Daraz started out with a bang—a loud advertising campaign for weeks to promote 11.11, unofficially called the world’s largest online shopping day, for the first time in Nepal. The event was supposed to be the beginning of a new era of digital shopping for the country, as the online retailer promoted the sale of up to 80 percent for hundreds of items on its website. But only a few hours into the sale, thousands of Nepalis had gone online to express their disappointment, many of whom started posting complaints online about what’s wrong with Daraz’s sale.

Although Daraz had promoted the sale with a heavy discount, many customers said the retailer was offering goods at a higher price compared to the prices on normal days, and that in-store prices for the same goods were cheaper than the ones being offered online by Daraz.

“Disappointing 11.11,” said Pratik Shrestha in a Facebook post. “Hope it does great next year because they sure do have huge supply chain and resources to pull off an amazing one-day sale.”

“E-commerce platforms in Nepal are a big fat joke,” reacted Prabhat Feri to the sale on its post. “Never buy anything from them. You’ll end up spending more for the same product than the conventional market would sell you for.”

Known as Singles Day among online shoppers and promoted by Chinese online retail giant Alibaba, 11.11 is in its tenth year. The company, which has been racking up huge profits on the day every year, made a record profit of $31billion in sales on Sunday. A little over 15 hours into the launch of its 11.11 sale, Alibaba said on Twitter that its trading had surpassed the $25billion sale from last year.

A Daraz official told the Post that the company had not finished crunching the numbers just yet.

In an interview with the Post last week, the company’s senior officials said that the website planned to generate 100,000 orders on Sunday and expected to sell at least 1,000 mobile phones within the first 15 minutes of the sale.

Cell phones were supposed to be one of the highlights of the sale. But excitement among online customers at the launch of new smartphones—Xiaomi and OnePlus in particular—quickly ended in disappointment after the prices were changed halfway through the sale which Daraz.com.np blamed on a technical glitch.

“The price of Pocophone showed Rs31,049 after a Rs3,000 promotional discount at 11.11, but now it is showing Rs34,049. Why?” wrote Sujan Shrestha on Facebook.

But Daraz officials pushed back on the criticism. “These are rumours spread by some people,” said a Daraz official, requesting anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the issues. “We offered discounts as promised.”

Daraz, which was launched by Germany-based web platform Rocket Internet, began its online shopping service in Pakistan in 2012 and was acquired by Alibaba earlier this year. The company officially entered Nepal in 2014, when it was first introduced as Kaymu.com. Two years later, the site was renamed Daraz after Rocket Internet merged Daraz and Kaymu under the Daraz Group.

Over a dozen e-commerce websites—all of them are promoted by domestic investors—are currently operating in Nepal. Although some of them, like Thamel.com and Muncha.com, have been in business for over a decade, e-commerce as a business has failed to gather pace in the country. Daraz’s recent campaign in Nepal comes with grand ambitions to change that.

Rajeev Amatya, the company’s managing director, told the Post that Daraz was planning to open 25 hubs across the country within a year.

“We have about 700,000 people visiting our website every month,” he said, “and we are aiming for 2.5 million in three-four years, which means almost 10 percent of the Nepali population is visiting Daraz.”

What will set them apart? “Customer service,” Lino Ahlering, Daraz’s chief commercial officer, told the Post. “Trust issues take place due to lack of awareness, and that is why we put a lot of emphasis on customer service so that we can communicate with our customers.”

But if the outrage online since Sunday is any indicator, a significant portion of Daraz’s visitors has not been enamoured with the grand sale campaign. Many customers compared the prices Daraz was offering to the market prices, and concluded that the online retailer was cheating. One of them summed up the widespread sentiment online.

“The normal price of Goldstar shoes is Rs850 while the same pair of shoes cost Rs890 after a 25 percent discount on Daraz 11.11,” wrote Suman Godar Thapa. “Are you trying to fool us?”