Gearbest.com want me to delete thread here on BLF to get a refund.

Don’t let CE mark fool you, it does not have to mean it is safe, it could also mean china export.

I did use that link because it had all the info, all the pictures, all the feedback from people with more knowledge then me. So should I use lots of time writing all this to them, or use the easy way, post the link?
And their BLF representative had seen the thread anyway, so they was aware of it, I’m sure of.

So all I did was to give them the possible to see all the facts, pictures, info about this issue in one thread, then make a decision. I got recommended by several people in that thread to ask for a full refund, so I did. I listen to BLF members, I have respect for them. But Gearbest.com has no respect for this forum and it’s users. They clearly say so in this part of the ticket:

Do you think that is respect for BLF and it’s users?

I wanted that, but they wanted to censor me…I can’t allow them to do that. So I can move on if they don’t censor me. They still have good offers etc.

IMHO This is not censor. This is extortion.

I have to say I think the problem is you get way too excited Ken. I shop with most of the known vendors Banggood, gearbest, DX etc. When I rarely have a problem I take it to PayPal, but it’s rare. One of the big problems is you are buying crap. Ultrafire batteries, power banks that work out more expensive than the Xaomi’s. The reason I have very few problems is because I buy quailty, samsung, Sanyo etc, thus I minimise the risk.

The Chinese vendors work differently to the way we do in europe , so learn to work with them.

However I also think there are a few members getting a little excited as well here, Ken is venting his frustrations which he, in my opinion has probably brought on himself, but I like to think we are a pretty tollerent place and the thread won’t be deleted.

Marc.

+1

The “crap” buying has been up before, yes before I joined this forum and a couple of other, I did buy some Ultrafire batteries and some low quality flashlights from Ebay (type 3000lm on a single XML emitter) for my self, changing out my 8 years old batteries and flashlights (that still worked, but wanted to have some new ones). But when I joined this forum, I was recommended Gearbest.com very fast, and many people recommended them here on this forum. So I believed that they would be a better store then using Ebay. After that I have not got lots of crap, I have purchased lots of good stuff, etc I only have real battery brands now, good ones. New ones. I have ordered flashlights highly recommended by members here, or from threads I found.

So the stuff i have is not crap. Maybe this power bank is not crap, I don’t know. The first one I tested was crap. Thats for sure.

The reason why I have many threads about crappy products, was because I started to getting them when I joined this forum, but they was ordered around one month before. But just because I did do a mistake before I joined this forum, it do not mean that I don’t listens to your members I try to buy good stuff.

But since my plan was to start selling some of the stuff, I can’t pay $200 for a empty power charger just because high price = high quality. If I’m going to do this as a business, I have to make money, and my prices can’t be to high.

But there is no point explaining my self, since i once buy Ultrafire, all I ever buy after is crap. Regardless of what store I buy from. (of course, that means that every store I buy from sells only crap)

That is just a bit of nonsense. Anything that looks like the CE mark is either the CE mark or illegal in EU.

Even companies inside EU do sometimes use a CE mark with wrong proportions.

I think this is a good idea, but it is an advantage to know a bit about the product you are dealing with.

Usual you do not have to register a company to be responsible, but you are correct. Very few people/companies ask for the paper work and it is rather dumb.

If the government get suspicious about one of your products, you have to produce the paperwork in about two weeks. This means prove that it passes the CE test (Norway may be different) by showing your test results.

With the CE mark you are self certifying, this does not mean you can just throw anything on the market (You can, but there might be consequences), any time the government are in doubt they can ask for the testing documents that shows why you mean your product can carry the CE mark. If you cannot show the document they can ask you to recall the stuff.

In real life the government is very lazy and do usual only ask for papers if there has been some reported cases with a product.

The repercussion will depend on country, I believe that in German you might face a jail sentence for ignoring CE.

Der Mr. Kenneth Myhre,

Lets see if we can see the big picture clearly.

