"They wanted to compensate me about 10% of the burnt goods' value." How Belarusian sellers on Wildberries solve fiery problems
There is a Telegram chat for Belarusians who sell their goods in Russia through Wildberries. Entrepreneurs look for advice there on commercial situations that everyone encounters sooner or later. Less experienced ones get answers from more experienced ones, while energetic and observant members share their lifehacks before others see these discoveries. In short, a typical chat where a person unrelated to the niche of online trading in Russia would hardly find anything engaging. But on July 18 — the day of the attack on Wildberries warehouses in the Moscow region — the chat came alive, and its content over these days began to represent a public interest.
Fire at the Wildberries warehouse in Elektrostal. Photo: bereg.io
How did Belarusian entrepreneurs react, what did they ponder, and what did they hope for?
The first message, written early in the morning, was by a user named Yan: "It seems a drone hit Elektrostal. Maybe it's better to screenshot your remaining stock."
At that time, to a person who had stopped reading news and checked nothing themselves, it might have seemed like a minor emergency, a small inconvenience affecting only a couple of unlucky people.
Then videos from the scene began to appear — hundreds of thousands of square meters of useful space, filled with commercial goods belonging to others, burning. This was not believed.
"Where there are thick plumes of smoke [in the video] — that's AI," "Don't repost propaganda in the chat," "media is all clickbait," — commentators refused to believe.
Within an hour, realization dawned, and from initial attacks on "fake-news journalists," public sentiment shifted to resentment towards the silence of Russian and Belarusian state media.
"There was only one report about the situation at WB warehouses in the morning, about the warehouse in Kotovsk. A one-minute news item. After that... SILENCE. Not a word was said about Elektrostal! All news was about how well the Rosgvardiya is doing its job. God forbid such news becomes common for Belarusians!" — wrote user Svetlana.
Someone started lamenting: "Stop with your AI. FACT: minus Stal, minus Kotovsk. Result: urgent resupply of warehouses if you got caught in this hell. Each of us had some goods at Stal. And some only had Stal. This is a disaster. Some have no money to continue working..." — wrote chat participant Natalia.
"No one thought this could be a loan or an obligation in the form of goods. Few understood the possible scale of the f***-up," — added another.
Immediately, there were also those who resigned themselves.
"The question is where to start: strong immediately or gradually. On the one hand, you shouldn't overdo it [...] Decided not to gather employees today. On the other hand, you need to distract yourself, call drinking buddies, and have some fun," — wrote a fatalist participant.
To the rhetorical questions of some, asking why the company didn't save the goods, others answered no less rhetorically: if you were there as an employee, would you rush to save someone's — or even your own — belongings first, or yourself?
After the initial acceptance, a collective search for the cause of what happened began.
The main theory quickly became the idea that the warehouses were supposedly located near large oil depots. And therefore, allegedly, when drones were shot down or deviated from their course, they flew into Wildberries. Conclusion: goods should be transported to warehouses that are not near oil depots. Others began searching for strategic objects on maps: a rating of safe and unsafe Wildberries warehouses, based on this methodology, appeared.
The foolishness was stopped by someone named Alexander, pointing out the obvious: "What difference does it make what's next to the warehouse? They're burning warehouses. And the recipe is simple: take a ruler and look 3000, better 4000 kilometers from the border with Ukraine."
Meanwhile, the commentator who had most actively previously argued that the video of the burning logistics center was an AI creation, politely asked others if there was any information yet about compensation from the company for lost goods.
"Warehouses, f***, are insured. [And] you are just a seller, a loser, multiplied by zero," — such was the quintessence of the first responses.
"Question: why should a Belarusian seller bear losses for burnt WB goods if WB buys goods from us according to a redemption invoice when selling them in the Russian Federation? And if it ends up in a warehouse, the goods are already WB's property, and all risks are on them," — some reasoned out of desperation.
In parallel, it began to emerge that entrepreneurs' data about their goods in the destroyed warehouses were simply disappearing from their personal accounts on the Wildberries electronic platform.
"Could you tell me how to check how much merchandise was at Elektrostal the day before yesterday? I can't find that report somehow..." — wrote one person.
"They've already started cleaning up reports. I uploaded them in the morning as soon as I found out... According to the new report, my numbers suddenly halved," — replied another.
"8600 units of goods. No compensation," — added a third.
While some were calculating losses and demanding answers from the company, others — the lucky ones — began canceling deliveries to the no-longer-existent Elektrostal.
And for this, they were fined: "Can someone tell me who canceled a planned delivery to Elektrostal? I canceled transit through Brest — and got a fine. I thought it might not be in the weekly report, but today I saw the fine."
Some of those whose goods were spread across different warehouses rushed to retrieve them in Russia. They were not allowed to. Not even at night.
Why so? People complained about injustice.
Someone suggested that it was because "they are organizing enhanced security."
And anyway, this is all just for a while, an antidote against attacks will surely be invented. For example, they say, anti-drone nets could be stretched over logistics centers, and duty patrols of firefighters could be deployed. The most skeptical commentator suggested stopping discussing nonsense, because only a "sarcophagus like over Chernobyl" would really help.
Then the goods finally began to be returned, but for money. "If you don't pick it up today for money, you won't pick it up at all tomorrow," — warned others and at the same time reassured himself, one of the participants who, according to chat members, overpaid.
The victims themselves began to form a group for filing pre-trial complaints, and also united to find lawyers. They listed their losses: 15 thousand dollars, 80 thousand dollars. One woman wrote that her losses were only 50 bucks, but she was also very worried.
At this point, news began to arrive that Wildberries was paying compensation. A strange lifehack emerged: the platform doesn't always know the cost price figures, so it's possible to make a profit. This almost happened to a couple of participants with a relatively very low cost price and high markup.
"They wanted to compensate me about 10% of the value of the burnt goods; I wrote back that I disagreed with such calculations. In response, they asked what amount of compensation I wanted. I gave them my calculations. They compensated me according to my demands in the end," — one of the sellers boasted about some victory.
"I lowered all prices to sell everything that's in [other] Russian warehouses and recoup the cost price [of what was lost]," — wrote user Elena.
"If another 3-4 warehouses are hit, in addition to huge losses, there will be reputational damage. Not a single seller will ship their goods to them, not a single Uzbek will come to work in the warehouses," — one of the users reflected when the future outlines of Tatiana Kim's company became apparent.
Finally, as of today, chat participants have partially breathed a sigh of relief: it became known that for deliveries to the Central Federal District, Wildberries will now use its warehouse in Bolshoy Kamen near Minsk. Which — for now — is not in the risk zone.
Here it should be explained that Wildberries algorithms prioritize goods in search results that are geographically closer to the customer. This was the point of sending goods to different warehouses in advance. But now, after the destruction of Elektrostal, a hypothetical Muscovite will see in the search results goods that are physically located in Minsk.