Retail web sites running on the Volusion e-commerce platform, as well as the corporate site of Volusion Inc., went off-line Monday because of a power disruption in the company’s data center, Volusion says.
Volusion serves mostly smaller retailers, including 11 merchants in the Internet Retailer Second 500 Guide and two in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
The Volusion outage follows a problem with its shopping cart technology reported this spring which left many of its e-retailer clients unable to process credit card orders. The most recent outage led to irate comments posted online by many of Volusion’s client retailers, including dozens of comments on Volusion’s Facebook page. “I’m currently dealing with confused customers worried about whether they have just ordered from a dodgy web site,” one retailer identified as Glenda Watts posted on Volusion’s Facebook page today.
Others complained that Volusion had deleted many online comments critical of the company’s service.
Sayeh Pezeshki, founder and CEO of SortingWithStyle.com, No.827 in the Internet Retailer Second 500 Guide, said her site’s outage yesterday was one of several problems she has experienced with the vendor. “We’ve been unhappy with several items regarding the Volusion platform,” she says. “Other items include customer service wait times on the phone have been outrageously long, and the bandwidth overage charges we have received have been outrageously high.”
Volusion did not immediately return a call for comment.
On its web site, Volusion reported today that a power outage occurred last night in its data center when “both primary and secondary breakers failed. This prevented the redundant generators from restoring power.”
The company added that its entire information technology team worked to restore power. “We can report that all systems are operating normally,” Volusion said today at status.Volusion.com. The vendor added that it was “awaiting further investigation by the power company to determine if there are any other power concerns.”
The largest Volusion client listed in the Top 500 is Orchard Brands Corp., which Internet Retailer estimates had over $200 million in 2011 web sales on several web sites including Blair.com and NormThompson.com. Orchard Brands declined to comment on Volusion.