Bemobbed Switch Malaysia turns off sale

Overwhelming crowds attracted by discounted Apple products forced a Switch outlet at Kuala Lumpur’s MyTown mall to cancel the event.

Friday’s warehouse clearance sale in Cheras prompted a queue to start forming the night before. As well as covering several levels in the mall, the queue even stretched outside.

In a bid to control the swelling crowd, the mall’s management introduced a ticketing system. However, this failed as the crowd grew unruly, reports Channel NewsAsia. The management was then forced to close the outlet after it had been open for 90 minutes.

Switch Malaysia - crowd

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Switch Malaysia apologised for cancelling the event, saying it had been overwhelmed by the 11,000 people who turned up.

“We are truly sorry for the demo clearance event … We did not expect the magnitude,” says the Switch message. “We sincerely would like to thank our customers who came from other states, woke up early, stayed up all night, braved the traffic and temperature at night, and those tried their best to stay in line.

“This has been a learning curve for us, and we promise we will do much much better.”

After the store announced it would be closed for two days, auxiliary policemen spent nearly two hours dispersing the crowd.

A Switch spokesman says the clearance sale has been put on hold.

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