All 4 Cases Fully Refunded! Can *Haidilao* Pass the Test with This Round of Damage Control?

Let me state my conclusion first: what deserves the most attention here is not the speed of the refund, but the fact that employees finally no longer have to pay out of their own pockets to take the blame. It is like someone in a dorm making a mistake, only for the most honest person to be made to buy milk tea for the entire room. This kind of rule was absurd from the very beginning. And this time, Haidilao laid out the amounts, stores, and handling results clearly, which is at least much better than glossing over the issue.

According to the follow-up investigation report released by Haidilao, as of April 13, a total of 4 incidents of “partners paying out of pocket to buy gifts” had been identified. They were spread across three stores in Hangzhou, Xianyang, and Beijing, involving a total amount of 1237.9 yuan. The official statement said, "The above four incidents involved a total of 1237.9 yuan, all of which had been returned to the partners on April 12." This sentence may not look long, but for the employees involved, its significance is completely different.

Looking at the details, the Hangzhou case stands out the most. On February 3, 2026, one partner failed to pay timely attention to waitlist reservation information and was unlawfully required by the store management to spend 1000 yuan, calculated based on three days’ wages for a food runner, on gifts to maintain customer relations. To put it plainly, this was dumping a management problem onto a frontline employee. It is like losing a team fight without reviewing what went wrong and directly making the support buy skins for the whole team—pointless.

There were two cases at the Xianyang store, both occurring in January 2025. Two partners, due to customer complaints, paid out of pocket to buy children’s toys worth 127.9 yuan and about 60 yuan respectively. At the Beijing store, on March 22, 2025, a 50-yuan gift was purchased because of a customer complaint. The amounts may not seem particularly large, but once this door is opened, anyone could be implicitly expected to “pay first and deal with it later.” Over time, it becomes like a dorm cleaning rota, where the same person always ends up losing out.

Also, Haidilao did more than just issue refunds this time; it also announced follow-up measures. The company’s CEO will personally apologize to the 4 partners, and a special partner rights protection task force has already been set up to continue publicly collecting leads on violations. The official statement also said that whether partners are still employed or have already left, as long as they previously encountered unreasonable penalties that violated company rules, they can report them, and after verification, the company will return the money and make corrections as soon as possible. I think this point is crucial, because it is not just about fixing these 4 cases, but about addressing problems from the past that may never have been spoken up about.

From the perspective of public opinion, people are no longer just watching whether refunds have been issued; they care more about whether the same thing will happen again in the future. After all, what the service industry fears most is this kind of invisible cost transfer: on the surface, it is about maintaining customer relations, but in reality, it makes frontline staff bear the cost of management mistakes. For the brand, this counts as putting the issue on the table. But whether it can truly get through this will still depend on whether the task force continues to issue updates and whether it can genuinely block违规 actions by store management.

If we score this by the standard most familiar to us students, this response is like a teammate feeding kills, finally turning on the mic to apologize, and paying back the internet fee you covered for him. The attitude is basically there, but whether the match can continue depends on what happens next. Refunds and apologies are only the first step. Whether the system can ensure that employees no longer have to “pay out of pocket to maintain customer relations” is the key to whether this issue will keep repeatedly going viral.