Gear Best ~ One of the Most Sketchy Businesses I've Encountered

Gearbest.com has a lot of great tech at low prices and after checking out other sources to see if they are legit I decided to order the Anet A8 3D printer for $169 +$23 shipping at 60% off. I sign up with their service and pay with my PayPal account and I'm told that my order has gone through. The next day I check to see if it has been shipped out yet and I have a ticket notification and it reads so

"Dear ******,

Thank you for your order at Gearbest. The transaction is now on hold and being reviewed by Gearbest Quality Assurance Program. This is a standard process of payment safety review and your items will be tracked once pass payment Verification. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience it may cause. For more information please read Gearbest Payment Verification.

Please help to provide requested document for completing transaction review and the document you provide should be clear enough to read. Please reply this email directly with attachment below 2MB per picture.

  • A Proof of Identity, which document you provide should show the name of PayPal account holder. Such as Residence Card, Driver License, or other legal governmental documents.

-If you feel uncomfortable to provide a Proof of Identity, please provide a Proof of Address, such as last-3-month Bill Statement of water, electricity or mobile.

Furthermore, it is suggested that verifying your PayPal account would have better service from PayPal and more safety for your payment.

  • Here are the steps to verify your PayPal account by using a credit card, and more details please follow instructions on PayPal website.

  • Log into your PayPal account.

  • Click Wallet.

  • Click the card that needs to be confirmed.

  • Click confirm card.

  • Wait a 4-digit code appears on your card statement.

  • Click Wallet after 4-digit PayPal code ready.

  • Click the card that needs to be confirmed.

  • Enter the 4 digit code in the box and click Confirm.

We guarantee all documents you provided will be deleted once we pass payment verification and would not be shared by any third party. For more information please read about our Privacy Policy.

Please kindly reply us in 2 business days, Gearbest will track your items as soon as payment verification completed. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Please let us know if you need further assistance.

Best Regards,

Gearbest Support Team"

I replied back that no business I've encountered has asked for this and asked if my order will still be shipped regardless of my choice to share the requested details. To which they basically sent me the exact same letter again.

I think Im just going to cancel the order.

UPDATE
I decided to break and sent them a photo of my bill from my ISP that I grabbed out of the filing cabinet (without my parents knowing) and covered all important information (literally everything except the name, address, date, and the ISP logo) This way I wasn't disclosing any information that wasn't already required for shipping.

The new issue, the printer has been sitting in processing for a week and that leads me to suspect that they are waiting for backorder from the manufacturer and just keep the "In Stock" button next to all the items on their site regardless of their availability.

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Probably not your issue but I have run into the situation where my shipping and billing address are not the same and people will not ship first time orders without extra verification.

Sounds like the easiest thing to do is verify your paypal account. It gives no info to gearbest and it will make issues like this go away in the future.

Sounds like your paypal may be not set up 100%

I got shit from them without any of that tbh

But ya i would give them shit lol

I dont have a bank account linked, but I cant do that because I dont have a bank account

Get one?

Just keep 5 bucks in there and link it lol

PayPal is shit. Grow up and get a credit card.

Its kind of hard to get a bank account on your own when you are 16 and your parents are unwilling to sign for you.

Get them to buy it for you. Pay them the cash. That's what I did with my parents.

They aren't willing to do that as well. My parents are kind of assholes

Maybe they have their reasons.

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Tell them you are thinking about joining the sjw army and that their microaggressions are triggering you

Could be a valid option

May send you to military school but thats like a win win anyway so

Their reasons are that they don't trust anything online and believe that if they even grasp a computer mouse all their personal data will be stolen

Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror where the law firm has a new service of suing parents for children's unhappy childhood.

Well see if you can get a friend to do it for you.

Lol thats real life, that chick that sued her mommy and daddy cuz she moved out do to them wanting her to do chores and not date a boy lololol

man this reality sucks sometimes

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Thats what im considering