Rating: GearBest.com [AVOID]

[sb56637]

Due to the multiple serious reports of unscrupulous business practices, I just gave GearBest an AVOID rating and am terminating their banner advertising contract.

[gearbest]

@Tom E

How about the ticket I opened on this light: http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_44314.html. Ticket #T55053214531. I said you listed it as a SS bezel when in fact it’s aluminum, and you (CS) never answered the issue in the ticket replies, and you never corrected it in the product listing.

What happened there? From the pictures, it’s hard to tell whether it’s aluminum or SS, but your support person never ever would answer to the Stainless Steel bezel issue in the ticket communication. You refunded me $2 on the light, but still failed to correct the listing, which is all I was asking for.

fixed, thanks

[gearbest]

@Tom E

Merchants don’t define color tints - that’s kind of odd, to say the least. The commonly accepted definition is this:

“Manufacturers produce white LEDs with outputs classed as “warm white” (2600 to 3700 K CCT), “neutral white” (3700 to 5000 K CCT) and “cool white” (5000-to-8300 K).”

Quoted from an article copied from Electronic Products by DigiKey here: http://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2013/apr/defining-the-color-characteristics-of-white-leds, another article stating over 5000K is cool white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature.

3C and 3D CREE tints are considered the top end of neutral, so 3A and 3B’s are considered cool white.

5500K is considered cool white pretty much everywhere by the manufacturers - a retailer just can’t make stuff up… Well, they can .

Hi Tom E, thanks and have fixed too, In China many suppliers define the neutral white from 4500k-5500k, it may be different from other places, but in order to make no misunderstanding, we have removed the neutral white descriptions, just left the 5500k

[MountainKing]

Add website issues to that: See my PM

[marcl]

This is a shame really. Whilst I have had plenty of orders go missing from august and sept, they have all been reshipped and received. I dont understand how my olight s30 was sent via china post and arrived in two weeks and yet i have stuff missing for over 100 days. For me the CS dept have been good but you do have to be assertive. I guess the only people who can tell us what happened are gearbest.

I hope gearbest get their stuff sorted and win back our trust.

[cavesprings]

@gearbest

please have a look for our product’s title, our title describs the colour temperature is 5500k.

Nothing in your product’s title is accurate. If I had to match up the tint with this chart,
GB BLF LuckySun D80-SE Need long tubes? -3/3/16 I’d say it was in the bottom left corner, around 7000k to 8000k. I’m sure some other members with a better eye for tint that bought this light could pinpoint it more closely.

[chuckhov]

7k-8k seems about what it is to me too.

-Chuck

[Tom_E]

I've been critical, but I still buy and, sometimes, recommend GearBest. I hope this banning is temporary, and can be lifted if GearBest can show progress. Again, all I want to see is a pattern of improvement, and there are some things they are improving on, as noted by corrections made to listings above. Of course there's a lot more issues goin on. For example, if I ever can find a 3 star review that we would deem negative actually posted, that would be a 180 degree turn-around for sure.

My shipments/deliveries have been pretty decent with them. I have a history of 44 orders from them, maybe 1 or 2 that didn't arrive, and no long delays in shipping. This about the same as all the other vendors, at least for me.

[gearbest]

@sb56637

Due to the multiple serious reports of unscrupulous business practices, I just gave GearBest an AVOID rating and am terminating their banner advertising contract.

We are very sorry and sad to see BLF admin has rated GB the “Avoid” rating. GB wishes to announce that we have been intensively trying to improve our services, as you may see a number of our customers also are starting to receive their orders faster than before. Those that are in transit and are already very late to arrive, how we wish we can still make it faster. Please be assured that we are currently doing our best to improve our services and hopefully regain your trust. Again, we are really sorry, and hopefully give us more another chance.

[gearbest]

@Tom E

I’ve been critical, but I still buy and, sometimes, recommend GearBest. I hope this banning is temporary, and can be lifted if GearBest can show progress. Again, all I want to see is a pattern of improvement, and there are some things they are improving on, as noted by corrections made to listings above. Of course there’s a lot more issues goin on. For example, if I ever can find a 3 star review that we would deem negative actually posted, that would be a 180 degree turn-around for sure.

My shipments/deliveries have been pretty decent with them. I have a history of 44 orders from them, maybe 1 or 2 that didn’t arrive, and no long delays in shipping. This about the same as all the other vendors, at least for me.

Hi Tom E, Thanks for your kindly understanding and supporting

[sb56637]

@Tom E

I hope this banning is temporary, and can be lifted if GearBest can show progress.

Just to be clear, GearBest is not banned from BLF, since I am sure that some of our members will continue to need their customer service here. Rather, they are labeled with an AVOID rating due to warn current and potential customers of their unscrupulous business ethics. And yes, if they show a consistent pattern of progress and a major turnaround, the AVOID rating can be lifted.

[DanielM]

deals are nothing if the people buying them never receive them

[Curetia]

I have not read the whole thread.

You should do it… For example you should not only read this rating thread… Read the few threads about the problems the last 4 month and than you can post your opinion again…

• Good and frequent communication on BLF forum

That doesnt work like this… I want to get support from the support team and I dont want to go for any problem to a forum and write there something…

• Some bangood affiliate linkers have said negative things about gearbest.

Because they have had problems in the past with their shippments?

• Some people are just negative on a daily basis with a black cloud following them, and these individuals have made many many negative posts regarding this, probably 20 or 50 or more from one person??? maybe they are just really negative or maybe they are getting paid to say negative stuff?

