Online Shopping Website, Raru, Stops Operations
A report from Raru’s website has stated that it is no longer accepting orders. Following months of consumer complaints about orders not being delivered on time and refunds not being processed promptly, it was shut down. On October 24, Raru also experienced an eight-hour downtime, which sparked rumors that it had neglected to pay its hosting payment or had violated a takedown notice.
Unhappy customers reportedly started submitting takedown requests to the Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa, according to postings on the complaints website Hello Peter. Raru director and co-founder Waine Smith was asked about the outage at the time, but all he could say was that they had reported it to their host and were awaiting a response.
According to Smith, the site had gone down at 09:00 and by 14:45 they were still waiting for a response from their hosting provider. However, on 4 November 2022, the Raru website displayed the following notice: Due to unfortunate circumstances we have no choice but to stop taking orders. More information will be provided in due course.
Logging in to monitor pending orders or returns was not possible. Along with Raru, it looks that SAGamer, the business’s renowned online web forum, has also been shut down.
It was not possible to log in to monitor pending orders or returns. Along with Raru, it looks that SAGamer, the organization’s venerable online web forum, has also been shut down.
The businessmen who established Take2 came up with Raru (and before that, The Shopping Matrix). In 2010, they later sold Take2 to Kim Reid, a former CEO of Naspers, and the US investment company Tiger Global Management. The following year, Take2 was rebranded as Takealot.com and the business has since gone on to become the most successful e-retailer in South Africa.
The Take2 founders, Neil Smith, Waine Smith, and Jose Pereira, were said to have consented to a three-year trade embargo at the time of the acquisition. When their restrictions ended in 2014, they established Raru to concentrate on selling the goods they had specialized in at Take2: electronics, games, music, and movies.