All the heavens begin with the love in the courtyard.

Almost all the employees of the nationwide micro-business were blocked at their doorsteps. They were all relatives and friends, and then relatives and friends brought their own relatives and friends. They were all acquaintances. A group of people came with electric fans to return the goods. They wouldn't listen to any nonsense and just demanded a refund!

The more money the employees earned earlier, the worse they'll be stuck in this mess!

But what can these people do?

In order to make more profit and to sell more at lower prices, they would buy goods for 75 yuan and sell them for 79 yuan. But they lost two meals' worth of money because of that 4 yuan difference!

Finally, having no other choice, they led their relatives and friends in a grand procession toward Xiao Lei's house!

In addition to Jinling County, customers who bought Thunder brand electric fans in other parts of Anyun Province also began to organize people to besiege the shopping malls!

Don't underestimate an electric fan. In this day and age, farmers might work hard all year round and still not be able to afford an electric fan.

Urban residents aren't much better off. After a year of hard work, the whole family might only save two or three hundred yuan, spending most of it on a high-tech electric fan. But then they hear that the manufacturer is going out of business and there are no guarantees anymore.

When people buy your electric fans, they expect them to last half a lifetime. But now, people on the market say that the electric fans we buy are actually made of inferior materials and can only last for one or two years at most. Aren't you just ripping people off?

At this point, the rumors were unstoppable, and the matter escalated rapidly. From being blocked at Xiaolei Village to being blocked at various shopping malls, it all happened almost simultaneously!

Now, it's no longer a simple matter of returning goods; it has escalated into a public event, with leaders at the county, city, and provincial levels getting involved immediately!

Faced with so many angry people, the first thing to do was to quickly quell their anger. The leaders ordered Xiao Lei Jia to process refunds for people at all levels as soon as possible. Not only were the 70,000 to 80,000 electric fans sold at low prices through the micro-business model refunded at the original price, but also the hundreds of thousands of electric fans sold in the previous two or three years. As long as people requested refunds, Xiao Lei Jia had to process them free of charge!

At this point, Lei Ting Electric Factory of Xiao Lei's family is basically finished. Not only is the factory finished, but Xiao Lei's family is also finished!

The rumors almost came true, because an event with such a huge impact could no longer be resolved simply by having someone take the blame.

More than 30 leaders, from Jinling County to Leiting Electric Factory, were stripped of their positions, receiving disciplinary actions ranging from party warnings to dismissal from public office. In this avalanche, no one was willing to protect these small fry!

Chen Pingyuan, who had only been in office for a year, was also directly removed from office, essentially ending his political career!

Lei Dongbao couldn't possibly be unaware of such a major event happening in Xiaolei Village. He received the news around the end of August, when some stores were returning goods.

After carefully inquiring about what had happened, Lei Dongbao came to the conclusion that Leiting Electric Factory was doomed!

Although he knew that Thunder Electric Factory would definitely go out of business, he never expected it to die so miserably. He originally thought that at most it would just have an extra 100,000 electric fans in stock.

At worst, the cash flow will dry up, and the bank will eventually take away the electric fans. Leiting Electric Factory will still owe the bank millions in loans. In the end, Jinling County will definitely find a way to help Leiting Electric Factory recover. It is estimated that the next group of people who take over will learn from the experience, and even if Leiting Electric Factory is half dead, it should still be able to survive.

However, this public incident completely dragged Leiting Electric Appliances and Xiaoleijia into an abyss!

Faced with hundreds of thousands of customer returns and refund requests, this is almost an impossible task for Leiting Electric Appliances Factory at present!

This is tens of millions of yuan. In the early 1980s, let alone a township enterprise, even Jinling County could not afford it!

But how do we solve this mess?

Now that things have come to this point, naturally some people thought of Lei Dongbao, so they made one phone call after another to Jinzhou!

But would Lei Dongbao dare to take over such a mess?

Does he dare?

Chapter 66: Tragedy Strikes

The Heavens Begin with Love in the Courtyard, Volume 66: Tragedy Emerges. A brand can go from glory to infamy in just ten days.

Over the past three years, Thunder Brand has grown from nothing to become a well-known brand in Anyun Province, which is a source of pride for many people!

Ten days ago, when people in An Van province talked about the Thunder brand, they praised it far more than they criticized it. But ten days later, when people talk about the brand again, all they hear are criticisms and gloating gossip.

The reputation of the Thunder brand has been completely ruined. Now it's even associated with inferior products. The stupidity of the management, coupled with a rumor, has completely destroyed the Thunder brand in a very short time!

The origin of the rumors is impossible to trace or investigate now. The biggest problem facing Xiaolei Village is how to solve the immediate issues.

The current Thunder Electric Factory is a complete mess. After the factory leaders were completely dismissed, it actually seemed like a form of protection for them. Now that they have resigned with the stigma of punishment, the worst that can happen is that they will no longer be leaders.

But if they leave, the thousands of employees can't leave!

Who's going to clean up that mess at Xiao Lei's house?

The relevant leaders in Jinling County are now facing a mess in Xiao Lei's family. They can't just not take over, but taking over would be even more troublesome, since getting money from them is out of the question.

