Never used them , thought they would be fine. I ordered batteries 1/07….
then I ordered lights from aliexpress a few days later… Lights came quickly, batteries not so much.
I inquired on 1/27…They said 20-25 business days…I didn’t notice in their reply, since it was a weird
run on paragraph… They SHIPPED on 1/27…??? 3 weeks after I paid, and coincidentally the same day
I inquired where they were……
WTH???
Its just gearbest with shipping batteries. I ordered batteries from them at the beginning of December. Then I ordered a D80 at the end of december from them. Long story short, I got the light almost a month before the batteries.
This has been brought up a bunch of times. Their stock/inventory system is… not great. They end up over-selling and an unlucky bunch gets to wait week(s) until they get more in stock. That or they never had any in stock in the first place and you get to wait until they receive the first batch. Or you can deal with their CS and try to cancel which is all over the place as far as good/bad/mixed results go.
Yes!
Exactly. “Gearbest Grumble”, it is.
Sorry to open my can of worms here, but passing of information about these guys is the only way to release the truth to the rest about their tactics so those uninformed can be informed.
Now, standard business ethics; you treat all customers fairly, whether they buy $20 worth of goods, or $20,000 worth of goods you treat each fairly. In reality, if you are the seller, you’re selling to make profit from your work—you will probably treat the customer who paid you $20,000 with a better sense of “attention” if they have a problem to uptake with your services. Just like any business, your biggest clients have the largest effect on your sales and ultimate worth, if they were to ditch you and go somewhere else. Those big spending clients, in a sense, own part of your business if they are a regular dealer with you. Fair to say, right?
Gearbest does not employ anyone with a sense of business strategy to keep large clients. They are after sales numbers as a whole, and that only, with disregard to the individual cases, which is a formula for eventual meltdown of a business. Or like Bernie Madoff did, create an illusion that something is there, until one day the balloon swells so large it bursts—air is what’s left.
They openly lie to customers as if we clicked the “I am stupid” button when we clicked the “place order” button. They overstep Paypal themselves, and which by law of contractual agreement with Paypal, would be grounds for a class-action suit against them for the legality of their sum of actions. What does this mean to say they overstep Paypal? I once placed an order well over $1000. This order had orders all around it, before, and after, which were $200-900 orders, all shipped to the same address, over a large time-frame. I noticed things after this order were showing up from them, things very close to this order in date had already showed up, but this specific order contained a lot of multiples of two specific items. I noticed the order was stuck in the processing stage, unlike the others. The other orders ALL, each and every one, had photos of the package sent when the order shipped. Paypal was used so that they could act as protection from Gearbest if something went wrong. When I contacted Gearbest about that order and why it was stuck in processing, no reply for 5 days. When I read their reply, it stated, “You have been flagged for credit card confirmation”. Now what does that mean? I thought to myself. They told me I had to scan and photocopy a, get this, “drivers license, or proof of photo ID”. That’s overstepping Paypal, clear and simple. Paypal is responsible for verifying the purchaser is valid. Clearly in my case, nothing had changed, so there was no reason at all to flag me for anything. Gearbest was merely creating a scenario to buy themselves time. I know this now. After I contacted them, the next day I get an email that the entire order shipped, with generic photos of nothing, no packages, for each shipment ID. This had me worried. After weeks, I received about 1/7th of the order in an envelope. Now I was really worried and ready to open my dispute against them. I had time, so I decided to chill out, simply because I was expediting everything, and thought maybe they sent it regular China post, or whatever they call it. Just the other day I received the other portion of that item, but not the complete order. Now they still owe me about 4/7ths of that order. It has not come. My full belief is that the order was taken without any of the stock actually on hand, which explains exactly why they would send generic pictures, and a very small part of the order in one bag, then finally the rest of that item. But I’m still worried, as that order isn’t completed! On going in progress I await to finish that story.
They do come up with repetitive lies, as if no log is kept of ongoing communications about an order. It’s as if each time you contact them about the same issue, they wait a few days, maybe 3-7 in some cases, then every single response I have EVER got back from them begins with: “I am very sorry for the delay on this reply…”. Or something very close to those words, and it’s like you restart from stage 1 all over again. I know this because I’ve contacted them about 20 different orders, and it’s nuts, almost like it’s taught to their reps in training to create as much of a time gap as they can when dealing with issues. With these repeated time gaps, the dollar value is falling, while theirs is climbing. Hmm! Makes you wonder what the real strategy is, doesn’t it? :GRADE:
They introduce their own questions, that have to do with nothing at all when you raise an obvious problem that is their fault, so that you are also a part of the problem; you become tied to the scandal which you seek to raise attention over. Just like my story above about the “ID confirmation”; they knew darn well it was the same person ordering. This is real thoughtful scamming, if you ask me. It’s in some paralleled way the “reverse psychology” dilemma, for lack of appropriate words.
I won’t go on about other problems they didn’t resolve as I don’t have the time right now, but just be warned. An order from them, is a gamble with them. That’s the best way I can put it.
When ordering batteries, if you live in the US, it’s best to order from a site in the US. The only places I order batteries from are mtnelectronics, imrbatteries, illumn, andrew-amanda, and orbtronic. Usually if one of the sites I use is out of stock then one of the others will have what I need. I know a lot of people go for “cheap” but I like to get my stuff when I need/want it. The prices really aren’t cheap enough for me to wait on something to arrive from China or play the Gearbest game. I have ordered from Gearbest myself and the only complaint I have is the time it takes for them to even ship an item. I try my very best not to do business with them for this very reason. I have always gotten what I’ve ordered from them though…so that’s a plus. Banggood is a little faster on the shipping from China but I rarely order anything from their China warehouse. One great thing Banggood has going for them is their US warehouse. I can’t say enough great things about it as far as shipping and stocking goes. They stock way more lights in their US based warehouse than Gearbest does and their shipping is free & fast. I usually get stuff that I order from their US warehouse just as fast as I get stuff when I order it from mtnelectronics or the other sites that I mentioned previously. Also, it’s best to support your forum compadre’s stores as much as possible…especially when prices are reasonable.
This is a good summary. The prices are usually great, the service can be spotty. I have had only good experiences, other people have had only bad experiences.
There’s not a whole lot of good grumbling can do though, there are already numerous “gearbest grumble” threads.
I’d be one of the last people to defend GearBest but when buying anything with multiple items from any of the inese sellers it is always best to split up the order into many smaller orders. If one item is out of stock they hold up the entire order to avoid multiple shipments from the same order. As a result noting ships until they have the entire order ready to go unless you raise a fuss about it.
The best I’ve come across is FastTech. If an item in your order is delayed they ask if you want them to ship what they have after about a weeks time.
It’s all part of the game so try to make my orders as small as possible. Plus, if a large order gets lost you are out the whole thing. With smaller orders only a small part of it might get lost. I’ve learned, like many here, the hard way.
+1
I treat most of my purchases through foreign vendors (and eBay, too) as risk-reward deals.
- The rewards are in pricing.
Overall, I’m satisfied with the value that I’m getting out of these deals.
Your shipping choice makes a big difference from GB. Sweden direct took forever. 6 weeks+ I think. International Bridge took 14-17 days.
I got them today… In retrospect IF they shipped on 1/27, the time wasn’t bad….20 days or so, but factoring in I paid on 1/07……
Sheesh
They probably shipped it before, but didn’t update the tracking number until you asked. Not unusual…
Both excellent, use paypal and if it never comes your covered.
I suppose yea, paypal… Still it was like 40 days. Unacceptable… I’ll try AliExpress or Fastech next time…