YIHAODIAN, an online retailer in China, was yesterday ordered by the Pudong New Area People’s Court to pay compensation to six clients for failing to deliver the gold bars they had purchased on the e-business platform.

Lu Zhigang and his wife ordered 18,700 yuan of gold bars of different types from the Precious Metals Flagship Store of Bank of China on Yihaodian. They paid all the money on January 3 and January 4.

But the gold bars, which should have been delivered one or two days later, never reached them. Instead they received a phone call from the e-business platform on January 8, saying that all the orders had been canceled as the sales promotion was a mistake caused by the system. It offered to give them a 100-yuan coupon to place a new order.