Here is the sad, sad tale of Ezbuy. Customers affected would have heard what is happening.

But here is more background.

Frozen accounts

Ezbuy has essentially been screwed over by frozen Taobao accounts. Up to 1,000 of these accounts to purchase goods in China swere reported to have been frozen, without valid reasons given.

Taobao is owned by Alibaba, whose CEO is Jack Ma.

In the aftermath of unfulfilled 11/11 Singles' Day sales, Ezbuy founder, He Jian, has published a letter addressed to Alibaba.

It is an emotional plea, as well as a backgrounder of what Ezbuy is about.

Open letter to Alibaba

The open letter was published on Chinese messaging and blogging site WeChat.

It is about Ezbuy's difficult beginnings, having started out as a bunch of people who wanted to make things easier for Singaporeans to shop and buy goods from China online.

Emotional and lengthy, the letter touches on He's personal memories, such as watching his son grow up among the packages that filled his Yew Tee flat in the early days of 65DaiGou, which was Ezbuy's former name.

Recent woes

With regards to the recent woes, He also shared that many colleagues had to work through the night to resolve the issues of the accounts being suspended.

One colleague was even admitted to the hospital for gastric pains.

This was partly due to her neglecting her health from working round the clock to resolve the account suspension issues.

One night, she did not even touch her food, despite it being 11pm.

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Feelings of guilt

He also recounted the timeline of events as scores of their accounts were suspended, and mentioned about his guilt being more intense than his anger.

This was so as he saw that customers from Singapore and Malaysia were all unable to purchase their items, and thousands of workers had their personal accounts, as well as that of their friends' colleagues, which were used, and ultimately sacrificed.

Perhaps what was the most striking about the letter is the final sentence in which He wrote, exasperated: "你们真的是太欺负人了!"

This can be understood to mean, "You guys are bullying (us) too much!", or "You guys are really big bullies!"

Alibaba responds

Alibaba has since responded on their official press site, in which they addressed the letter and the accusation of being bullies.

Titled, "Official Statement from the management of the Alibaba platform: Scalping will hurt consumers and the businesses interests", it was published on Dec. 8.

Their letter seems to reaffirm Alibaba's, and by extension, Taobao's position and decision, for freezing Ezbuy's many accounts.

It was rationalised that Alibaba's actions are not bullying, but in fact, was a logical response for Ezbuy's actions, in which Alibaba sees as "scalping", or the act of reselling things at a higher price for profit.

Alibaba says the fact that they have thousands of accounts and needing to fulfill orders within a short time period and increasing prices for profit, which was interestingly not mentioned in the open letter, were things that pointed towards a classic example of scalping and no longer that of a simple proxy shopping process.

Alibaba also mentioned that this hurts buyers, disallowing them from buying goods at preferential prices and also disrupts the businesses from operating normally as they will be penalised for selling goods to Ezbuy.

With that said, however, Alibaba was sure to clarify that they have always supported small and medium enterprises and local businesses as long as they did not harm consumers and the business operations, probably as a response to He's emotional allegations of Alibaba bullying a smaller company such as Ezbuy.

Indefinitely paused

Wherever this feud is heading, Ezbuy customers will continue to have trouble with the Buy-For-Me services for Taobao for some time to come.

Whether other purchasing agents can plug the gap that Taobao's ongoing issues have created is a tough question to answer.

But in any case, consumers can only hope online shopping from Taobao will get easier and more accessible in the near future, with Ezbuy or without.

Top image via Ezbuy