GearBest -- what a waste of time!

fcop

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I had a bad experience with GearBest. Bought a dash camera from them in September paying via PayPal. A week goes by -- camera not shipped. I send them an e-mail asking when it will be shipped. A day later I get a response containing 3 paragraphs of text all talking about some custom issues with iPhone 6 (?!). Because I did not buy iPhone 6 from them (only a dashcam), I point this out in my next e-mail to them and ask the 2-nd time when the dashcam will be shipped. They come back saying please wait 2-5 business days.

Long story short, 3 weeks later the camera still not shipped. They keep promising it will be shipped within next 2-5 business days. Asked for a refund. They promptly cancelled my order and promised a refund in the next 2-10 business days. Opened a case with Paypal and got my money back on the next day. Bottom line -- wasted 3 weeks of time + too much back and forth on e-mails with them.
 
I'm sure they have happy customers too, when you run a business on the smallest of margins though there are always compromises, customer service and after sales service often suffer as a result
 
I appreciate you posting!

for dashcams im only going to support USA based distributors. @Pier28 has been very helpful in customer service and prompt shipments. sure this narrows what products one can get, but i much rather have top customer service any day.

again many thanks for the post!
 
I haven't bought a dashcam from them, but I have bought and received several other items, though it does take a long time. The most expensive item I bought was a $45 battery charger. I treat them the same as DX and a few other overseas sellers, don't spend too much and don't expect to get the item in less than 30-45 days. Once you get close to 45 days, inquire about the shipping status and warn them of the 45 day Paypal limit. I haven't had to file a charge back yet and now that Paypal is extending the limit to 180 days, there should be much less of a chance at losing money.

KuoH

Long story short, 3 weeks later the camera still not shipped. They keep promising it will be shipped within next 2-5 business days. Asked for a refund.
 
Hey Guys,

I am pretty sure they have happy customers. I also buy stuff from other online Chinese shops and most of the time it works out OK. And sometimes the shipment takes more than a month to land on my door step -- no biggie, we all know that's how they roll. However, what was different here is this:
1) They fail to ship item in 2-5 business days as advertised on the web page. Some other Chinese shops I dealt with did take longer to ship things out, but they also advertised them with longer ship times right on their web site.
2) When I send them a question, they respond with some nonsense having nothing to do with my order.
3) Once you put them back on the right track, they start making and breaking promises of 2-5 business day shipment like there is no tomorrow.

All of these issues together (and on the same single order) produce an experience that makes you think you should have bought it somewhere else.
Nothing wrong buying it from China, just some other seller... that's all.

fcop
 
going by your timeline of events it sounds like you might have ordered right on the holiday period, worst time for any kind of freight if that's the case, they still screwed up it seems anyway but it would certainly be more common at this time
 
going by your timeline of events it sounds like you might have ordered right on the holiday period

You are correct. They actually pulled this one out when one of their 2-5 business days promises has passed with no shipment telling me that it was China National Holiday day that time. Then I started wondering what other Chinese Holidays may be forthcoming that I have no clue of that may cause more delay in the shipment. That's when I thought it's best to pull the plug and buy it from some other place.

And I would probably not even bother writing this up here if they sent me a refund at the same time as they cancelled my order. Usually these two things go together or very close in timing. Instead GearBest says OK we cancelled your order now wait up to 10 bus. days for a refund.

Cheers.
 
still piss poor customer service.

put up a note saying there is a holiday or something and be more realistic with shipping times, especially for the overseas market (USA, etc).
 
I've had one item from them and it was a good experience - on the flipside you really did order at the wrong time there.

Was there no warning on the website saying that they'd be shut for the week for National Holiday as various other Chinese websites I used had a banner and message on every page?

As an idea I ordered various things from China at the exact same time - one was the week before National Holiday on the 29th of September and they managed to sneak that one out early and it just arrived yesterday. The other order was a few days later but I'll see how long that takes as it will be behind the backlog of other stuff that accumulated during the week off.

I'd ordered a couple of other things as well which I paid $80 express shipping for. You're probably unaware from the sounds of it but in China at the moment shipping took a battering not only because the iPhone 6 was taking up probably the majority of the cargo space (Apple launches happen every year so avoid ordering at that time if you don't want extra delays) but there was also a massive customs exercise where they were looking for fake goods and currency and loads of stuff was stuck in a queue for checking. It took DHL ten days to clear one package through customs. Totally out of their control and that was just a G90 dashcam. Another company I ordered from knew of the issue in Shenzhen and that package was routed differently using a different courier and took literally a few days door to door. Likewise something is coming from Korea and is coming at warp speed right now :)

Maybe Alta @GearBest could help?

