Defrauded Shophetic dotcom customers demand government action

Customers of Shophetic dotcom demanded government action against the founder of the fraudulent e-commerce platform who took crores of money in advance payments against their online orders and went into hiding.

The customers in a human chain at the National Press Club on Sunday said they ordered many expensive products including motorcycles, home appliances and smartphones the e-commerce platform offered at discounts after June last year.

Delivering some orders, the company began dilly dally and after October its founder and Chief Executive Officer Azizul Haque Sunny and other office staff went into hiding.

Their office in the capital was found to have been closed and no phone numbers are active.

At least 350 of Shophetic customers are looking for Sunny's whereabouts.

"We beg government attention so that we can get our products or refund and the law enforcement agencies should seal Sunny's ways to leave the country," said Zakaria, who ordered a motorcycle at Shophetic.

Mohammad Mokhless who came from Sylhet to join the demonstration said, the government is helping many other e-commerce platforms' customers through enforcing, initiating refunds and Shophetic customers also deserve the same.

The victims said, when the government enacted the standard operating procedure for e-commerce at the end of June, some large deep-discount, advance-payment only platforms including Evaly, Eorange, Alesha Mart, Qcoom began to fall.

At that time, some new platforms including Shophetic, Anonder Bazar, Akashnil Online Shopping, Purplex BD surfaced claiming to be fully compliant with the new regulatory environment.

With their behavior, the CEOs of the platforms bluffed customers and went into hiding with people's money ultimately.

"The less discussed small platform frauds also should be under the government agencies' action," Zakaria who joined the human chain from Narayanganj.