The Xiaolei family is now basically bankrupt. On the books, there's not a single penny left, let alone cash!

The tens of thousands of electric fans that were sold earlier have now been returned to the warehouse. After all, so many people blocked Xiao Lei's house at the time, and many people took advantage of the chaos to start smashing, looting, and burning. Even the Angora rabbit breeding base started to be vandalized, and some people took the opportunity to try to steal Angora rabbits!

The villagers of Xiaolei Village were not to be trifled with either; they were also victims. At this point, they could only desperately protect their property, which almost led to a murder. In the end, the Jinling County authorities had no choice but to order the managers of Leiting Electric Factory to quickly deal with the current group of people.

So the electric fans that were sold earlier are now being quickly recalled. These used electric fans are now being dumped in the warehouse like scrap metal, and nobody cares about them.

Seeing this, the bank was unwilling to take it away; what would they do with it?

The Thunder brand is already infamous, and these are already used electric fans. There aren't even workers to repackage and reprocess them. If we take them away now, it will leave us with evidence. Anyway, things have already blown up, and it's a certainty that the bank's leaders will be punished.

Everything is now spiraling into a worse situation, but things have already come to this point. In everyone's eyes, whoever touches this is doomed. Jinling County is also powerless, and no official is willing to take over. They would rather be criticized than do the job!

Faced with hundreds of thousands of customers demanding refunds, the mess at Leiting Electric Factory, tens of millions of yuan in bank debts, and the insults and attacks from thousands of villagers in Xiaolei Village, Xiaolei Village has now become a complete cesspool!

No leader would dare to jump into this latrine!

What else could Xiao Lei family do at this point?

With no one to rely on, the villagers of Xiaolei Village naturally had to save themselves. Their first thought was Lei Dongbao, because only Lei Dongbao could save Xiaolei Village now!

So, led by Lei Shigen, wave after wave of villagers from Xiaolei Village went to Jinzhou to seek Lei Dongbao's help!

Lei Dongbao naturally dared not take on this mess, but what could he do when faced with wave after wave of childhood friends and relatives in their seventies and eighties kneeling directly in front of him?

Lei Dongbao didn't know what to do either. He couldn't handle this mess, so he could only refuse again and again. In the end, he chose to use just one word!

"hide!"

Lei Dongbao isn't a superhero. He doesn't call me Brother Lei when he needs me, and he calls that bastard surnamed Lei when he doesn't.

Besides, this matter originally had nothing to do with me, and getting involved now will only cause me trouble!

However, he never expected that things would gradually spiral out of control and eventually lead to a tragedy!

The rumor that Leiting Electric Factory was about to go bankrupt and that the electric fans in their homes were made of inferior materials has now come true.

The hundreds of thousands of customers who bought Thunder fans are now completely fed up. They start blocking the entrances of shopping malls and department stores whenever they have a chance, and it has escalated into petitions to higher authorities. The situation is getting bigger and bigger!

The higher-ups were also alarmed by this. Although they demanded that Leiting Electric Factory refund and return the goods to these customers, Leiting Electric Factory was now an empty shell, with no money on its books and still owing tens of millions of yuan in loans to the bank.

Besides, it's just an assembly plant, there's nothing of value in it. There are some spare parts left in the factory, why don't you take them out and exchange them for money?

The only thing still worth something is those 100,000 secondhand electric fans that have already been sold, used for half a month, and then returned. It's already September, and the electric fan sales are about to end. Besides, they're Thunder brand fans. Who would dare to buy them?

There's no money, and if you want junk, you'll have to haul it yourself. There's nothing the higher-ups can do about Thunder Electric Factory in this state!

Moreover, if hundreds of thousands of electric fans are refunded and returned at the original price, that would amount to tens of millions, close to hundreds of millions of yuan. First of all, are the major shopping malls and department stores willing to give up the profits that have already entered their pockets? Even if they are willing to give them up, Xiao Lei's family can't afford to lose even if they sell all their assets!

If it were a few million, the government might try to find a solution, but now it's tens or hundreds of millions, and no one dares to take on that responsibility!

At this point, everyone, from the provincial to the municipal and county levels, wanted to use delaying tactics to get to the bottom of the matter. Nobody cared about the fate of the Xiao Lei family anymore. Those who had been punished had already been punished, and as for money, there was no way they had any!

Besides, the electric fan wasn't unusable. It cost a little over a hundred yuan, which was a lot of money for ordinary people in those days, but it wasn't much for each family. It was about two months' salary, so they could just bear with it.

That's what everyone thinks. The Chinese people are known for their forbearance; they believe that if you just endure it, it will pass!

Once the storm has passed, this matter will be over, at most leaving behind some bad reputation!

Liu Xianjun, 37, from the suburbs of Jinzhou, works as a temporary worker at a pesticide factory, earning 30 to 40.5 yuan a month. With this salary and age, he is naturally at the bottom of society. His family of six lives in a single room allocated by his wife's workplace. The environment is similar to the family compound where Gao Shengnan used to live in Jinzhou. In the summer, it is stuffy and hot!

