Here's Why We'll Be Listing GearBest Deals Again

Here at DealNews, our duty to our readers is to provide only the best deals from the most reliable vendors. That's why we stopped listing GearBest offers earlier this year, when we started receiving complaints about the company. But recently, we decided to take it one step further.

Our team negotiated better customer service with the store, so that our readers can still take advantage of the brand's deals without the risk of a poor experience. GearBest agreed to some changes, which we've outlined below, along with the history of our readers' disputes.

Many GearBest Customers Had No Problems...

For several months, we listed deals from GearBest with very few complaints. We had many readers who ordered from them and had no issues except for a delayed shipping or arrival time. However, these issues were routinely noted in our deals from GearBest; in our editors' eyes, a long shipping time seemed like a reasonable tradeoff for good prices on lesser-known, but well-reviewed, tech brands from China. This is a commonplace policy we employ for some vendors on eBay or Amazon Marketplace.

But Complaints Began to Intensify in Recent Months

In January and February, we began receiving comments from readers saying they'd seen GearBest's BBB score drop. At that time, complaints about the company to us had not changed — we still weren't seeing any significant problems regarding orders placed from our deals.

Unfortunately though, our readers began experiencing trouble with GearBest deals. In mid-April, we received numerous formal complaints about shipping issues, return issues, and items arriving broken, among other things. The volume of these negative complaints led us to stop listing GearBest deals in early May. We wanted to investigate the situation further.

A Better Plan for Customer Service

Our team reached out to GearBest to troubleshoot how the company can better address customer service issues. A representative from the company assured us it will tend to all complaints from our readers, and — as of this writing — the store has resolved all formal complaints that we had received and forwarded to the company.

But for readers who didn't log their complaint with DealNews, or for future problems, GearBest agreed to open a channel for better customer service. The store has provided us with two direct contacts that we will forward complaints to via the following address: complaints-gearbest@dealnews.com. Through that email, a shopper can speak with a GearBest representative, and DealNews will simultaneously be alerted to the issue. (Additionally, readers can always log a concern at our complaints page.)

If a reader receives a faulty item, GearBest has assured us it will provide a full refund. Moreover, the order department will resolve all lost package issues.

We're Listing Deals Again, But We're Being Cautious

With this plan in place, DealNews has decided to start listing GearBest deals again. However, rest assured that we'll be closely monitoring the above email account, to ensure that this arrangement works for our readers. Moreover, we're going to start by only listing deals with sufficient stock and shorter delivery times; GearBest recently launched a new in-stock function that will reportedly indicate the ship time to customers.

So while we are cautiously recommending GearBest for deals again, we plan to reevaluate this policy if we see another increase in complaints. We ask that our readers keep us fully aware of all concerns during this time. You can share your thoughts in the comments below, send us a message via our complaints page, or reach out directly with the aforementioned email address.