Spat between Alibaba, ezbuy rages on

Alibaba Group, the parent of Chinese e-commerce giant Taobao, reiterated its stance that ezbuy broke its rules, as their spat shows no sign of abating.

Alibaba reissued a statement it published last week, with a spokesman saying it wanted to bring attention to its official position on the issue. Its statement had said it takes action against businesses that violate the rules of the platform.

It said: "ezbuy has admitted that in the past month alone, it has attempted to use over 1,000 accounts to buy items on Taobao with the same delivery addresses and then resell the items for a profit. That is in clear breach of our platform rules."

But ezbuy's co-founder Wendy Liu dug in, saying yesterday that the company had not broken any rules as they were simply doing what others did in the "daigou" industry, referring to the practice of buying goods on other people's behalf.

She said: "ezbuy is trying to provide a convenient and value-added service to Singaporeans who want to make their favourite purchases on Taobao. We are also creating an additional channel for Taobao sellers to take in more orders."

Alibaba said previously that when it identifies those who "break" these rules, it will respond with measures such as freezing or permanently closing their accounts. This was what it did to ezbuy earlier this month, leaving the company with a backlog of unfulfilled orders.