First you bought a bunch of (low end) stuff from “China” looking for low cost products. Personally I would say that part of the cost savings is “risk” in that you may find some of the item to be substandard (the classic example are Fire batteries)

Second I am sure that GB (or any other Chinese company) is not taking this personally. Consider that they (like all of us) are defaulting to use our subjective “preferred’ techniques to address and resolve issues in life (aka coping mechanism / survival strategies). When any company is confronted with an issue they seek ways to address it. The fact that a high volume low cost Chinese distributor wants to negotiate and is concerned about their reputation I believe should come as no surprise. The fact that they are negotiating with you to change/remove your earlier posting actually supports your right to free speech. Because if you were not free to post they would have simply removed your postings and told you to pound sand. as they can not do this they are ”incentivized” to negotiate a settlement with you.

Second if you have the PayPal option then that might be a good way for you to “negotiate” the issues to conclusion. Or follow more closely the “reviewed” products so that you have fewer surprises in the future.

Third all things considered I think from an economic standpoint you have the upper hand (in the sense that I am confident that you can “cost” them) a value greater then their profit made on the transaction in total, is a “loss” for them.

Fourth consider that as soon as your voiced opinion(s) drifts from factually backed content and appears to move into an emotional based “rant”, to neutral third parties (the rest of us) you loose some credibility in making your point(s).

Fifth while GB may/does have at least one representative on this forum I think you have done yourself a disservice by implying that somehow we all/many/most/ more then are fairly obvious, have some financial incentive to protect GB. On this point I think you are WAY off base. You may want to consider the tone and tack you take in the future on these various points of consideration.

^ +1…

Freedom of speech is one thing, but this is becoming defamation.

If all this was about the OP starting a business selling these items, then I wonder who was going to handle his complaint department and customer relations?

I don’t think that I would ever want to buy from him, or complain to him about anything.

I agree that this is a proper forum for discussing problems with vendors. I certainly want to know the experiences of other buyers. However, it seems bad transactions are often accompanied by bad feelings and I don’t understand that at all. It’s a business transaction, no need for the drama.

I have had a couple of issues with Gearbest transactions, but I’m happy to report that they have all been worked out to my satisfaction, so far. Part of that good experience was due to discovering, here at BLF, how to use basic, translatable english in my communications and to specify exactly what I want to happen to become a satisfied customer (even if I have to accept some losses because that is often a part of business).

It could be something I wanted to sell yes. I do not need 11 pcs for my self. But good way to move the focus away from Gearbest.com wanted to censor me and this forum. :wink:
I have told you and the rest of the members that I don’t care about the money, or the main issue with the broken item, but I care when they ask me to censor my self, and remove a whole thread from this forum, that many people has used time on.
Who decides what threads thats is on BLF, the members and admins or Gearbest.com?

Forget about the other stuff.

Okay Kenneth and all; this is getting a little heated, so lets attempt mediate this a little...

There are two separate issues so we should separate them:

1) Gearbest product was faulty or behaved unexpectedly. This is possibly a safety concern but we cannot be sure whether it was the product, your cells, usage, manufacturing, etc. Always willing to give the customer benefit of doubt, but fact is it cannot be proven without testing and independent verification. This part of the issue was already raised in a separate thread and should be discussed separately. If many other customers come forward with the same problem, or it burns down someone’s house, customer injured/dies, it will be on GearBest. You are correct not to want to distribute a product you have no confidence in and suspect is dangerous. Use this in your PayPal claim and take it up with the safety governing bodies if you wish. We would all be interested in those results.

2) During the course of your support ticket, GearBest CS requested that you censor/revoke your posts here on BLF. Yes, this is a definitely a concern and valid reason for posting here to let us know. Your single mistake, possibly through language barrier or frustration in light of the situation, was to infer BLF may also be corrupt, or that Admins here are in the pocket of GearBest. Sure there are relationships between vendors and customers as expected, but this is an independent forum and the members will not react kindly to accusations against them or the Admin.

