Banggood is only good for astrolux deals and anything else is available on aliexpress for a lower price. Gearbest never shipped my giveaway prize from last year and they haven’t had any good deals I’m aware of.
Ordered 2 lights, 1st week of January:
- Mastercard that works on Ali and everywhere else was rejected
- declared shipment after 5 days, shortly postponed by 1 week
- postponed by another week, then each single day for 2 weeks in a row expected shipment was delayed by 1 day
- during Chines new year shipment date travelled in time to mid January
- then was set to beginning of March
- and shortly after that to 3rd week of March.
I’ve talked with support 2 or 3 times - copy-pasted answers from template, not clarifying situation a bit. I’ve cancelled my order and got money back, but lost welcome coupons, discount etc. Few days later lights were available for the price bigger than in manufacturers online store.
Now same lights have nice Askmeforcodetobeignored (banggood) prom by guy on this forum, so I can say nothing but best about banggood.
My two purchases at once - first and last one.
TL;DR - Shipment of my order was postponed multiple times, reaching 2,5 months delay from declared date; goods were never shipped, as I finally cancelled the order.
Pretty much everything can be bought on AliEx for cheaper - I’ve found. Only thing worth buying from BG are, as others have mentioned, their house brand Astrolux lights. Sometimes you get pretty good coupon codes which are BG-exclusive. Other than that I steer clear from them. Communication, service, shipping etc is slow and unresponsive.
From the UK perspective, since Brexit:
BG. Before, the shipping cost was free or minimal. But now, have to be wary of say 9.60 GBP shipping on purchases ranging from a ‘cheap’ Convoy S2+ to a 100GBP + Astrolux. Can still be some good savings on their electronic flyers, but need to compare prices to check. Have had the very best of experiences with customer service to the worst…
AliEx. Has now started adding VAT, although when I made purchases a few weeks ago, they had not got a GB Vat registration number. Have dealt with a couple of complaints very quickly and in my favour, with quick refund.
Kaidomain. Painfully slow processing time. OK, so I allowed 2 weeks for the Chinese holidays, but it was a further two weeks before items shipped. However, the package did arrive within a week with air-mail.
GBest. Again, can be some savings on their Offers. Some Convoy deals can even be a bit cheaper than Simon’s store. Shipping still free or minimal.
Last thing I ordered from BG took 25 days in May 2020 from PP to doorbell. Nothing to complain. Sometimes I look at their site, but the prices are not appealing. Same for shipping fee, insurance, etc.
Because GB refused to honor their GAW, I never returned there since Dec. 2019. Last actual buy was in Dec. 2018. Not that I have not tried. But the A-brand lights with reasonable prices were all “out of stock”, and the funny-brand lights all had A-brand prices.
Since 2020 I bought from AE, Drop, eBAY, FT, HKE, KD, Lumintop, Manker, and Sofirn. All went fine.
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Several of us are in the ‘No Delivery Boat’ this year with Neal, we feel your dissapointment. :weary:
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Strange these stores are being so unprofessional.
They want sales and use us for advertising purposes but do not care about the negative picture they make of themselves. 
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I had several negative experiences with Banggood, ordered items that were mysteriously canceled and refunded. Product was then “deleted” on their system. Refund took days. I can’t use my affiliate points in a way that makes sense. Please don’t use BGpay, it is disastrous.
Gearbest was a little bit better, bought a flashlight and it arrived.
Fasttech is still my favorite, even though they don’t ship knives to my destinations.
Haven’t purchased anything from BG or GB in three years because of problems. GB once shipped a flashlight that took a couple months to arrive. I was able to track the package, and it toured the world. After brief stops in Sweden, and a few countries in Europe, it made a tour of the middle east. Finally arrived in the US, but was shipped back to Europe for another tour including Sweden before finally arriving in the US for a second and final time. After it arrived, I inspected the shipping label and the address was correct. The last time with GB, I ordered a common folding Ganzo knife. After about a month, they finally sent me an email saying it was illegal to ship to the US, and they refunded my money. Same day, I ordered the exact same knife from Fasttech, and it arrived within two weeks.
Banggood would never seem to honor sales, so I quit buying from them. Never had a problem with Fasttech.
If there were truth in advertising laws in China they would be called Gearworst
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That is a special light to get a World Tour. :sunglasses:
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I got back into online purchasing in 2017 to buy a mobile phone from Gearbest. My previous experience was with DealExtreme from around 2007-2011.
