Singles’ Day Sale payment woes leave shoppers angry, frustrated

PETALING JAYA: Many Malaysian shoppers who waited for midnight to arrive to enjoy huge discounts offered by online shopping websites were left disappointed after they faced issues when paying for their items purchased.

The stroke of midnight marked the start of the Singles’ Day Sale, also known as 11.11 sales, as it falls on Nov 11 each year.

The Singles’ Day Sale, which traces its roots to China, is regarded as the single biggest day for online shopping as for 24 hours, popular online shopping websites like the Alibaba owned Taobao, Lazada and Shopee offer big discounts on a variety of goods.

Understandably, many shoppers were excited about discounts, with some items enjoying up to 75% discount.

On one site, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, which is normally sold for RM3,599 was going for RM1,819 with free delivery, a discount of 43%, while a 40-inch Samsung LED TV was being sold for RM959, down from the original price of RM1,602.

There were also massive discounts for fashion items, beauty products, household goods and others, for both men and women.

But social media pages of online shopping websites were flooded with complaints about payment issues some faced.

Many complained that their purchases were listed as “pending payment”, despite banks notifying them that the money had been deducted from their accounts.

A Lazada customer, Ilyana Ismail, said: “Since midnight until now, there’ve been no changes. It’s the same — pending. I’ve been asked to make more payments. Nothing has changed.”

On Shopee, Winson Soh said: “I’ve been charged and already received confirmation from my bank, but my order does not exist? What should I do now?”

Many other customers also said their payments failed to go through and that they had wasted hours staying up for the sales.

Source: FMT