Asian Tech Press (Apr. 13) -- Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com Inc was accused of cheating consumers due to repeated delivery delays to Shanghai residents amid COVID-19 lockdown.
After the outbreak of the epidemic in Shanghai, many Internet companies rushed to support the city to ensure supply of food and essential items.
In the evening of April 8, Lei Xu, CEO of JD.com, who had just taken office for a short time, said in the WeChat Moments, known as "Friends' circle", that JD.com "has been fully equipped and ready to go, and will do its best to support Shanghai at full power."
Xu said, "JD.com has never spared any effort in the fight against the pandemic and never settled accounts, and is willing to use its best supply chain capabilities to efficiently support any city that needs it."
However, many Shanghai residents have recently reflected that the goods they bought on JD.com's e-commerce platforms have suffered multiple delivery delays.
One Shanghai citizen, who requested anonymity, said, "I placed an order on the JD.com platform on April 3, and at the beginning the platform showed that it was delivered on the 13th, and now it is the 22nd."
The citizen complained, "what I bought on Tmall was delivered early."
He explained the item he ordered on Alibaba's e-commerce platform Tmall on March 25, which was delivered on April 10."
Many other Shanghai citizens said that JD.com's deliveries originally scheduled for April 12 were temporarily changed to April 24.
Others questioned JD.com's delivery promise was a pie in the sky.
They explained that after Shanghai entered COVID lockdown, JD.com claimed that it would provide guaranteed goods for the city and started special live-streamings for the essential supplies. However, after placing the order, the deliveries of their items were postponed several times and they have not received them until now.
Public information shows that No. 1111 Xingbang Road, Jiading District, Shanghai, has been classified as a lockdown zone by the local government on April 11 due to confirmed COVID-19 cases.
The address under full lockdown corresponds to JD Asia No 1. Warehouse, JD.com's e-commerce logistics center in Shanghai, which was officially put into operation in October 2014.
According to Chinese media The Paper on Tuesday, JD Logistics, JD.com's logistics unit, has issued an emergency notice internally to give greater incentives nationwide to recruit expressmen to reinforce Shanghai within this week, on the one hand.
On the other hand, the e-commerce company plans to gather more than 2,500 people locally in Shanghai to join the terminal delivery by way of crowdsourced delivery.
In addition, JD.com also plans to mobilize the storage capacity of the entire East China region to replace that of Shanghai and Kunshan and do its best to safeguard the livelihood of Shanghai.