Gearbest was doing good deals in 2017 and had a good reputation but these days they seen to be a shadow of their former selves. I bought a TIP SE from them a few months ago but they took 3 weeks to ship the order when the claimed shipping time was much sooner.
Banggood easily usurped Gearbest’s position. A Sand FW3A kicked off a round of torch purchases for me. I felt okay about buying from them. Shipping costs to Australia have increased which is unfortunate.
I have tried Fasttech and liked that they didn’t charge the Australian Federal government’s 10% GST (which the other large sites including AliExpress do). I trust them but they don’t seem to have much worth purchasing on there. A cool bonus is they photograph the package as proof that it’s been sent.
I’ve recently made a bunch of orders via AliExpress and wonder if that’s the “new Banggood” for the global torch enthusiast community. I ordered an S21B from the Convoy site which arrived no problems.
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I ordered my first big light MT35 PLUS from AliExpress, took 3 months to arrive, 3yrs ago. Just make sure the item you want is in STOCK.
Or you may be waiting a long time for it. 
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CNCman nailed it. Make sure it is in stock before ordering. You will save your self a ton of potential headaches.
I say this every time someone brings up BG/GB/Ali discussions. A simple search will tell you all you need to know. Some good experiences and some bad. It will also tell you that patience is a must and, if you have to communicate with them, super simple sentences with no complaining about how you feel about something, is a must. 5000 word messages probably won’t be read.
People will say BG/GB/Ali is doing better when they have a good experience and, will complain they are doing worse when they have a bad experience.
Purchase at your own risk. We are buying from China, not Amazon or Ebay. Lower your expectations and increase your patience. It will all work out one way or the other. This is why we all have PayPal/Credit Card protections.
the inventory management system on these shops isn’t accurate enough. Also, the items don’t show the correct countries they can ship to. happened to me at Banggood several times that products were sold, then canceled and then refunded. Weeks later the items is “no longer available for country x”.
they will never tell you to your face what or why, the email is very generic.
Did it come in small suitcase with stickers collected from each visited country? 
Yes, that has happened to me several times, the last time was an Astrolux K01 cu a few months ago for around $35. I was very disappointed.
I won’t mention Gearbest here as I’ve had several bad experiences and I’ll end up writing 2 pages, I’ll just say never again.
Fasttech has been pretty OK for me, only a couple of problems that got worked out.
A few weeks ago a Banggood CS person accused me of lying and scamming them. When I strenuously objected someone else stepped in and found it was their mistake. To apologise they gave me some of those wonderful points. I get tired of the “smoke and mirrors” and the cleverness of BG, and also the shipping delays. That being said, I now use BG almost exclusively as they have by far the fastest shipping to this country which has a horrible postal system. 14-20 days delivered to my door. Amazing, the first time it happened I was stunned. They are partnered with a local courier company so they bypass the local postal system.
I’ve been buying online for 20 years and from China for about 8 years. In some things I have very little choice but to buy online as many things are simply not available where I live. I’ve had some problems but try not to get into the hothead mode (I really try!) as it usually doesn’t do any good. I remind myself that to them I’m just another customer among millions that they will forget about within seconds while I can have a burning resentment against them for years.
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I do believe you covered it better ‘toddcshoe’. :+1:
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Gearbest is Gearworst now.
in my case they just stole 65$ of affiliate reward. never sent these money to me, had to to it in 11.2020
there is the same story from another BLF member.
i wrote to GB several time from different adresses. they replied, but never wrote me back after i describe sitiution
GB got as much worse as BG got as much better. great choice of flashlights.
in NO situation i`ll recommend gearbest. ALL the managers who worked there for years left company. heard the same even about GB boss.
damn, even store rep didnt log in at BLF for months...
one of my subscribers told story that when his Skilhunt H03 broke soon after purchase, he tried to solve it wia warranty, but his orderd just disappeared from order list
store is totally crap and lies
no issues with banggood to sweden, usually 10-12 days and package is in my hands from china…- not bad… for me they have very good logistic shipping considering its corona times.
gearbest i havent bought in forever… seems they are crap now .
I bought an LT1 from AliExpress last month. I was concerned at how long it would take to arrive with Brexit etc, but it came in 2.5 weeks, which surprised me.
I’ve not bought anything from Banggood for a while but they always were fairly quick.
GearBest have always been slow and awful for me.