Gearbest was, until this year, one of the reference stores when it comes to buying products in China , by sending products from the Asian country to the whole world, including Spain. Along with big names like Banggood or AliExpress, the store even had warehouses in Europe to receive its products earlier, as well as to avoid the collection of VAT after the new European law. However, the store has not shown any signs of life for days, and the news that we are hearing does not look good.
Throughout 2021, user complaints against the store continued to increase. Orders not being shipped, customer service not responding , etc. The store increased its prices throughout the year, in addition to imposing stricter conditions for external sellers who advertised on the store’s marketplace.
Lack of stock and orders that were not shipped
These changes were made in order to clean up accounts that were in the red. Little by little the store was plunging into a spiral of financial problems, where there were products that were not shipped, and users who did not pay with PayPal had serious problems receiving refunds. Thus, in recent months, the store barely had stock of products.
Various websites began to warn that Gearbest was ceasing to be a trustworthy website to make purchases in China , where they also did not respond to any emails. Now, the web is gone, and it hasn’t worked since this weekend . When trying to log in, Gearbest does not work and I get a message saying “Invalid URL The requested URL” [no URL] “, is invalid.” The latest version available in Google cache is from September 7.
Thus, currently nothing is known about users who had orders pending shipment or arrival. If you didn’t pay with PayPal, it may be very difficult to get your money back. The store hasn’t even notified its third-party sellers and affiliates of the closure. On their Twitter account in Japan, the last tweet is from August 5, while on Facebook, where they had a lot of activity, the last post is from July 7.
In June, Gearbest’s parent , Global Top E-Commerce Co., Ltd (previously known as Shenzhen Globalegrow Electronic Commerce Co. Ltd ), filed for bankruptcy and stopped paying wages to workers. The company had 3,000 employees, and at the beginning of the year they only had 500. From Poland they say that the company has already laid off all the workers . The bankruptcy process is currently under review. The value of the company on the stock market has not stopped falling in recent years, since they have been losing money for years .
Gearbest started operations in 2014 , and in a short time it became one of the largest online export stores in China , selling all kinds of mobiles and gadgets at affordable prices. In the last year they had even added electric bikes.
The bankruptcy of a company does not have to imply its end. Someone can get hold of its assets at low cost and restore operations, but in this case it is difficult for this to happen, so buyers do not have much to do with the web, since they are not responding to emails nor in other ways of contact. The price competition from other websites, and the new European VAT law have been too much for a website that seemed too big to end this way.
