Singapore—Sometimes it pays to air your grievances on social media, especially in an age when posts can go viral very quickly. One Lazada shopper received a personal call from the South East Asian e-commerce giant’s CEO two days after posting about a purchase that went awry and wrote that he received a refund in full as well.

On Saturday, May 4, netizen Howard Toh told the story of his misbegotten Lazada purchase over Facebook, accompanied by photos of the package that was actually delivered, as well as screenshots of the items from the Lazada site.

https://www.facebook.com/howardtoh/posts/10156202229466770

By May 6, he posted an update saying that that CEO himself had called him and that his payment had been refunded.

Howard Toh wrote his post originally “to warn everyone that shopping on Lazada is no longer a safe experience after the acquisition by Alibaba.”

He wrote, “Even up to early this year, I was still rather confident that disputes arising from faulty/missing products from China will be handled responsibly by Lazada.”

Apparently, when Mr Toh ordered 3 foldable keyboards from the site, what actually arrived was only a ring for a mobile phone, and nothing else, in a package so small that it could not fit even one keyboard, much less three of them.

On the site, his purchase had been marked “delivered.”

He promptly spoke to an agent via live chat, who apologized and promised to escalate the matter. She also told him he’d be receiving an email about his order shortly.

However, when Mr Toh got the email, he found that he would only be getting a refund for two out of the three keyboards he had ordered.

When he contacted the company about this, they told him that “only 2 of the 3 items were wrong.”

Understandably, this made the customer very angry, in fact, he used the word “furious” in his post.

“I was furious and insisted that I received no keyboard but a frickin’ mobile phone ring,” he wrote.

The Lazada agent told him to initiate a return on his order page on the company’s website, whereupon he was told that he needed to return the package to Singpost or Ninjavan.

Which upset him even further. “WTF? I reported a fraudulent activity on Lazada and they expect me to return the package myself?,” wrote Mr. Toh.
The agent told him that she would endeavour to have his package picked up instead.

According to Mr Toh’s post on May 4, by that date, he was waiting for a call from the manager because the listing of the item was still online on the site and because he didn’t have the assurance of the full refund even after he returned the package.

He wrote, “This is a serious matter and Lazada seems to not take this seriously. I have given them ample time to respond appropriately before I put up this post.

And you know what? Lazada recently told me that my spending on Lazada is higher than 99% of other shoppers in Singapore. I am not even expecting VIP treatment. Just refund my money, take action against the seller and maybe apologise to me for the inconvenience!

So please, be careful when shopping on Lazada. It is no longer safe.”
He ended his post by tagging Lazada’s Facebook page, which may be one reason why the CEO himself gave Mr Toh a call.

Perhaps a bigger reason is that his post went viral, with many customers writing about their bad experiences with the site as well. Comment after comments were posted by netizens who wrote about having ordered an item, and yet receiving something entirely different, with prayer bracelets being the most common wrong item received.

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