It may not have been intended, but parts of the first post come across as abrasive, and so unfortunately some of the valid and useful message is devalued by immediately getting peoples shackles up.

My personal rule of thumb is to always start off nice, polite and affable (as it seems you did in your GB ticket), and you are much more likely to get somewhere or receive the attention and resolution you desire. Most of the time, the people you’re liaising with are just workers who are not the underlying cause of the problem, so they need to be engaged to care about it and won’t take kindly to immediate harshness and disgruntlement. Then of course, as may unfortunately be required, you can always change tact to ‘bad cop’ when all else fails. Save the complaints, letters, crusades, campaigning, threats, law suits, etc until it is obvious being nice is not going to get anywhere.

Perhaps an idea from here is to leave the discussions about the actual fault to the other thread you already have. Edit the OP to remove any perceptions of campaigning, make it specifically about the topic of Vendors requesting censorship, and we can all debate that real concern like the friendly BLF community that we are.

I think we all feel your frustrations, it’s just some of the message is pushing the wrong buttons!

All the best and good luck.

Hirsh

Regardless of everything else here, there is some righteousness in him not just taking his money and deleting the thread, right?

This statement come wrong out, I admit that. But this thread is about Gearbest.com trying to decide what should be on the BLF forum, and that they want to censor me and BLF.
When a person writes that he has contacted a Admin for review of this thread, I get suspicious. Since it was on this forum I was recommended to Gearbest.com, so many times. So if a Admin think this thread is to sensitive, that it hurts Gearbest.com interest, I would ask a question why? For I can’t believe members of BLF think it’s OK that Gearbest.com dictates whats on the forum or not.

So I did not accuse the Admin to be in the pocket of Gearbest.com, but if he closed this legit thread, with real proof that Gearbest.com tries to dictates what should be on this forum, I would feel really paranoid, since I know they pay people for good reviews and good feedback.

And I have to be honest that I did not expect people to take Gearbest.com side in this thread, since the proof is there, they wanted me to delete a whole tread here on this forum, not caring about all the members that had used their valued time on the thread.
And I don’t understand why the issue with the old thread gets up again and again, this is about the info in this thread.

And when people complying of me buying Ultrafire batteries several months ago, then I loose all faith. Is it really OK for Gearbest.com to dictate what is on this forum or not, that is the question, nice if people replies to that, and not what I did back in 1997 or who shot Kennedy.

That had been the easy solution. Take the $66. Then get $30 more on the good reviews. Thats $96. Then I have $8 on my points account. Thats $100. I could buy several good flashlights for that.
But as I wrote in the first post, I don’t care about the money, I do not a company dictate me what I write where, I do not let them censor me, and I do not let them censor a whole forum like BLF. Just to get what I should get anyway.

Take an example:

You buy something from eBay and it arrives defective. You leave a negative feedback which of course affects a lot the seller rating. The seller offers you a full refund in exchange of you removing the negative feedback. This happens hundreds of times daily, is a normal eBay practice.

Is that considered censor as well? Is the eBay seller trying to limit your freedom of speech? How is that different from this situation?

Now think about this: if the seller is willing to refund you fully, then it’s no longer the seller’s fault for your accident, it’s the manufacturer’s fault. Then where comes the need for a negative campaign thread like this?

If they were actually censoring you, both of your threads would’ve disappeared already, CPF style. :slight_smile:

Yes that kind of censor as well. I have turned down offers like that several times. For, if they sell crap, the buyers have the right to know that. The seller can stop selling that goods, or if they still want to sell crap, they must take the consequence and get bad reviews from time to time. But of course, I should get the refund still.

If all the critic of me, that I only buy crap, that means that the store I buy from sells crap, then it’s not fair for new buyers to think they buy a good product, because of they only have good reviews. Are they selling crap, people need to know that.
Then the store can stop selling crap, and people start knowing that.

So a refund you have right on, you should get without, faking a review, feedback or deleting thread from a forum.