After being closed for the past year, e-commerce platform Evaly started selling products on October 28 through its campaign titled “Dhonnobad Utshob,” which aimed to celebrate the immense support received during its “crisis” period.
However, Evaly was not able to restart operations through its previous domain — evaly.com.bd — and had to use a new domain evaly.com, which went live last week.
According to the platform's chairman Shamima Nasrin, Amazon was unwilling to give access to the server without Rassel, the former managing director of the platform who is currently behind bars.
“We wanted to launch with our initial domain evaly.com.bd. However, the domain is currently in process of being transferred from BTCL to us,” the chairman of the company told the media following a press conference earlier.
As the platform started operating under a new domain, neither the old data of consumers nor the amount of pending money is accessible for now.
A missing server password is holding up all payments of Evaly customers and merchants as it contains data of all buyer and seller transactions.
Without that data, the worth and veracity of the claims cannot be estimated, according to Evaly's court-appointed Managing Director Mahbub Kabir Milon, who resigned last month.
“Hopefully, we will get it soon. But don't panic. All old data is protected by Amazon. We hope to be able to resolve the old server issue soon,” Nasrin further said.
Prior to the new campaign, a post was made from the platform's verified Facebook page which read: “We are back,” and asked customers to update Evaly's app from Google Play Store.
Evaly commenced their official return with a new campaign which started at 10pm on October 28 through the app of Evaly.
However, the server went dark just 15 minutes after launching the platform with several users reporting the incident to the media.
Following the incident, Evaly immediately posted their regret for the inconvenience and cited that Evaly's servers were unable to manage the load of all the customers.
The service of the app resumed later that very night.
On the other hand, the government on Tuesday asked Evaly to stop selling its different digital items, including gift cards, vouchers, wallets, cash vouchers etc.
They warned stern legal action would be taken otherwise, sources said.
The Ministry of Commerce issued an order to the company on Tuesday to follow the existing policy properly and discontinue the sale of digital items.
The entity is selling various types of gift cards, gift vouchers, wallets, cash vouchers etc at 24-59% discount through its verified Facebook page, a source said.
Issuance, use, sale and purchase of such things without prior approval of the Bangladesh Bank are prohibited as per its existing policy, he added.
The Commerce Ministry order asked the Evaly authority to display the Bangladesh Bank approval, if any, on its Facebook page and other relevant places.