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The Consumer Protection Committee in China’s capital city of Beijing on August 4 summoned Beijing Missfresh E-Commerce Co., Ltd, the operator of the grocery delivery platform MissFesh, after it received a large amount of consumer complaints about the company’s suspension of some businesses, according to a notice released on the committee’s website on Tuesday.
The deputy secretary general of the committee told the company to properly handle consumer complaints and publish refunding plan in a timely way; strengthen communications and cooperations with city- and district-level consumer committees to protect consumers’ legitimate rights and submit a report about relevant situation and a rectification plan to the city’s committee within three days, according to the notice.
Missfresh, a startup that had previously been valued at nearly $3 billion, is now struggling to survive amid mounting reports of employee layoffs and supplier protests.
The reversal of fortune comes just over a year after its initial public offering on the Nasdaq, when the company raised $273 million at a valuation of $2.8 billion. But its shares, which had already lost 98% of their value since their debut, plunged another 43% in a single day on July 28 after it announced that it would temporarily shut down its main business line.
The company, backed by investors including Tencent and Tiger Global, has announced “temporary closure” of its on-demand distributed mini warehouse (DMW) service. Related…