Here is what happens when you dare to open a dispute on Aliexpress concerning a KPrepublic purchase: You will get instantly banned from buying any more KPrepublic products through Aliexpress.
This is what happened to me after complaining about a missing numeral 9 keycap and receiving two numeral 6 keycaps instead, which is my perfect right to do so. As a courtesy, I even sent them a personal message, saying I would drop my complaint as soon as they would send me the missing keycap… to no avail.
The only other way to contact KPrepublic is jumping through the numerous hoops of installing Discord, learning how to use that app, reading the FAQ, getting approved to contact them after leaving your phone number, finding out how to use @ModMail and getting approved to use @ModMail. I did all that, but this is of course a ridiculously convoluted ticketing system.
As a decent buyer, I find such customer service behaviour absolutely despicable. What are your opinions about KPrepublic’s customer service? Have you experienced anything similar?
I consistently make 1 or 3 purchases from them every month. Sometimes 5 products at once per month. Over the years of the hobby, I probably made 100+ purchases. Only in their store.
I solved all the moments with problems simply by communicating through personal messages. No tickets or requests or complaints or disputes.
The last problem was a box in the form of a switch. I also made a meme about this case.)
I don’t order from them often due to shipping cost and time, but I had an issue with a BM60 PCB I ordered directly from KPRepublic’s website in late 2021 where the USB port seemed to have a bad solder connection. I DM’ed them through their Discord and they were responsive. While I did need to provide a lot of photo/video evidence to prove the issue, the person I chatted with was polite and sent me a replacement at no charge.
My understanding for most online marketplaces is that disputes are seen as really serious accusations that can jeopardize the seller’s ability to sell on that marketplace and shouldn’t be used as a first line complaint.
I’ve been quite a regular customer of theirs since 2015 or something when i first bought an XD87 and, even though issues were very rare, they were always quick to respond, always friendly and solved my problems without much of an issue. One of the keyboard kits, i think it was a MKB87, had some issues being recognized with some USB cables. i sent them a message, a video showing the issue happening, and they sent me a replacement unit without any issues within a day or 2.
As the Llama above me already said, you should always try and DM them first and use all other avenues of getting in contact with them. Disputes are there if the seller is not responding or not willing to fix your problem and there’s no other way and it can have quite negative consequences for them.
And yeah, i’m sorry mate, but reading through your reddit thread and your comments there it’s pretty clear that you’re pretty much at fault for going about it the wrong way from the start in pretty much all the ways possible. even being pretty rude and unfriendly to them. You have even posted a small part of the dialogue where they have directly offered you a solution, telling you to close the dispute and they will send you the replacement part and they even said that you could then just open another dispute should the replacement item not arrive. And you have told them “no, you’re lying, be honest, you can only open one dispute on aliexpress.” even though you can close and open another dispute without any issues and there is no reason why a reputable seller would lie about this. you have straight up rejected their help and their offer to fix the situation.
Now you are just publicly insulting KPRepublic out of spite and for no reason. Not to mention insulting chinese people and their culture in general there too while you’re at it, pretty much claiming that lying and being untrustworthy is in their culture in your reddit thread. Speaking of being vengeful.
I could go on, as there’s a lot of other things wrong, but that’s enough drama for me for today.
This was years ago, but I bought a keycaps set from them but was sent just the bottom row instead, after a message they fixed everything and sent me a complete set.
I’d definitely agree with the others here, sending a message should definitely be your first action when resolving problems on sites such as Ebay, Aliexpress, etc. Disputes should only be used if the seller is 100% a scammer or not responding.
Yes, I have learned my lesson now: Contact KPRepublic through Aliexpress’ direct messaging.
I can confirm it works, as the exact same packing error happened again when I received my second set of Domikey SA Gas Attack. There were two numpad 6’es and no numpad 9. They have sent me now the missing keycap with tracked mail.
I overreacted because of three reasons:
No guidance on KPRepublic’s website about how to handle problems with Aliexpress orders.
My long history (since 2013) of dealing with genuine scammers on Aliexpress; mainly for electronics stuff.
The poor implementation of Aliexpress’ direct messaging and dispute handling process. The dispute handling does not offer an option for the seller to correct his/her mistake. The direct messaging is full with commercial spam, so I tend to ignore it.
