Ebuyer were formally a staple of my personal and professional shopping life. I’ve built multiple home computers based on components they sell and actually quite a few work ones too. Even when their prices started to become inflated I used them because of their reliability. Over the years I’ve used them less and less, partly because my keen interest in hacking together computers has dwindled along with my spare income and spare time. If you don’t have time to play the latest games, why spend the time making the perfect gaming computer? (I’m actually writing this on a computer I built over 11 years ago, with components sourced from Ebuyer). But despite this history, I am closing my wallet. I’m never going to use Ebuyer again.
It’s 2023. For many years now companies like Amazon have dominated the internet with next day (or sometimes even same day) delivery. While I don’t condone their working practices, they have set a standard for the modern world in terms of expectation of service. Even unconsciously it’s with this expectation I think a lot of us shop online these days. When I decided to dust off one of my old servers to setup some home shared folders again, I put in an order for components from Ebuyer. It wasn’t a massive order or an expensive order, but an order none the less. Perhaps a little surprised I Ebuyer still charge for shipping, even when you’re ordering an NVMe drive and SATA cable. I opted, perhaps foolishly for “Super Saver Delivery” to cut shipping costs in half. I knew I didn’t need the components next day and that I would no doubt leave the project sitting until next weekend anyway…
One week later, my order is finally dispatched. The sloths in the warehouse must be moving at break-neck speed to get an order like this out of the door (this is a joke). While I have been in and witnessed warehouse working and I know I couldn’t do that job myself, I do think there is a capacity problem with Ebuyer here. What management and staffing levels are in place that causes picking of a 3 item order to take 7 days?
Three weeks later, some of the order is still missing. The customer support has been, by I think any modern measurable benchmark, poor to say the least. Apparently my missing item is being queried with the courier but it has highlighted some other issues. The Ebuyer system has notes on it incorrectly allocating order items to trackable shipments, so when I expect one thing, I receive another. On top of that, as a customer if something is missing, I would expect some kind of remedial action instead of endless waiting for information. At this point we’ve worked out the item was delivered to the wrong house, but there’s no information as to which house that is! And it’s only part of the order that’s missing so it’s clearly a delivery company fault. Yodel themselves have a terrible reputation, especially locally. One begins to wonder why I’ve bought goods from Ebuyer and why Ebuyer have paired with Yodel.
As it stands I may never get my missing item; I’m in a void of waiting for information from Ebuyer customer support. But after almost another week of waiting for a response, I’ve decided that any loyalty I’ve shown in the past shall be left in the past. Ebuyer are a legacy company. They’re slow to pick. They’re slow to dispatch. They’re slow to respond to support requests and their couriers can’t deliver successfully. If my order had been something urgent – maybe I was replacing a failed SSD in my main computer – I think by this point I would be livid. But since it was a side project I just have this slowly dawning cold, calm realisation that I’m never going to use Ebuyer again.
