‘This whole time I had no idea what was happening’: Small business owner says Instagram glitch cost her $1,000 worth of sales
In 2020, Instagram added a shopping tab to its user interface. The idea behind it was simple—many people find products they’d like to buy through Instagram, and the app changed its design to facilitate purchases of those products.
Now, though users can still buy products through Instagram, the focus has shifted. Instagram removed its shopping tab in favor of a “Reels” tab earlier this year, with one article on the topic in Engadget noting that “social-based shopping was only expected to represent five percent of US e-commerce in 2022.”
Still, numerous users sell goods on the platform. However, this is not without its issues, as the owner of the shop Garbage Humans (@garbagehumans) noted in a recent video on TikTok.
In a clip with over 651,000 views as of Saturday, shop owner Cathy claims she lost out on about $1,000 worth of sales due to a glitch in the platform.
@garbagehumans It’s fixed now… but I’m still so sorry to everyone this happened to. #smallbusiness #meta #shopify #businessowner ♬ original sound - Garbage Humans
According to Cathy, a customer reached out claiming they had accidentally placed a duplicate order through Instagram. When Cathy tried to resolve the issue, she found that there were no orders placed via Meta (Instagram and Facebook) for the past 90 days.
She then posted about the experience on a Discord server. One of her friends offered to make a purchase through the platform to check to see if it was working. The friend placed an order—and, according to Cathy, the order was not received on Meta’s platform.
“Now, I’m getting very scared,” she says. “How many people have placed orders with me and received absolutely nothing because I can’t see it?”
Confused, she reached out to Shopify and Meta regarding the issues. Shopify directs her to Meta, where a worker corrects the issue. When the Meta employee does this, Cathy's online store receives 6 months' worth of unfulfilled orders.
“So what’s happening is, the orders are coming through, I’m not seeing them, I’m missing the ship date, and the orders are getting refunded,” Cathy explains. “Thank goodness these customers are at least getting refunded.”
“We’re still working on it now, but from what I can see, I’ve missed out on about $1,000 worth of sales and pissed off countless customers because they ordered something and never received it,” the TikToker says.
As the video progresses, Cathy notes that her concern is not about lost money. Rather, she is worried about the impact this could have on her business’ reputation.
“I am mortified. I am humiliated. This is not how I run my business,” the user details. “How many of those people were first-time customers who will probably never shop with me again because that was a terrible experience for them? And this whole time, I had no idea what was happening!”
In the comments section, many users noted that this experience was unfortunately common for those using the Instagram platform to sell goods.
“Happened to us too,” one user wrote. “It was a nightmare.”
“This happened to me too,” another added. “Thankfully it was only about 4 orders but I was mortified too!”
“This happened to me!!! I was shipping old as heck orders I felt so bad and it took months for one person to say something,” a third user shared.
While many suggested that the TikToker reach out to customers individually, she later posted a video explaining why this wasn’t possible.
@garbagehumans Replying to @twatrockclamjam ♬ original sound - Garbage Humans
According to Cathy, she is not provided with customer information beyond their first and last name.
Furthermore, “the orders were never synced to Shopify,” the platform running her store. “They have zero records of these.”
Users suggested working to resolve the issues on Meta’s platforms.
“I echo the idea of making an Instagram post about this,” suggested one user. “Meta has really f'd up Instagram's code and mechanics. I have issues everyday while browsing.”
“Post updates on your shop letting users know you had an issue and ask them to reach out to you there,” stated a second. “You can verify with the information you do have.”
We’ve reached out to Meta via email and Cathy via Instagram direct message.
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