Ebuyer was founded in November 1999 in Sheffield by Paul Cusack, Mike Naylor, Steve Kay, Neeraj Patel, and Adam Ashmore – with startup capital of £250,000 from Paul Cusack, its annual turnover was in excess of £220 million by September 2005. Stuart Carlisle was its Managing Director from 2014 until resigning in 2015. As of 2020, Ebuyer was owned by Malcolm Healey's West Retail Group.
Security
In July 2008, Gavin Brent, from Holywell in Flintshire, North Wales admitted stealing goods worth £20,000 from the firm before returning the goods, and demanding full refunds. Brent, whose suspicious transactions were spotted by Ebuyer's security team, went on to conduct an online campaign against the company and the investigation. This included menacing Ebuyer staff and a police officer from Brent's now-defunct blog.
Controversy
During 2005 Ebuyer had significant customer service problems. Sheffield Trading Standards received 282 complaints about the company, and the customer service phone number had been removed from its website. After this, the firm promised to improve its service, and restored the customer service number to its site. Average daily telephone wait times are published. On 28 November 2011, eBuyer ran a £1 promotion via email, offering new deals on the hour until midnight. eBuyer angered customers when their website was unable to handle the extra traffic, causing it to crash. When the website did work, many customers were emailed after successfully ordering and paying for items, only to be told they were out of stock. Many customers vented their anger at the company on their Facebook page, however eBuyer ran a campaign on their customer forums in an attempt to counter the bad publicity. In December 2013, eBuyer posted pictures to Facebook of its staff wearing Christmas themed jumpers. However, a Facebook user named Phil spotted that one of the images contained a leaderboard in the background that suggested that eBuyer staff were rated on the number of returns that they reject. eBuyer responded to these accusations by stating that these were return merchandise authorizations avoided by providing technical advice.
