GearBest Scam Review – (Complaints of Scam?)

This is an updated review regarding GearBest.

GearBest, found online at GearBest.com, is an online retail platform that enables consumers to browse a wide selection of consumer goods that are said to be shipped directly from manufacturers.

Used by tens of millions of online shoppers on a monthly basis, there is no denying that GearBest appears as a reputable consumer shopping platform but through the midsts of all their achievements there is still an emerging pattern of complaints that needs to be addressed.

To learn more regarding common consumer complaints plaguing GearBest and if you can trust this online manufacturer-to-consumer business we invite you to read our unbiased review.

GearBest Oversight

GearBest provides a desirable business model for most online shoppers due to the fact that the ideology in employment revolves around cutting out the middle man enabling consumers to save money by shopping via their platform.

By effectively cutting out the middle-man, in this case 3rd party venues and retailers, consumers are able to purchase goods at a rate cheaper than they could elsewhere.

According to GearBest.com, they work with over 1,000 top bands like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei to name a few.

Global delivery of purchased goods are said to be handled with express shipping carriers such as DHL, EMS and FedEx.

From eco-friendly packaging to delivery of your product is said to take 5 days.

Returns and exchanges are eligible up to 30 days while GearBest is said to provide a 1 year warranty for free repairs.

Among the category of goods supported would be:

• Appliances
• Cell Phones & Accessories
• Computers, Tablets & Office
• Consumer Electronics
• Drones, Toys & Hobbies
• Health & Personal Care
• Home Improvement & Tools
• Home & Garden
• Industrial & Scientific
• Motor & Car Electronics
• Outdoors, Fitness & Sports
• Shoes & Bags
• Watches & Jewelry
• Apparel & Accessories

GearBest states on their About Us page that they have 46 warehouses worldwide while a few of them can be found in the USA, Spain, England, Poland and Czech Republic.

The distribution of consumer goods from a multitude of warehouses should, in theory, render fasting shipping and delivery times for purchase orders – however, as you will learn shortly, a pattern of consumer complaints has developed around the business not delivering items within the promised delivery date.

GearBest Reviews

GearBest.com reflects a strong pool of both positive and negative consumer feedback.

As a whole, however, GearBest tends to reflect far more positive ratings than negative.

For instance, at TrustPilot, GearBest.com reflected a 4 out of 5 star rating out of 25,812 reviews as of September 16th, 2019.

Shared below are a couple of the most recent positive and negative reviews we found:

Romcos – “Great store with excellent support. Very good items for me and my family. Whether with shopping or with support. In my problems, I only met with helpful and kind support. Thank you very much.”

Feilim Desmond – “Disgracefully slow and uncommunicative customer service following a phone that went missing during transit. Phone was shipped from Germany to Ireland but went missing somewhere along the way. Instead of trusting the customer they will make you jump through hoops before putting in a claim with the shipping company. Over 2 months and I am out of pocket 450 euro and have no phone.”

Ricardo Mendes – “I have shop on gearbest for a quite long time and I didn’t have any problems with it. Good customer service”

Colin – “I ordered a phone on the 4th of July 2019.kept on contacting them to find out way I didn’t receive.thay said it got lost during shipping.reorderd on the 9th of August got lost again.asked for a refund no luck.only got my money back a week ago.only because I paid by PayPal.or I wouldn’t have got my money back.customer service rubbish don’t buy off this company”

We should note that GearBest seems quite professional and quick to resolve disputes within the TrustPilot review platform.

These reviews, and more, can be found at TrustPilot.com.

Site History

GearBest.com was privately registered on December 17th, 2013 through the Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd from an undisclosed registrant contact supposedly based out of Guang Dong.

According to SimiliarWeb, GearBest.com reflected a global rank of 630 and is ranked as the 6th most popular site in regards to computers, electronics and technology.

Last month alone, GearBest.com supported over 67 million visitors.

Site visitors based out of the United States contribute for the largest portion of incoming site traffic (over 11%) while over 51% of the sites traffic stems from referral, social media and display advertisement based sources.

There is no denying that GearBest is a widely relied upon and utilized retail platform.

GearBest Complaints

Despite the thousands of positive reviews revolving around GearBest there are complaints that should and need to be addressed.

When visiting the Better Business Bureau we were confronted with the following:

Apart from that, the BBB has rendered GearBest a BBB rating of “F.”

173 customer complaints have been disclosed while 41 of them were resolved over the past 12 months.

Shared below are some of the most recent complaints we found:

“False advertising on prices in the emails they send out. Definitely a bait and switch tactic. They also cancel orders after they take your payment and charge an “international transaction fee” that they refuse to refund even though they cancel your order.”

“They advertised a $50 off coupon for new members. When I signed up they split the coupons into multiples that didn’t add up if not being used I tried to contact them and explain that they should have worded it $50 in savings not as a $50 off coupon I even sent them a photo of their advertisement and was disappointed in their treatment.”

“On JANUARY I bought a camera and an accessories kit. According to the page they were both due to shop within days. I already received the accessories kit but Gearbest does not ship the camera. It’s still being sold, people are receiving it and posting reviews but three months have passed and THEY HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO SHIP THE PRODUCT. They keep telling me to choose another product, so I am supposed to eat the accessories kit, right? Or shove it somewhere cause it won’t fit another camera. They are selling products without stock or are just unable to ship them. This has been my worst experience with online shopping.”

“I haven’t received my order or a email for over 3 weeks. I had to register and went to contact us and it just kept giving me back and forth wanting email. I tried online chat nothing happened kept saying sign in I did and would start all over again. I couldn’t even find a phone number or address.”

“I ordered some merchandise from Gearbest.com. I made sure I gave the correct address since I had moved, I even when in and updated my new address in account information. They sent the merchandise to my former address, they try to blame me for putting incorrect address. After some back and forth I showed them I had paid extra insurance in case merchandise is not lost, broken or not delivered. They only offered to reimburse me less than half of my purchase price”

More consumer reviews regarding GearBest.com can be found at SiteJabber (4.5/5.0 Rating).

Is GearBest.com Trustworthy?

There is no easy way to address this question for 2 reasons.

The first being that GearBest is shopped by millions of consumers of an annual basis.

Therefore, for a retail platform to reach that kind of reputability, obviously they are rendering a service of value.

However, the second reason now, GearBest also reflects a generous pool of consumer complaints.

While this can be suspected with a business conducting tens of thousands of transactions per day, the pattern of complaints laid out by the BBB is worrisome to say the least.

With this being said, we do believe GearBest to be trustworthy but perhaps not the best shopping outlet available due to the volume and nature of the complaints.

GearBest Review Conclusion

GearBest.com may be the online shopping platform that you’ve been needing to take your business to the next level or simply they could serve as your one-stop-shop for when you are trying to shop within a budget.

Before shopping with GearBest it is important that you conduct further research into their platform, you can do this by visiting the feedback below this review while visiting the review portals nested within our review above.

The more educated you are regarding GearBest the less likely you may be to encounter the pattern of complaints warned about at the Better Business Bureau.

If you have a shopping experience with GearBest or insight to share we ask that you please share your feedback with us below!