The ban on covered vans from the highways between July 16 and July 18 to ease Eid traffic has hit the e-commerce companies, who are now sitting on undelivered orders from district towns.

About 60 percent of the orders of e-commerce companies, most of whom are based in Dhaka, come from the districts.

“It's out of our hands,” said Fahim Mashroor, convener of the BASIS e-Commerce Alliance.

The delivery to district levels will resume on July 21, meaning those who have done their Eid shopping on the e-commerce sites will not receive their purchases on time for the festival.

As soon as they learnt about the ban, they advised their customers to place their orders without further ado.

Anwar Hossain Salekh, a manager of Karatoa Courier Service, said his company that halted the service as per the government's instruction is staring at a busy time afterwards.

Karatoa has 13 fully-loaded vans in Dhaka and 20 in Chittagong that need to be dispatched as soon as the service resumes after the Eid.