If you do want something quick local vendors are always the way forward as they can have it in your hands in a couple of days. To be fair last time I used Gearbest it was express shipping and took four days which was great.
 
you really did order at the wrong time there.

Well, we know that Holidays can delay shipments and can deal with that. Although, I did not see any banner on their web site announcing possible delays when I was placing my order. At any rate, I do not think that was the problem here. The problem was poor customer service/communication -- they keep e-mailing you some generic boilerplate emails and do not deliver on their words. Good news is that not all Chinese shops/sellers are like that and there are many good alternatives out there. GearBest was lowest price though.
 
I have had good experiences with GearBest as well and good communication from Alta. My SJ4000 WiFi was express shipped DHL and still the Holiday delayed it one week. Unfortunately these places don't have big call centers like many big companies and to offer such low prices and free shipping from the other side of the world means there will be some compromises. GearBest has the lowest prices and delivers real products, that makes them good in my book. Fasttech made me wait a month and a half and sent me a cheaper version of what I bought.
 
@fcop Thank you so much for your feedback. Could you please let me know your order number or something, So i could check it for you?
We do have National Day vacation in Oct, But I'd like to find out where is wrong in this situation, we'd love to improve our service when problem founded.

Many thanks.

-Alta
-Gearbest
 
@fcop Thank you so much for your feedback. Could you please let me know your order number or something, So i could check it for you?
We do have National Day vacation in Oct, But I'd like to find out where is wrong in this situation, we'd love to improve our service when problem founded.

Many thanks.

-Alta
-Gearbest

There's not much that you can do for me at this point as I have already spent too much of my time on this $45 order. The last thing I need now is another round of explanations, clarifications, excuses, etc but in public forum this time. If you are interested in improving your service take a look at difference between pay dates and ship dates of your G1WH orders. Pull out those that exceed 5 bus. days, see how many you have. That's the scope of the problem. Take a look at Support Ticket history on those orders and see if you can find those responses that speak nonsense. Hint -- filter on iPhone 6. Another hint -- analyze responses signed by Joyce. Good luck.
 
There's not much that you can do for me at this point as I have already spent too much of my time on this $45 order. The last thing I need now is another round of explanations, clarifications, excuses, etc but in public forum this time. If you are interested in improving your service take a look at difference between pay dates and ship dates of your G1WH orders. Pull out those that exceed 5 bus. days, see how many you have. That's the scope of the problem. Take a look at Support Ticket history on those orders and see if you can find those responses that speak nonsense. Hint -- filter on iPhone 6. Another hint -- analyze responses signed by Joyce. Good luck.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Gearbest will try our best to offer the best service and products.
 
gearbest is the worst! I ordered a g1w-c that was supposed to be 140 lens. needless to say the cameras weren't 140 and they never sent out emails saying this. They just updated a forum and expected people to find out. after a month of getting the run around about my camera not being shipped and bla bla bla, I ask for a refund and they didnt give it to me.. had to file a paypal claim. Gearbest is a horrible company that is very deceitful and lie right to you in emails. I've been lurking on here for a while still looking for a dash cam sorry for the negative first post, but gearbest truly sucks as a retailer. i'd stay fay away from them IMHO. ..
 
You shouldn't lose anything due to conversion if you paid by PayPal, a cancelled transaction returns exactly what they deducted
 
What did GearBest say about the mistake? Are they resending the cameras a faster way?
 
I don't need (and I don't want) express shipping. I'll be glad to have them sent.

Dera MIA,

we wish to apologize for the difficulties you have been experienced.

First, your Paypal status shows "Unverified", and the financial department can not confirm payment security. Second, you placed 3 orders and the recipient countries are inconsistent. Theoretically, our internal system will cancel the order in this context. This is all our However, our Customer Service noticed you order and sent you a email for some attachments to confirm the payment information to ensure we both property safety. Since we did not get your reply about that, so your order was canceled. We feel very sorry for cancel your order for above reasons.

Please tell me what you think will be the best way to do with this, I will try my best to solve this problem for you.

Looking forward to your reply.

Best,
Gearbest
 
if your account is not verified the seller is offered no protection at all by PayPal so totally at the sellers discretion as to whether they ship or not, if one of the 3rd party insurance companies is used that do fraud protection they'll also reject it, personally whenever using PayPal if someone with an unverified account sends me money I automatically refund it, it's far too easy to get ripped off these days
 
o_O what do I think about "what" ? What do you propose ?

Dear MIA,

We do feel very sorry about the Paypal confirmation, and the inconsistency of recipient countries issues. However, this is how our web work and we believe what we did is trying to ensure we both property safety.

We would never want to let any our customers down, so we would like to work together to resolve the issue to your satisfaction.

Best,
Gearbest
 
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