Microsoft Dynamics glitch holds up Dabs orders

IT hardware reseller Dabs.com is scrambling to fix its business systems after an upgrade caused a hold-up in delivery of orders.

Over the last week, frustrated customers have been complaining that they have not received their orders from the reseller, which is owned by BT. Dabs said on Friday that "teething problems" in a Microsoft Dynamics upgrade to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) and IT systems had caused the backlog.

IT hardware reseller Dabs.com is scrambling to fix its business systems after an upgrade caused a hold-up in delivery of orders.

"During the weekend of 26/27 February, Dabs.com migrated 1.1 million customer accounts to an upgraded platform," the reseller said in an emailed statement. "Following this migration, some processes have been running slower than anticipated, which has caused a backlog affecting a small number of customer orders.

"We are currently working on a performance upgrade which will allow us to start clearing the remaining outstanding orders from tonight," the company added.

Dabs said it has brought in additional customer service staff to help respond to customer enquiries. Its warehouse and delivery staff will be working over the weekend to help clear the backlog.

The reseller, which was bought by BT in 2006, typically processes tens of thousands of orders per week, and the most recent figures available put its monthly total at 75,000 customer orders processed. It sells a range of electronic hardware, including servers and laptops, as well as components and networking equipment.

Customer problems

Customers started to notice problems on Monday, and Dabs said in a Twitter post on Tuesday that it was "working hard on a fix". Over the course of the week, however, a number of people posting on Twitter and on Dabs customer forums said that their orders had not arrived.

"Just spoke to @DabsDotCom; can't tell me when order might get delivered, decided to cancel," said Mark Wilson, an IT worker in Brighton, in a post to Twitter on Thursday.

Customers on the Dabs web forum said that they had been unable to place and cancel orders, while many complained of being kept on hold for 20 minutes by customer service staff. "I've been trying to place an order, but each time it tells me there is an error and that the tech team have been informed," said julian40_06 on the Dabs forum on Wednesday. "Unfortunately, this has been going on all day."

The upgrade glitches also exposed some customers' personal details to other customers, Dabs admitted. As the result of a "coding issue", a "tiny number" of users were able to see the order and address details of others, the reseller said.

"At no time were these customers able to see the financial details of other customers. We apologise for this issue, which was quickly rectified," it added.

On Friday, Dabs customers said they were unable to log into their accounts for a number of hours. A flyer was posted at the top of the company's site saying this was due to maintenance, but has since been removed.

Dabs told one customer the issue could be to do with the technical issues. Andy Hunt asked on Twitter: "I have been unable to log in to my account today and yesterday. Is this to do with the problems you are talking about?" The company replied: "Yes, I would imagine so. When everything is resolved I'll let everyone know and we can double check then."