Naver users irked by service disruptions, Company hastens acquisition of Poshmark

Naver Corp. was reportedly criticized due to the disruptions experienced by its users last week. Business officials said on Monday, Dec. 19, that the inconvenienced customers have expressed disappointment and annoyance as the interruption did not only happen once but many times in succession.

According to The Korea Times, users have complained of not being able to use the Naver Map app properly. People have been using the app to search for something but the service could not provide proper results.

For instance, they have input “Christmas cake” or “Christmas” on the search bar, but the Naver Map could only suggest Paris Baguette bakery shop and Baskin-Robbins stores. The app could not locate any other stores related to the given keyword.

Users said that they only see the said shops, and the branches on display are not even close to where they are located. Moreover, the Naver Map is not showing any other outlets and brands, even if they specifically type the exact name of a store. If they type, "Tous Les Jours cake," the results will always be Paris Baguette which is the bakery’s rival chain.

The errors were said to have lasted more than six hours late last week, thus, many users were really irked by the situation. For its business, Tous Les Jours reportedly said it suffered a loss of earnings due to the issue with the Naver Map.

Naver issued an apology for the system glitch. A company official said, "After finding out the excessively high similarity between the specific brands and Christmas-related keywords in our synonym processing, we corrected the error. We apologize for your inconvenience."

Aside from this, it was also reported that some flight tickets that were not eligible for Naver’s KRW100,000 or $77 discount were also mistakenly sold for lower prices at the Naver Flight platform. It took several hours before the company was able to correct the errors. This has inconvenienced travellers because some of them were forced to cancel their reservations.

Meanwhile, amid the criticisms, Naver is speeding up its purchase of the Poshmark social marketplace for new and secondhand styles for women, men, kids, pets, homes, and more. The tech firm is buying the US-based company for $1.6 billion.

Pulse News reported that Naver originally planned to complete the deal in April, but it is now moving the schedule to an earlier date. It now wants the negotiations to finish by early January.