Rating: GearBest.com [AVOID]

http://GearBest.com
AVOID

Pros:

  • Occasionally excellent prices and offers

Cons:

  • Reports of unfulfilled orders and selling unavailable products have become the norm
  • Many complaints of bait and switch coupon tactics
  • Many complaints of poor customer service
  • Many reports of issues with orders
  • Frequently incorrect stock status of items, often sells unavailable items and accepts payment without notifying customer
  • Free shipping not available everywhere, relatively expensive to some countries
  • Requires paying extra for tracking and order insurance, and won't offer full compensation on uninsured items
  • Possible slow turnaround times to fulfill orders
  • Problems caused by splitting orders into multiple shipments
  • Reports of slow refunds
  • Some grossly inflated lumens claims
  • Generic discount codes don't work or even raise the price, since almost all items are already listed as discounted
  • Previous issues:
    • Multiple reports of offering bribes for positive reviews
    • Negative product reviews often not published
    • On at least one occasion GearBest customer service told a user to delete a negative comment in order to receive a refund.

Hi guys, GearBest asked me to create this rating thread for them. Any more pros or cons you would like me to add?

At least for now.How good - let’s say Jasmine from FT from days long gone by , or even better. PM were answered in couple of hours and I was very impressed by CS Karen.I placed an order 2 days ago , so I still can not comment on shipping/products. But I like what I see , for the time being.

Well, since they asked for it... :evil:

I received an unsolicited private message from GearBest.

Although that is a pretty good deal for a Sipik SK68 clone, I don't have a slickdeals.net profile.

Maybe they have me confused with someone else?

What I’ve ordered I have received so far (some $0.01-0.1 deals). The shipping time was on par with other Chinese sellers.
They use some shady tactics. On each checkout they try to add you $1 for insurance. When they had Nitecore deal with each added product from the sale they would add a bunch of garbage to the cart.

Edit:
After multiple orders I’m happy with them. Few issues I had with received products were solved without much hassle. Their response is usually fast.

From what i can tell, they are pretty solid. Ordered one survival card for 0.1$ and got a free flashlight for review, pretty fast shipping too. And Karen is very responsive over emails, if you have any questions.

The automatic $1 “insurance” is a minus point for them. It’s automatically checked for every order and has to be manually unchecked every time.

But on other points they’re quite ok. The site’s quite good. But my experience is very limited, so far I have only the $0.10 multipurpose card (arrived quickly), and another 10c deal incoming from them.

I am not too fond of sellers sending me vague PM's, gearbest has done that twice.

Banggood started PM-ing me as well (but it was not a vague mail, but straight asking me to review a light), and it resulted in me doing a review, so it does work for them, but then came Tinydeal and now Gearbest. So I'm guilty responding to one of these personal mails, but now I'm not so sure if I appreciate any more of them :-(

Who is going to review the evil bear?

Too bad his eyes don’t light up so we can claim it a “flashlight” review.
Forgot link Monokuma

Thanks guys, updated the original post.

+1 on the automatic insurance, which is very annoying indeed….

I received unsolicited PMs from Gearbest also, wanting me to do reviews of their lights. It really doesn't bother me. If they want to send lights for free, so I can review them, so much the better. It keeps the monthly giveaways coming. I don't care where they come from. They don't have anything different than anyone else. They just went with different brand names and that's all I see. Just another seller trying to get in the biz. We see them all the time don't we?

I'm sure they will be responsive for a while at first...

Edit: I like the insurance thing. That way the stuff they ship should definitely get replaced or money reimbursed if it's missing or damaged and it's safer for them when people try to con them, saying something is bad when it isn't.

They originally contacted me through my blog asking me to do reviews, and I did one for them. My problem with them is that I didn’t even get a “hey, thanks for your time” or any response at all from them, even though I did the review here on BLF as well, and they got two reviews for the same flashlight.

So they were very aggressive until they got what they wanted and then treated me like I didn’t exist. I’m not hurting for money or flashlights, and I give everyone trust and the benefit of the doubt until they give me reason not to. I’m sure their aggressive tactics will find someone hard-up for a flashlight, but that isn’t me. Sorry, but I won’t be dealing with them in the future.

The hidden $1.00 charge on every order is as sneaky as it gets, when you see an owner doing something like that, then you know that he is not totally trustworthy and will always be looking for more than he can get honestly and openly, so you always have to be on your toes if you have to deal with him.

Somewhat similar experience here, except I contacted them through their public thread review sample offer.

After I made the review they kept requesting me to do more things with the promise of the next light until the end result was essentially “just kidding, no next light for you.”

You live and you learn. I similarly won’t be dealing with them anymore.

What did they request you do?

You remember that giveaway they organised at the end of March -> ” Gearbest Sipik SK98 Giveaway TWO WINNERS”:[Announced] Gearbest Sipik SK98 Giveaway TWO WINNERS
well, I thought my luck with radnom.org changed but it seems it did not :frowning: contacted them yesterday via pm to see what is happening with that gift of mine and here is the answer:

I am not particular fan of SK98-type lights but I like gifts, I am not a rich guy to refuse free light either but I am pretty sure this one is not coming…

Wow, sorry Sirius9.

:~ If your going to do a giveaway it would be good to hold the prizes aside.

It was mostly simple things like minor tweaks to my review, title, text link, picture link. Quick changes no problem. They wanted me to advertise their event in my review which I declined and they said that was fine…

Then they wanted me to make that Nitecore event deal alert, which I did.

Strung me along for a week or two and got the ‘just kidding, no light’ email.

Normally I’d be fine with all that was requested as long as they were truthful up front.

It’s not hidden. I’m not a fan of it, but it is a unique service that might be valuable for someone else who might miss the option. I’ve seen other online vendors add a whole new item, so it isn’t even uncommon any more.

Not related to the post above I’ve had members send unsolicited messages when they’ve seen something I posted that triggered a comment from them. It’s part of being a member of an online community. I can’t understand being offended by an offer of a free light to review - or an exchange that is based on a response to a message.