Row between Alibaba and ezbuy erupts over accounts

But Alibaba has since hit back, saying that it took action because it could not tolerate ezbuy's alleged scalping behaviour.
ezbuy issued a statement on Friday saying that more than 300 purchasing accounts, which were used to place orders on popular Chinese e-commerce Website Taobao, faced technical restrictions early this month.
ezbuy uses these accounts to place orders on other sites such as Alibaba-owned Taobao on behalf of customers.
However, it was unable to |place orders and check out successfully.
ezbuy said more than 1,000 such accounts have been blocked to date. It has been unable to resume its Taobao Buy-For-Me service, which allows buyers to purchase items from global websites through ezbuy.
ezbuy said it had been facing this issue since November 4, when it launched a 11.11 campaign - China's version of Black Friday on November 11 - when stores roll out massive sales on the occasion called Singles' |Day.
On Friday night, ezbuy founder He Jian posted an open letter to Jack Ma on Chinese social media platform WeChat accusing Taobao of bullying a smaller player.

‘Ants on the net’ 
He introduced himself as an engineer who started a platform in 2010 with a few partners in Singapore. This platform became ezbuy.
In his letter, He asked Ma if the latter could explain why the accounts had been blocked from purchasing around Singles' Day.
“I hope that we, these ants on the Internet, will at least be able to shout our grievances and not just be bullied by anyone,” wrote Mr He.
In response, Alibaba Group issued a statement on its Taobao website on Friday, saying ezbuy's act of creating accounts to buy items from Taobao and reselling them was an act of scalping, which it does not tolerate and will penalise.
A spokesman for Alibaba said such acts severely damage both consumers' and sellers' rights, disrupt normal business transactions, |and perpetrators should be penalised.
“We have followed regulations and carried out the corresponding punishments appropriate for such acts,” said Alibaba, referring to the freezing of ezbuy's purchasing accounts.
“As the ezbuy company described in its open letter, the more than 1,000 accounts that placed several orders at one go under a single address and resold them at a higher price has long breached the regulations of a daigou,” wrote Alibaba. 
“This is a typical case of scalping behaviour.” 
“Daigou is a Chinese term that refers to a third party acting as a channel to buy goods on behalf of a buyer, generally shipping from China to other countries.