FastTech - Kept my money for a month and then "Oops, we don't have that"

Lightbringer :beer: for you. Seems we’ve been writing a message in the same time

I’ve never thought I might be an advocate of a Chinese store. But since we both seem to be experienced - yeah. we know quite well how it works.

People, don’t get angry. There’s just a price to pay for way cheaper products bought directly in China. But we all keep buying there, because at the end of the day, you still appreciate lower prices and their efforts to satisfy you.

But if you expect highest level of sales, you’d better contact your local dealer.

:beer:

Ooh, I like beer…

Well, I tried ordering 1 time from FT, they ended up not having the product and refunding me the money.

Second time I thought about ordering I asked first if they had what I wanted (because I suspected it was - AGAIN - old stuff that shouldn’t be in stock). After some days, I got an answer that didn’t have it in stock, that they would need to ask the manufacturer and check if there was stock or not.

So, I never thought about doing a 3rd attempt, nor will from now ON!

In any case, my suggestion - althought not ideal - would be to always ask if the item is in stock before ordering/paying!
I saves us some trouble then…specially when stores are like this…

Yeah, Fasttech is like that. This happened often to me but I still order from them time to time.

Banggood does this a lot. Sometimes they pretend they shipped the order, but won’t provide a tracking number, then, only after I contact them, they give me their new favorite lie “We really, really did ship it, but customs sent it back”

Had the same situation with hkequipment.
Flashlight was listed as avalaible, paid, than a few days processing and money back.
Of course I was circa 15$ short, because of currency conversion.
MIke

did they prove that customs sent it back? or how did u prove they didnt ship at all?

I’ve also gotten the “tracking shows it was delivered to United States customs ….”
Yeah, right.

Thats annoying for sure

Have you ever been to walmart, lowes, or home depot after looking a item up online that said 5 in stock at that location, only to find out they had none in stock when you get to the store. :person_facepalming:
Keeping up with stock seems to be low priority.
I have had similar experiences with several sellers from ebay to many sellers across the pond.
Places that seem to keep up with actual stock the best seems to be online sellers in my own country.
.
I have also expressed my disappoint to Fasttech about keeping up with their stock.
But its still happening, so nothing has changed.
I know its frustrating but at least you did get your money back, sometimes with other sellers that can be a real long drawn out task.

I don’t know about all that…. Banggood has always been good with customer service and I’ve spent thousands on them, my most recent order was shipped with an incorrect version/s of the items and CS shipped a replacement order without question upon me reporting it.

They made me ask 3 or 4 times to cancel a order that didn’t ship :weary:

i dont know man, i had a defective light, showed them a video of it, got a refund back right away. well as “right away” as they possible can considering the time zone and stuff, each reply took a day

They did this to me several times and there are plenty of other posts on here from people making the same complaint. Banggood claims it’s shipped, but never provides a tracking number, which I paid extras for, then they blame “customs”. I put customs in quotes because they never provide any details. Customs in what nation? Why did customs reject it? I don’t order batteries form Banggood, so they cant blame the batteries.

i ordered batteries from BG recently…if the tracking info is correct, its already here, released by customs, being processed by local post service

I’ve definitely had similar experiences with FastTech - long waits as the product is Restocking, and one time they also told me that the product was discontinued.
In my case however, they allowed me to substitute it for a similar item (which was even a bit more expensive). I was probably lucky that it was a pretty generic product.

Nevertheless, I feel like my customer service experiences with FastTech have been better than other Chinese e-commerce sites.
For example, while AliExpress constrains sellers to ship within a guaranteed window, some unscrupulous ones have supplied fake tracking numbers, delaying a refund until months later during a dispute.
And there have been countless stories here of Banggood marking a product as “shipped”…only to cancel/refund the order by some opaque reasoning.

At least with FastTech, they’re comparatively transparent about the state of your order (at least the part that’s under their control). Each item in the order has its own status, and because they always take a photo of the package before shipment, you can have more confidence that they’re not lying about the order being shipped to buy more time. Their business model (of contacting suppliers on demand) certainly has its failings, but the company itself hasn’t struck me as dishonest.

Guys, don’t you think this is another topic leading nowhere? Actually, each seller has his “hall of shame”. I’m not gonna name them, but readers know. It’s been discussed so many times, that people are more likely to post their negative opinion than positive. So many times we’ve come up with the conclusion, such topics are not reflecting the whole statistics on a particular seller. etc, etc, etc.

Just my LAST 2 cents: what I’ve learnt buying in Chinese stores is that you should consider you’ve made a bargain deal only when you receive your item and after check everything is all right. Even now, after a few years of experience I keep falling into pitfalls of their marketing. Just today I’ve received info from BG, their description on UV lights was wrong because it was a white light torch (what). But they promised to refund it. Or well known Wuben. Ordered E05 on Ali, but after 5 weeks I applied for a refund. Decision took 1 hour, money is back. I’ve ordered in the same store two pieces of Wuben E05 - they arrived after 9 days.
What is my advice? Keep calm, don’t get excited until you receive your product and take into consideration 5-10% of your transactions will be refunded due to various reasons. Buying by these rules made me calm and easy. I just make 10 bargain purchases having in mind I’ll receive 8 or 9 of them. Still worth it for me and I still play this game. If I get tired, I’ll switch to MTN or L4P (once Neven reopens).

Wellp, anyone who expects amazonlike performance is always going to be disappointed.

that is so true, amazon has spoiled us like enabling parents

There is no inventory, when you order something, they try to get it from their supplier, who also may be a drop shipper with no inventory. Eventually it gets back to the original supplier or manufacturer who may or may not have them in stock or may now want a higher price. Sometimes the manufacturers are waiting for enough orders to come in before they make the product.