A few days ago – February 25 to be precise – @Goldicz, a DealDey merchant raised an alarm on Nairaland, about the eCommerce site owing merchants large sums of money for months, and brought the diatribe to Twitter.
@DealDey so much is happening on nairalandforum with #DealdeyPayUs cc @jidetheblogger @lindaikeji @AfricaFactsZone pic.twitter.com/F7KgpR0WGZ
— Chybyke (@Goldicz) February 25, 2016
Started a hashtag too.
@DealDey stop been a criminal and pay us our money. Is it a crime to sell on your platform. #DealdeyPayUs #DealdeyPayUs #DealdeyPayUs
— Chybyke (@Goldicz) February 26, 2016
Is there any truth to reports stating that @dealdey owing merchants since January 2016? #DealdeyPayUs @Gidi_Traffic
— Jay (@JuwonTheTechie) February 29, 2016
We reached out to DealDey for comment on the matter, and their response was that they have had technical issues with their payment reconciliation platform since late January, and they communicated to their merchants that payment reconciliation will be done manually until the technical glitch is resolved.
Now, for a company the size of DealDey, they are dealing with around 4000 live merchants with multiple deals on their platform, at any given time. When you have to make these payments manually one-by-one, it’s not hard to see how quickly things begin to build up.
DealDey say they’ve shared a schedule with all the merchants, and have so far met the schedule. They promised to switch back to the automated system yesterday (February 29), and by tonight or tomorrow, all held up payments should be completed.
“We have tried to reach out to the merchant, as we assume that he has not checked to see our communication and he has refused to provide details; so we cannot resolve whatever issues he has independently,” they said, in response to his allegations.
It doesn’t look to me like there’s much to it to be honest (so far, I haven’t seen any other merchants come forward to say DealDey is still owing them any money), but I’ll pay attention over the next few days, to see if the complaints subside, like DealDey has said they will.
