Chinese giant Alibaba‘s global e-commerce platform AliExpress has warned its customers that there could be delay in delivering orders because of the coronavirus outbreak, adding that some shipping and logistics are experiencing longer waiting times for processing orders.
Customers have started complaining that orders were not only taking a long time to arrive but were being automatically renewed, instead of being canceled and refunded. AliExpress said that it was constantly monitoring the situation.
In a statement to NYTimes, the company said that “some deliveries may be affected but we are working hard to support our sellers in this difficult time while minimizing any inconvenience to our customers.”
AliExpress is one of the most downloaded shopping apps globally. This is partly helped by the trends of consumers worldwide buying products directly from manufacturers. However, unlike Alibaba’s Tmall or Taobao, AliExpress primarily caters to international buyers.
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Alibaba Group had warned in February of a drop in revenue at its key e-commerce businesses as the coronavirus sweeping China has hit the company’s supply chains as well as product deliveries.
Launched in 2010, AliExpress is particularly popular in Russia, the United States, Brazil, Spain and France. The company had more than 79 million annual active consumers in the year ending Aug. 31, 2019.
Sellers of Amazon in the United States are also bracing for product shortages due to idled factories in China and canceled cargo flights from the country. As per the report, more than a million Amazon sellers source their products from Chinese merchants.
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