A while back, Ezbuy ticked off quite a number of patrons when they pulled off a pretty questionable stunt.
In a move nobody saw coming, Ezbuy halted new China Buy-For-Me orders just before Singles’ Day on 11 Nov, saying that a “very popular China e-commerce website” had suspended many of the accounts of its purchasing partners.
As a result, customers were left stupefied as their China orders were either cancelled or delayed.
When they called the customer service centre, they were only told that Ezbuy could not make any orders because “it has been banned”.
Not the most appeasing of answers to give a confused patron, to be honest.
Now, almost a full month later, the online shopping commerce has issued a response on its Facebook Page.
In the post, Ezbuy disclosed the exact identity of the “very popular China e-commerce website”, and disclosed a timeline of the events that transpired over the past month.
Can’t read? Here’s what they’ve written (warning, this is gonna be long. FREAKING LONG):
Dear Valued Customers,
On behalf of the entire team at ezbuy.sg, we would like to apologise to all our customers who are affected by the recent delays in receiving their orders, and to our merchants, partners, family and friends who were unintentionally involved in this issue for lending their support. We regret the problems that had transpired in the last few weeks, specifically in the multiple delays that many of our customers had faced. It has come to a point where it is necessary that we address several things that have happened.
We first faced an issue of not being able to place orders through many of our purchasing accounts on 4 November 2017, the launch date of our ’11.11’ campaign. We started our ’11.11’ sales pre-campaign on 4 November 2017. Since then, we had recruited a few hundreds of purchasing agents including small companies and individuals to overcome the issue. Due to the overwhelming customer queries, we have also added 40 new Customer Service Officers (CSO) within 2 weeks. Below is a chronological timeline of the incident from 4 November to 4 December 2017.
4 November 2017: On 4 November 2017, 161 purchasing accounts on Taobao begun to have issues while checking out the items in the e-shopping cart, with the following error message: “As there are overwhelming customers checking out, kindly try again later”.
Our immediate resolution to this issue was to clarify directly with the Taobao CSOs, which was conducted through our purchasing agents. Multiple queries were subsequently directed to Taobao CSOs over the next few days, however, we observed that more purchasing accounts started to receive the same error message. Subsequent replies received from the Taobao CSOs had the following message: “Your account looks abnormal and cannot be used; however, we can’t disclose the reason behind it”.
These purchasing accounts have been actively operating for several years, without any issues before 4 November 2017.
8 November 2017: Our 4 days ’11.11’ event was scheduled to start on 8 November 2017. We had set up 210 new purchasing accounts to facilitate a smooth order process. However, all 210 accounts were unable to carry out the processing of orders and seemed to be facing technical restrictions. We were unable to assist customers in completing their order from Taobao and had to put up an announcement on our website to inform our customers that our purchasing agents are blocked by an e-commerce website, and have to stop taking orders through ‘Buy-For-Me’ service for China.
11 November 2017: Our 2 main warehouses in China, specifically in Jia Xing and Dong Guan were blocked on the Taobao system. Our purchasing agent and ‘Ship-For-Me’ customers who were using their own Taobao accounts who had indicated similar shipping addresses, were also unable to process the checkout.
Our purchasing agents and customers clarified this directly with the Taobao CSOs but did not receive any response. Subsequently, only a few customers received a reply with the following message: “This is a system bug, they need 5-7 days to resolve”. Since then, we have changed our warehouse addresses and recruited a new batch of purchasing agents.
13 November 2017: We put up an announcement during noon time to update our customers about the progress of 11.11 orders, mentioned we would need another few days to process the order due to the restriction. Subsequently from 1pm to 10pm, another 200 purchasing accounts which directed all our customer’s orders to new warehouses were facing technical restrictions one by one.
At the same time, our purchasing agents received messages from sellers on Taobao asking if they were purchasing on behalf of ezbuy. Our purchasing agents were also notified that Taobao had informed them that our warehouse addresses in China was involved in “abnormal” activities, and the sellers’ shops have had their credit points deducted by Taobao.
14 November to 30 November 2017: We sourced for additional 4 new warehouse addresses. However, 180 purchasing accounts which were directed to ship to 2 of these new warehouses were facing technical restrictions as well.
We updated TODAY regarding the progress on 11.11 orders, and the story was published on 30 November.
1 December to 3 December 2017: Another round of purchasing accounts was blocked. More than 300 purchasing accounts were also facing technical restrictions, as long as these accounts had indicated our warehouse addresses.
Before this incident, we used to process orders, finish inspection and repacking within a few hours to a day. However, with the constraints raised during the past few weeks, it took us much longer to process our customers’ orders and we are very sorry about the inconvenience caused.
We are aware that the setbacks we experienced during the 11.11 period has affected our processes. Despite that, we have constantly adjusted our plans and tirelessly searched for new methods to overcome these constraints. It was a tough decision to make, but we decided to keep silent until we cleared most of the backlogs to prevent any external interference and further delays in our customers’ orders. We know that many of you were anxious because of that, and also found our Customer Service officers hard to reach.
We assure you that our officers have been working hard to reply all of your enquiries as soon as possible, including any after-sales issues. In fact, we truly value every feedback and comment from our customers and will not stop improving our services from here. These setbacks will not stop us, but only make us stronger, better and fuel our desires to provide the best experience and fulfill our customers’ expectations of us.
To provide a global shopping platform easily accessible to our customers, besides what we have been offering, we have now included other popular China e-commerce sites such as JD.com (Jing Dong), Mogujie, as well as our very Own Sellers as an alternative. Besides China, we would like to invite everyone to try shopping from our Korea, USA, Taiwan and Singapore marketplaces as well, where we have a large variety of exclusive offerings available.
Last but not least, we are extremely thankful for those who have been patient, supported and encouraged us in this tumultuous journey. You have given us the greatest motivation. We seek your kind understanding in this issue, and will continue striving to improve our services.
Damn… what can I say…?
While we were bitching openly about how they sucked, they were trying their best to resolve all issues.
And I can only imagine their pain: getting all their platforms suspended for no apparent reason, and having to answer to all the enraged and impatient patrons…
It must have been painful.
But we see the light now, Ezbuy. At least they’re not like any fly-by-night businesses that take lots of orders and disappear within a day upon facing a major problem.
And it seems Netizens agree too.
As of now, it’s unknown what solutions they have come out with, because from the looks of it, it’s not a problem that can be solved within months.
But still… jiayou, Ezbuy!
Fighting!
Since you’re here, why not watch a video about an NTU student who went all out to impress his crush, only to end up in…tragedy? Here, watch it and do remember to share it (and also subscribe to Goody Feed YouTube channel)!
This article was first published on goodyfeed.com
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Image: Facebook (Ezbuy Singapore)
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