[Rant] Shopee Phone Purchasing And Returning Experience / Review

First and foremost, I need to precede this with the fact that most of the sellers I've dealt with on shopee are perfectly nice human beings. My experience with them overall is absolutely wonderful and I have purchased and sold plenty through the platform.

Unfortunately, this entire experience has really soured my opinion on them. It really only takes one apple.

I've been dealing with this with restraint and patience, but today's the last straw. I just got an email from shopee telling me they needed my entire month's credit card statement after I've sent them my transaction history to confirm something and I just want to ask them if they're like my account id and password while they're at it.

I need to write about this or my head will explode.

Since July, I've been dealing with a spectacularly bad seller who sold me a phone and a phone screen cover that literally doesn't fit the phone. The only reason why I got it from the seller in the first place was because he said they also sold screens and I wanted to make sure I had something that fits. The same seller actually pulled this with another buyer as well. 

Here's the picture I attached as proof of non-fitting screen cover. It's tempered glass and this particular phone is slightly curved, which means a random tempered glass for a different phone will not fit it at all. In addition to the halo effect around the phone, the sides of the screen is not covered completely. The screen cover is literally too small.

I requested they attached the screen cover prior to shipping since I make lots of air bubbles, but they didn't, so I ended up making do on my own. I paid RM15 for this screen on top of RM800+ for the phone, so I didn't think the seller would make a fuss. Wrong.

Like a good buyer, I tried to reason with the seller, letting them know they've probably sent me something wrong. No big deal. Just send me the right one.

In return, I got a sob story about lack of stock, how the phone screen covers distributors are overcharging him, the decline of trust amongst people along with a blatant lie that none of the screen covers for this particular phone would fit anyways. It's a Xiaomi Note 4. My friend just bought this phone and she had a screen cover, tempered glass, that fits perfectly.

I've removed the store's name because I'm sibeh coward and dunwan drama, but if you want to know, pm me on instagram (@peachy_amy) since I'm fairly active there. Or you can keep scrolling till the picture with the invoice. 

After spending way too much time trying to talk sense into the seller, I finally realized I wasn't getting through with reason and just suggested opening a dispute so I can return the cover. Even that was troublesome. The seller insisted Shopee would cover shipping costs and I wouldn't have to make payments via pos laju, which is another blatant lie. I spent some time reading through the rules on shopee and it clearly states the seller needs to bear the cost in circumstances such as this, where the seller has provided me with a wrong item.

Seller denies responsibility and tells me I should contact Shopee.

This is where Shopee started being the middleman.

At this point, I considered dropping everything. It's only RM15 and my time is worth more than that. I've already wasted too much time being upset with this. The level-headed cs on shopee's facebook page insisted I take this up to them, since it's not my fault and I should be allowed to keep my hard-earned money.

I shit you not, there's been more than 25 messages exchanged from Shopee with instructions on what to do with returning this because it's needlessly complicated.

For your information, I have included all these conversation and pictures to the dispute team so these aren't like, behind the scenes action going on. I've actually deleted the pictures from my laptop and am getting these from conversations with shopee, so everything you see here, I've emailed shopee.

After a tedious negotiation, shopee informed me that the seller will refund me the money and bear the return shipping fee for the wrong item. In addition, they also require the receipt of purchase, receipt from the pos laju transaction, and the tempered glass be in pristine condition (or no refund).

I took a picture of everything before sending it to them since I have zero trust in them now.

By early August, however, the seller miraculously refunded the cost of the item, RM15. I asked shopee if they still required the item to be returned and they confirmed that the seller does, indeed, want the item back. I double checked shipping would be covered and yes, shopee said they would.

Oddly enough, I wasn't charged GST for this purchase despite what the receipt suggests.

The address was emailed to me in August and I returned the item in mid august. the receipt from pos laju tallied up to RM11.55. I also needed to send shopee a receipt of them. Even the lady at the post office who made sure to include a copy of the receipt of the return was like, 'why is this so troublesome?' You and me both, lady.

This was especially frustrating because the pos office that has receipts properly printed is also the place to pay bills, send parcels, renew licenses, and about a million and one things, so this is more time spent.

The item arrived on August 15, 2017 and the shipping cost has not been processed and refunded to me.

I brought this up to them on August 23rd because I believe in people like that. They told me to wait until the end of the month and if it still haven't been banked in, I should let the team know.

And mind you, I've talked to at least 3 different shopee cs I get a new cs on the other end of the email chain. I feel the need to explain things all over again because I don't know if they do have access to any of this unncessary drama. This blog rant is as much to keep them informed so I don't need to explain myself to them all over again as it is to remind myself that shitty human beings exist and sometimes, we suffer needlessly for it.

Anyways, here's where I started getting really annoyed.

Well, that's easy enough to check. It's completed on the 27th? Let me give you the screenshot of my bank transactions from the 24th August. Mind you, I'm already annoyed by having to do this because my bank transactions should be private and are you really implying that I'm lying about being refunded? Wtf.

And then I get another email.

At this point I've had enough of this shit. Like, what the actual fuck. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. IT'S FUCKING RM11. WHY WOULD I LIE ABOUT BEING PAID FOR THIS WHEN I'VE DONE LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE RIGHT?

I said as much, but with much less capslock involved, and in addition requested shopee provide me with the seller's proof of payment, because fuck this shit. Fuck that I have to do this shit to begin with. Fuck lying sellers and fuck shopee for covering their asses and adding more work on my end because a seller thought it would be easy to scam RM15 off a buyer by deliberately sending a wrong phone screen cover and knowing it would be too much hassle to return it.

At some point, it turned into a major headache that's really so much more trouble than it's worth (probably at that point where I had to proof that I wasn't lying about the cover not fitting).

I'm sharing this because I'm annoyed as fuck and this is quite helpful is making me relax so I can get back to work tomorrow without worrying about this fucking shitpile of bullshit over a phone screen cover that's literally, only RM15.

Update September 5:

I promptly replied asking for proof that the seller banked in the payment, because isn't that so much easier than giving Shopee my entire banking history? And here's where things start making sense.

Despite my explanation in the original email, pulling out old dispute ticket numbers and an explanation of how this is a shipping fee return that should come from the seller, this particular shopee customer service representative has NO CLUE what he's dealing with and has pretty much not been reading my replies and is probably just sending copy-pasted responses. Because he sent this:

I went nuclear and asked if he had any idea what dispute he's dealing with. Then I sent him this link (see, I told you this isn't just a useless rant).

 Update September 7:

Finally, we're on the same page.