Can you proof this? I dont think so…

And the problems which are posted are not only from one person… If gearbest send a package out and the post stamp is 2 month later than it smells like cheating customers by change the order status to shipped without shipping it in real…

[kuoh]

I don’t know what the problem is for others, but so far I have gotten all of my orders, though their tracking leaves much to be desired. I have made 23 orders beginning in April 2014 with items from $0.10 to $120 and all except the last 2 which are still in transit have arrived intact, some barely so, due to the use of cheap bubble envelopes instead of a proper box. Granted they’re not the fastest, but I haven’t had much trouble other than the shipping speed. However with their new forced tracking fee policy, I can see myself buying less of the smaller toys, gadgets and batteries.

KuoH

[pilotdog68]

Obviously many people have not received good service (or really any “service”) from Gearbest, so I understand SB’s decision. I do hope that GB can continue to improve and regain the trust of the community.

In the meantime, I am not the boycotting type and I have never had an issue with them personally, so I will continue to take advantage of their great deals until I do happen to get screwed myself.

However I will say that I am always more careful with GB than I am with BG or FT regarding authenticity of an item before I purchase. That is mostly due to their questionable wording in the descriptions of some products.

[Ormbett]

@can

But a few pros are :

- Currently offers probably the best and most frequent deals and promotions on BLF

- Probably the top or second most used seller for BLF members

• Good and frequent communication on BLF forum

I really like gearbest and they have not paid me anything to say this. And I do agree some have had multiple problems, but I have not.

- Some bangood affiliate linkers have said negative things about gearbest.

- Some people are just negative on a daily basis with a black cloud following them, and these individuals have made many many negative posts regarding this, probably 20 or 50 or more from one person??? maybe they are just really negative or maybe they are getting paid to say negative stuff?

• gearbest clearly does a LOT of volume with BLF members and this will result in more bad experiences reported, -it is just math

I agree 9001 % and I have read all the posts. Gearbest have got much negative feedback that they deserve but all the hate and accusations of being liars and scammers doesnt feel very constructive.

[MountainKing]

Novermber 9??? Dude you’re way off….Here is mine! I am not even sure that damn thing shipped yet though…

order date:
W1510210242041187 Oct 21, 2015 17:42:04 PM

“Ship date” supposedly though after I went through ten’s of hoops communicating with them…
Nov 15, 2015 08:59:25 AM PST

[Pregulla]

So far my experience with GB was reasonable. I didn’t have any problem with my orders that was not solved via CS, never needed PayPal protection.
Defective flashlight ($6, crushed LED), defective DMM (temperature sensor not working and no back light, $13) - got a replacement after sending them pics/video describing the problem. They have offered me a resend or refund, I’ve chosen a resend in both cases and got a replacement. In both cases they didn’t ask to ship the defective item back.
Some of the orders that didn’t reach me, they have resent to me.

The shipping times have improved lately, but don’t rely on that, one of my last orders it took over a month to ship (ordered on oct. 9 , shipped nov 12, all items in that order were marked as shipped within 5 days). If delivery time is important I just know not to order from them.
It took for them over two weeks to publish my reviews. Contacting their CS didn’t help and it was the only time I’ve used their BLF support. Next day after contacting CS_Gearbest my review were published.

Their CS may be slow at times but eventually they get the issues solved, at least in my cases.

[MountainKing]

$0.1 flash sale sk68 clone: Never arrived
$3 flash sale charger MC1: Never arrived

I seriously never bothered starting a paypal claim for the absurdity of these petty amounts. I keep my claims for more important amounts or when I am seriously pissed off (even for $1 then) I am sure other people got ripped off. Do not worry though. For every dollar they ripped me off, they paid it Hehe!

[hank]

it’s extremely unethical for a company to bribe (what GearBest calls a “big gift”) people to only post positive reviews and tell them to lie about their reviews being unsolicited by the merchant.

That’s what personally ticked me off. A direct personal invitation to help them lie to potential customers and be rewarded for doing it.

I responded directly and pointed out they’re offering to compensate me for doing something that’s not only unethical but illegal where I live.
And they certainly know where I live.
No reply.

The FTC revised its Endorsement Guides in October 2009 to keep them up-to-date with current marketing techniques, such as blogging and word-of-mouth advertising. The Guides point out that marketers using these new techniques are subject to the same truthful advertising laws that other forms of advertising always have been. That means, among other things, that marketers who are compensated to promote or review a product should disclose it.

Advertisement Endorsements

It makes me wonder if there are other online forums/discussions/communities-of-interest where GB also promotes themselves.
Is there a drone-copter forum? A slinky-nightgown forum? An android-phone forum? Are they doing this same sort of marketing elsewhere?

Yeah, there are good people there doing good cooperative work with folks here.

It’s someone in marketing or purchasing who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, allowing the fakery to thrive.

Example from the above-linked FTC page:

September 2, 2015

A California-based online entertainment network has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it engaged in deceptive advertising by paying “influencers” to post YouTube videos endorsing Microsoft’s Xbox One system and several games. The influencers paid by Machinima, Inc., failed to adequately disclose that they were being paid for their seemingly objective opinions, the FTC charged.
Under the proposed settlement, Machinima is prohibited from similar deceptive conduct in the future, and the company is required to ensure its influencers clearly disclose when they have been compensated in exchange for their endorsements.
“When people see a product touted online, they have a right to know whether they’re looking at an authentic opinion or a paid marketing pitch,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. “That’s true whether the endorsement appears in a video or any other media.”