Sneaky tricks by Banggood

I would argue that “they” all do this. Not just BG.

Waiting for CS feedback can take forever, regardless of company. I understand your frustration, but that is the game we are playing here. Every dollar counts for these companies, especially with a lot fewer customers nowadays. Not trying to protect them, just saying I would expect this kind of behavior.

Well, they save a few dollars and in return they lost a 7 year customer with hundreds of orders. I do not tolerate dishonesty.

The customer service agent talked me out of cancelling the order with a promise of refund difference. Then they waited 3 days and said they cannot do it because low price just expired. I know it expired, I contacted them 3 days earlier while it was still active !

the only thing customer could do is cancel the order yourself (if possible after payment went through) and then re-order it. I know this doesn’t work on many of these websites. Amazon is a great example where you CAN cancel after paying for your order.

That is exactly what I intended to do. My order was very early in the processing stages, it was just a couple of hours old and could be cancelled easily.

But the customer agent said “don’t cancel, I will just refund the price difference. Please wait a few days and it will be processed”
Then they waited until exactly after the low price expired, and then played dumb. “Huh, we can’t refund this price as it was only active July 21-24”

yes, they don’t offer a “button” where you can cancel or the cancellation is more like a “request” which doesn’t get answered.

Amazon is way better in that aspect. you can just buy, pay and then cancel and you get your money back.

Customer service derp droids are everywhere, yes in USA as well. With their broken logic you have to “SPEAK TO THEIR MANAGER”
The RONA really lowered the bar for CS, I’ve just gone straight to my CC to dispute amounts and get it back… their too busy derping it up to logically reply to a official CC dispute anyway.

please let us never make comparisons between amazon and the chinese e-malls, k thx!

yeah, you are right. should’ve not mentioned those in the same sentence. different universes.

Please PM your order number to me, i will check what happened, thank you!

Yep, I ordered a 12V battery charger on one of their flash deals.
Three months later when I inquired, they replied they would get it shipped right away.
A week later, I got a refund promise email.
The product is still for sale, but back to full price.

1. I dont think cancelling order due to better offer is a good practice. If you booked uber, and get a good offer from random guy driving next to you - do you cancel your uber order?
2. It is easy to judge when you are behind the screen. Once you have placed your order, lots of thing are processing. Small and tiny sellers can involve changes at this step, but big company with several warehouses, offices, outsourced customer services may meet some serious delays and even be not able to stop process. Like big machine that have big inertia.
3. Comparation with amazon is not clear. Many goods that you get from China are available because conditions are acceptable for seller/manufacture. Warehouse rent, all types of logistics, rules for new manufacture that want his product to be placed on well-known website - all this makes cheap (or rare) products available for you. If convoy flashlights are still not available from Amazon, what can we say about less popular products?
I am also a 7 year customer with hundreds of orders. I don’t like some things (extra shipping cost for each warehouse, shipping insurance), but overall feeling is: BG is still more reputable than most other Chinese marketplaces. If friends or relatives ask me to choose something from China and value is over $100 - I send them link to BG. Once I made a mistake and put an order for Chinese version smartphone instead of Global version - I was worry but CS canceled it in few hours after my request. Once Ive got a phone without English firmware - CS checked my video and sent me newer model with English language. In think % of orders that Ive meet any problems is considerably smaller than average, especially if compare with JD or Aliexpress.

The price changed 2-3 hours after placing order, while order is still processing. Most companies will refund the difference in this circumstance.

As I have stated, the problem is staff behaviour. He said “no don’t cancel order, I will refund difference, just wait”. Then 3 days later “sorry, it is too late to refund price difference, the price has now gone up”.

Maybe it is different in Russia but in most countries honesty is important. You don’t try to “fool” your customers with tactics.

problem is banggood has so often different flash sales, holidays sales during year etc… its almost impossible to know if a light will get even more cheaper then already with coupon, its a risk buying… but yea they could u atleast have given the refund…. i just buy lights from the coupons and dont look again if its sold cheaper or not… not worth my trouble….

Maybe it is not tactful to refer to the country where I live without a country in your account?
Yes, many things are different here. If you are interested in thing that your neighbors (residents, citizens) are not interested in, you have zero probability to find them in local store or local warehouse. And Chinese marketplaces gives this chance to have something not common in your area.
Imagine that there are many pedestrian streets with nice drinks in your town, but your grandma misses tiny store with sewing supplies that have been there for 50 years. Sewing supplies store can not pay rent competitive with bar, it can not provide same quality of interior, same amount of staff. Does anyone deserves to demand high standards customer services? If so, your grandma will never get what she wants anymore.

Sorry to hear that.

I would do the same thing if it happens to me, they really shouldn’t do that to any of their costomer.

It’s quite simple. You want an item the seller has. And he wants your money.
If you both agree on that, you’ve got a deal.
A few days later you become aware that you could have had a better deal.

I don’t know where you come from, but here we tend to stick to a deal once it is made.
Of course you can dissolve the deal, but then there could be penalties to be paid.
Because the seller thought he had a deal: with you.

In NL you can complain about buying too fast and paying too much.
But the only thing you can hope for is some leniency from the seller.
Because legally you have “no leg to stand on” as we say here.

You should have stuck to your first plan: cancel the buy and then re-buy.
Won’t be the first one who does that. Until you are blacklisted because they find out.

Of course the CS is a tricky Dicky. But is smart enough to keep his proposal on ice.
Because everybody is authorized to receive money, but to pay money is another thing.
His supervisor would have laughed his head off and then put him out of his office.
So you have been tricked by your friendly CS buddy, because you wanted to trick BG.

BTW your comment on kiriba-ru makes me think that you suggest that it is common for
some cultures to have opposite morals and rules than used by honest people elsewhere.
I hope this was a slip of the pen in the spur of the moment.
Because in some cultures the title “honest” has to be earned by the way you act and live.
Not by the number of stickers with “honest” on them that you bought and paid for.

I think the cultural elements regarding this scenario matter. In the general world of retailers (to which a web shop, let alone an overseas one, wouldn’t necessarily count) has various policies regarding price-matching and/or price-adjustment.
The local customs where a customer comes from surely has influence in what they expect from other stores.

The big issue here is that the customer support team agreed to do something and didn’t do it. That is the difficult bit. A customer is allowed to ask any question they may seem fit, IMO.

It also depends on the actual amount. I personally wouldn’t care about a few bucks I have lost, I would still save way more in shopping abroad. I would care if it was i.e. 50% off on 100$ or something like that (which, I believe, isn’t the case here).

Exactly. This is my grievance. They said one thing and did another. In hindsight, I can see they did it on purpose.

It is not about the money - which is very small - it is about being “jerked around”. Wasting time, waiting for an e-mail which never came etc. Acting dumb when I questioned them.

If the first customer service agent said “We do not have a price refund policy” then it would be no problem. I would simply cancel the order and re-order at the lower price. To re-iterate, we are talking a matter of hours between order time.

You have it in writing, and the Banggood rep above has offered to help. Seems fair enough?

That’s what you’d think. I have the chat log etc. But no.

Their stance - including the rep above - is that the price now (after 1 week of stalling) is higher than when they originally agreed to refund the difference. So they are acting like there is nothing to refund. “Please check current price, it is higher, we cannot refund difference…”

The reason it is higher of course is that they didn’t refund the difference as originally promised. The low price was available when they promised the refund difference, and for a subsequent 72 hours.

Their customer service is like talking to a brick wall, i’m done with it. They lost a long customer.