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For anyone considering buying a Xiaomi phone from Gearbest I thought I would share my cautionary tale.
tl;dr version:
- Purchased Xiaomi Mi A2 in Nov 2018 from Gearbest
- After 3 months phone was bricked by Xiaomi OTA update
- Sent back phone to repair at my cost to Gearbest - 6 weeks later they tell me it cannot be repaired
- After much back and forth Gearbest offers refund of about half the cost of the phone ($110 USD)
Despite being told it would take "2 business days", and numerous follow-ups, still waiting for my refund 4 weeks later
I purchase a Xiaomi Mi A2 in Nov of 2018 from Gearbest for my wife for Christmas. In March Xiaomi pushed out an OTA update that bricked the phone – this was a common problem reported by Mi A2 users at the time: http://en.miui.com/thread-5809179-1-2.html
Since the bootloader was locked, the only possible way to recover the phone was to disassemble it, short out the test points and flash with EDL which I did not want to risk for a phone supposedly under warranty.
I raised a support ticket with Gearbest and after some back and forth 3 days later they responded with:
After reviewing your case, it has passed 45 days money back guarantee, we regret that it can not be repaired according to our supplier.
They offered me a refund of $30 USD, which consider I paid over $200 USD for the device I thought was a joke.
I responded pointing out that:
- The device can be fixed by bridging the test points on the device and reflashing (provided evidence of this), however doing this would void their warranty
- The phone has a 1 year repair warranty provided by Gearbest and the device is only 3 months old
Gearbest then responded and said I could send the phone back to their repair center at my cost (which equated to around $20 USD) which I elected to do.
The carrier notification said the phone arrived at the repair center on 25 March. After multiple messages to customer service eventually over 6 weeks later I received the follow:
Thank you for taking the time to return your item to us.
After inspecting it carefully with our technicians, we regret to inform you that this item cannot be repaired.
To resolve this issue, we would like to offer you the following options:
….
Partial refund of 80USD, to your original payment account
-For PayPal refunds, please allow up to 48 hours for the transaction to process and appear in your account.
Now, I know for a fact that the phone WAS repairable as others had successfully reflashed their phone using EDL as I mention above. I was pretty incensed - I had now waited 2 months, had no phone and they were offering me less than half the price I paid for the phone as compensation. After some back and forth we eventually agreed on a $110 USD refund:
As you are a valued customer of us, we would like to refund 110USD on your wallet or your original payment account.
Please confirm we could go ahead.
Kindly let us know about your decision at your earliest convenience.
I was told that my refund to Paypal would take “2 business days” to show up in my account.
A week later I still had received no refund and I contacted them again, and was told that:
Due to the weekends and peak season ,there is delay for the refund . Now we have urged our related colleague to process this sooner . Please kindly wait about 1-3 working days.
After numerous follow-up contacts over the subsequent 3 weeks I have been told several times that the refund will be processed in "1-3 days" but am still waiting.
No idea if I will actually eventually receive the refund - but I would caution anyone against using Gearbest. If something goes wrong with your device, you will be fighting tooth and nail to try and get them honor their warranty. In hindsight I would have been better off just paying the premium to buy from a local reputable supplier.
Also, if you have a Xiaomi phone make sure you enable OEM Unlock on the device out of the gate! Xiaomi bricking phones with OTA updates unfortunately doesn't seem to be that uncommon.
It's the price you pay when you buy grey