Last month, he saw an advertisement for Thunder brand electric fans, which made him very interested. He finally made up his mind and spent his savings of six months to buy the family's first floor fan for 159 yuan!

At the time, the advertisement for Thunder brand electric fans promised a three-year trade-in program, requiring only 19.9 yuan. Moreover, the trade-in fan could be traded in again after another three years.

In short, the advertisement for Thunder brand electric fans claims that users can use Thunder brand electric fans for almost their entire lives, and after three years, they can exchange them for a brand new electric fan for 19.9 yuan!

At the time, Thunder Fans' advertisements promised that this promotion would be valid indefinitely!

This promise of permanent effectiveness struck a chord with Liu Xianjun, so he ultimately spent 159 yuan to buy a floor fan at Jinzhou Department Store!

For an average citizen, 159 yuan is equivalent to three months' salary. But for Liu Xianjun, it was money he had saved up over the past six months by living frugally and eating only coarse food for two months.

When the controversy surrounding the Thunder brand electric fan broke out at the end of August, Liu Xianjun was among the first customers to go to Jinzhou No. 1 Department Store to return the product. However, Jinzhou No. 1 Department Store naturally refused to refund him and told him to go back and wait for news!

Later, the situation gradually deteriorated. The bankruptcy of Leiting Electric Factory also hit Liu Xianjun hard. The rumor that he bought a fan made of inferior materials plunged his family into endless quarrels. His wife even threatened suicide, demanding that he return the fan!

So in early September, Liu Xianjun began to petition, but it was to no avail. His wife at home also went crazy, arguing in the morning, at noon, and at night, gradually pushing Liu Xianjun to the brink of despair!

Finally, on September 9th, Liu Xianjun brought back a five-kilogram barrel of highly toxic pesticide from the pesticide factory, ran directly to the entrance of Jinzhou Department Store, and immediately gulped down two and a half kilograms of pesticide.

Even a miracle couldn't save him from this dosage. The sensation this caused in Jinzhou quickly spread to Anyun Province, and eventually reached the ears of some bigwigs in Yanjing.

Things spiraled out of control. Rumors spread like wildfire, and even more people came to petition. Jinzhou Department Store was so blocked that it couldn't even open its doors.

At this point, Anyun Province had no choice but to set up an investigation team. Since this incident occurred in Jinzhou, the Jinzhou authorities were also afraid and had to hold a meeting to discuss how to resolve the matter.

However, the amount was too large. Finally, someone thought of Lei Dongbao. At the joint request of more than a dozen provincial and municipal leaders, Lei Dongbao had no choice but to step forward.

Lei Dongbao stepped forward not only because of the requests from the leaders, but also because his mother knelt before him, begging him to help the villagers.

Xiao Lei's village has become a notorious place. The Angora rabbit breeding base is failing, and the rabbits are being sold off cheaply because people in the surrounding villages would rather throw away their rabbit feed than sell it to Xiao Lei's village.

Those newly built villas in Xiaoleijia New Village stand there bare, and no one dares to go in and live there. The electrical appliance factory, including the warehouse, has been sealed off. Everyone is in a state of anxiety. The villagers of Xiaoleijia are now afraid to go out!

Upon hearing about Liu Xianjun's tragedy, Lei Dongbao sighed deeply. He couldn't help but recall the saying, "Don't advise others to be kind if you haven't experienced their suffering."

One hundred and fifty-nine yuan is a very simple thing for me, but for many ordinary people struggling to make a living, it is a hurdle they can't get over!

At this point, Lei Dongbao finally accepted the leaders' entrustment and chose to step forward to resolve this crisis!

He spent three days thoroughly investigating the current asset structure and debt issues of the Xiao Lei family, and finally came to a conclusion!

Xiao Lei family is truly beyond saving!

Although Lei Dongbao was brought back to the helm, the support from the provincial and municipal governments was very limited. They really didn't have any money; the only support they could provide was policy incentives and personnel. In recent years, Leiting brand electric fans have sold more than 500,000 to 600,000 units, and now the company is making headlines and is known to almost everyone.

If the leaders were to refund and return the goods at the original price, the required funds would be beyond the reach of even the Jinzhou Second Machinery Factory, let alone Xiao Leijia!

In 1988, which company would dare to take on tens of millions of dollars?

But this matter must be resolved. How should it be resolved?

Lei Dongbao sat in his office all night, tapping on his desk, searching for inspiration to find a solution. Then, around midnight, he suddenly seemed to have an idea, picked up a pen from his desk, and began to write seriously!

After a night, Lei Dongbao rubbed his tired face, slowly stood up, and walked out of the office!

After he left, he immediately had someone notify the leaders of the provincial and municipal investigation teams to come to the Jinzhou Second Machinery Factory for a meeting!

More than a dozen leaders arrived at the conference room one by one. Lei Dongbao stood at the top. After everyone had arrived, he slowly tapped the table to quiet everyone down, and then slowly raised his head and spoke.

"I've already come up with a solution; now all I need is the cooperation of all the leaders!"