Ezbuy’s woes continue, as firm dogged by warehouse problems in China

SINGAPORE — As the festive spending spree picks up with Christmas around the corner, e-shopping service provider Ezbuy has for the first time given a detailed explanation of its problems with a Chinese e-commerce site which has resulted in massive delays to orders here.

Among other reasons, its warehouses in China were found by e-commerce site Taobao to be involved in “abnormal activities” but Ezbuy has been unable to find out more information.

Last week, Ezbuy told TODAY that an estimated 30,000 orders were disrupted, and it was “working towards fulfilling all orders that have been affected” by this week.

As of Friday, about 2,000 to 3,000 orders were still not delivered to customers, Ezbuy said. It added that its China Buy-For-Me service remains down, as the company’s purchasing accounts on Taobao continued to face technical restrictions.

“It has come to a point where it is necessary that we address several things that have happened,” said Ezbuy, giving its first detailed explanation of why their customers continue to be affected by delays in receiving orders from their ‘11.11’ sales on Singles’ Day.

Ezbuy said its woes started on Nov 4, when 161 of its purchasing accounts faced issues while checking out the items bought. Ezbuy said it was told by Taobao customer service officers that the accounts were “abnormal and cannot be used”. However, they were unable to disclose the reason behind it, Ezbuy added.

The company stressed that its purchasing accounts had previously been actively operating for several years, without any problems.

It continues to face “technical restrictions” despite attempts to get 210 new purchasing accounts up and running from Nov 8, and directing orders from its main warehouses in China’s Jia Xing and Dong Guan to new ones.

On Nov 13, from 1pm to 10pm, another 200 purchasing accounts which directed all its customer’s orders to new warehouses were facing technical restrictions “one by one”, Ezbuy said.

In the meantime, its purchasing agents started receiving messages from sellers on Taobao asking if they were purchasing the items on behalf of Ezbuy. The sellers also lamented that they had their credit points deducted by Taobao, and they were informed that Ezbuy’s warehouse addresses in China were involved in “abnormal” activities.

In a bid to resolve the issues, Ezbuy obtained four additional warehouse addresses between Nov 13 and 30. But 180 purchasing accounts directed to two of these new warehouses started facing technical restrictions as well, Ezbuy said.

Over the weekend, more than 300 of Ezbuy’s purchasing accounts continued to be blocked when their warehouse addresses were indicated, Ezbuy said.

The firm said it has hired “a few hundreds of purchasing agents including small companies and individuals” to overcome the issues, but to no avail.

Ezbuy said: “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.”

Despite its problems with Taobao, Ezbuy has continued to take orders, including for the 12.12 sales next Tuesday.

In an email to its customers, Ezbuy said it made the “tough decision... to keep silent”, until it cleared most of the backlog of orders to “prevent any external interference and further delays in our customers’ orders”. It added: “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.”