who the seller is | art. 44 | the platform can be made to pay if it cannot give the seller’s real name, address and working contact details, and is jointly liable where it knew of the harm and did nothing |
| Fraud | art. 55 | three times the price paid, and a minimum of 500 yuan |
| Food that fails the safety standard | Food Safety Law art. 148 | ten times the price or three times the loss, and a minimum of 1,000 yuan, with the first seller or producer asked paying first and recovering from the responsible party |
The Consumer Protection Law text is the 2013 revision, in force since 15 March 2014; the Food Safety Law carries a third amendment dated 12 September 2025 that left article 148 unchanged. The Consumer Protection Law Implementing Regulation, effective 1 July 2024, is a separate regulation rather than a revision of the law (State Council order 778).
When the platform is not enough
The China Consumers Association is a social organisation rather than a regulator, and the law gives it investigation and mediation functions plus the power to support a consumer’s lawsuit (arts. 36 and 37). Its complaint window is 315.cca.org.cn. One consequence is easy to miss: once a consumer association has accepted the same dispute, the department has to refuse your complaint, because article 16 counts it as already handled; and the department may hand your complaint to the association to mediate in its name, with both sides’ agreement (art. 19).
A court is the route that can order money to move, and it is easier to reach than it was. Since 1 December 2025 the Supreme People’s Court has run one platform for filing, mediation, enforcement and preservation — the People’s Court Online Service, at zxfw.court.gov.cn and as a WeChat mini program, with the 12368 hotline for questions (court announcement, 27 November 2025).
Small claims are the cheap version: a simple money claim worth up to half the previous year’s average employment wage in the province is heard under the small-claims procedure, at first instance and with no appeal, and the parties may agree to use it up to twice that figure (Civil Procedure Law art. 165, in force since 1 January 2024). Two limits matter. Cases needing an assessment of loss, or where a party cannot be located, are excluded, as are cases with a foreign element (art. 166) — a dispute with a foreign element does not qualify for the small-claims track, which for a reader holding a foreign passport is the clause to read twice. The wage figure is published province by province and changes yearly; there is no national number.
Which line takes what
The number 12315 is not the only official line, and for several sectors it is the wrong one.
| Line | Handles | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| 12315 | consumer disputes and reports about market conduct: goods, food, price, advertising, contracts | the platform in this post; the number survived the State Council’s hotline merger (State Council Office document 53 of 2020, 28 December 2020) |
| 12345 | general government service: consultation, requests, complaints across departments | one number, 24-hour human service; Beijing answers in 10 languages and Shanghai in Chinese plus 18 foreign languages |
| 12378 | banking and insurance consumer complaints | since 2024 the financial regulators split the work: the financial regulator takes banks and insurers, the central bank takes payment and credit-reporting firms, the securities regulator takes securities, futures and funds (joint announcement) |
| 12305 | postal and courier complaints | the postal authority mediates and answers within 30 days of receiving the appeal (art. 4, in force 1 October 2020); the number is being merged into 12345 province by province |
| 12328 | road, water, urban transport, maritime | consultation, complaints and reports for the transport sector (art. 2, in force 1 October 2021) |
| 12377 | illegal and harmful online content | six channels including the hotline and email; infringement reports have to be filed under your real name |
Three more lines moved: telecom 12300 and tourism 12301 merged into 12345, their numbers withdrawn, and food and drug 12331 went into 12315 (document 53 annex). Sina’s consumer platform, which ranks well in searches, calls itself a third-party bridge between buyers and sellers, not a government channel (its own Q&A).
How I checked this
The regulation comes from the State Council gazette and SAMR’s own publication of order 121, read in both. The clocks and jurisdiction rules come from the platform’s complaint and report notices, read on the platform; the sign-up form and the Chinese-only interface are what I saw in a browser, not published statements. Law texts come from the National People’s Congress site and SAMR’s own copy; the hotline merger list is annex 2 of the State Council Office document; the language figures are the two cities’ own English pages. Every link returned a 200 or a redirect on 16 October 2026, except the court filing site, which refused my request while a browser opened it.
What I could not check
- I have not filed a complaint through 12315 or 12345, so nothing here is a record of a real case.
- Whether the platform accepts a passport or a non-mainland mobile number is not stated in any official text I could find. The form asks for a mobile number and an SMS code; the rule asks for a name, telephone number and postal address.
- No official source states whether the 12315 hotline answers in English or what its national human-service hours are.
- The migration of 12305 into 12345 is running province by province; I saw one provincial notice dated April 2026 and found no national completion date.
- The ten working days for a green-channel settlement is the platform’s number, not the regulation’s.
- Beijing’s own English page counts ten languages and an english.www.gov.cn story from December 2024 counts eight; both are official and I could not reconcile them.
- I did not test whether a complaint filed by a foreign passport holder is accepted in practice, and I have no case data on how often mediation produces payment.