dBrand's shady practices

[JohnFSkinedy]

Before everyone starts defending dBrand and acuse me of being a POS, here me out, 10 years ago when i started ordering from dBrand they were an excellend company with excellent customer service and a superb produdct.

 

has anyone noticed over the last 6 months - a year that they have relaly began to fall with there quality and customer service. just look at the posts below:

 

there are so many more in the last week alone. now i get that people who are happy dont report issues. but at the same time. allot of people wont go to reddit! and the sheer amount of people complaining in the past week is hidious. with countless more agreeing in the comments. 

 

the last order i placed was absolutely terrible, wrong skins and wrong designs twice in a row. 1 week to get a response. absolutely crazy.

 

i watched another LTT video last night and yet again they are promoting dBrand with all guns go, do they not see these issues and think -  we owe it to our community to look into this?..

 

**

**

 

**

 

 

[MarkPol88]

Out of the 5 examples you posted, PS5 one is probably user error (as the original OP even suggested in replies) and last one is resolved. I did not read the rest of threads as I chosen two at random.

The thing is - they are not so big a company as people think they are and mistakes like this will happen. The question is how many mistakes must happen before LTT starts to investigate.

Right now, IMO it is a backlash of black friday/christmas season frenzy, not a steady decline, but time will tell as always.

[venomtail]

Two days ago I received my skin from dbrand, 2nd one that I've yet to apply so I'll see how much they've changed in 6 years since last time I bought a skin for my V30.

[Lurking]

If it has been that bad for you, why do you keep patronizing them? If a company treats me badly, I vote with my wallet 

 

As for ads on LTT, do you really think an advertiser needs to like the product to praise it? They get paid to say good things. Think of a TV station. Do you think that TV station really likes the car, drink or cigarettes they advertise?

[RabbidEwok]

Eh their skins aren’t that great anymore tbh. I got a couple years ago, one of which is still holding up fine. Got one last year that started delaminating after 10 months and the grip case starts warping after not too long too 

[Erioch]

21 minutes ago, RabbidEwok said:

Eh their skins aren’t that great anymore tbh. I got a couple years ago, one of which is still holding up fine. Got one last year that started delaminating after 10 months and the grip case starts warping after not too long too 

That's a shame.  I have one that is a couple of years old as well and it's great but I'm getting a new phone.

[wanderingfool2]

I would say overall this is just a meh.

 

The PS5 one it looks like the person might have accidently pulled a bit too hard when applying it stretching the decal [and even admits it].

 

Customer service being slow to respond, while unfortunate, it seems like there was a recent launch that meant CS was swamped...so slower responses while bad isn't a be all end all thing.

 

Refund one is a bit odd, given the guy purchased it years earlier; but sounds like dBrand is also just slow in processing refunds...which is bad but not terrible to the point of being shady.

 

The biggest thing that seems to be an issue though is that they aren't more forthcoming in which products are still essentially backordered (i.e. won't ship immediately)

[Koechophe]

like 5 people having issues with either quality control or delivery is not "shady practices." That's kind of just "company is a company, so sometimes things happen."

[JohnFSkinedy]

7 hours ago, Koechophe said:

like 5 people having issues with either quality control or delivery is not "shady practices." That's kind of just "company is a company, so sometimes things happen."

go take another look today. more complaints. 10 days for a response. the level of CS is unacceptable from them tbh. 

[dkoudijs]

As others have said this sounds like some bad cases of customer support during a busy time.

I would keep an eye on this, and see how it progresses over the coming months. I like to think all companies run by people don't want to be dicks, and will make attempts to do better.

 

Also Dbrand is in a tough business, there is so much competition that I doubt management is just like "Hey we can cut support and be just fine...."

[VesperMoirai]

Could be worse, could be ASUS. Either way. Have yet to have a issue with dBrand myself. For my wife or myself.

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, JohnFSkinedy said:

go take another look today. more complaints. 10 days for a response. the level of CS is unacceptable from them tbh. 

It depends, if it's constantly 10 days to get a response then yes it is bad; but in general you have to consider what events currently are happening.

 

In this case, it seems like one of their releases didn't go so well and now they are having an influx of customer service issues...things like that you have to just sort of "deal with the backlash" as a company.

 

Let's put it this way, how would you deal with this

On a typical day you get 250 cases; and can easily manage with 10 staff members (but can easily handle 500 cases a day lets say)

A new product is released, and there is an issue with it.  You now have 1000 cases in a day.  You now have 2x the amount of work an agent can realistically do in a day, and since it was a botched release you keep having more and more complaints roll in every day.

 

Lets say this went on for 2 days only, that's 2000 cases or "4 work days" of work to do in the 2 days.  So wait times for some customers are now 2 days waiting period (and it takes 6 days to clear the backlog, as after you still get 250 cases a day)

Lets say now the issue went on for 7 days, that's 7000 cases or "14 work days" of work.  So wait times would be 7 days, and it would take 21 days to clear the backlog.

 

So, as a company would you hire more people?    Do you think they should hire 20 staff?  Because if they had 20 staff they could handle the surge...except then for the 358 days of the year you now have 20 staff handling 250 cases when realistically you would could get by with only 5 employees during those normal days.

 

It's a balancing act really, hiring the right amount of staff to field complaints and clear up queues without getting into the situation of overstaffing yourself.

 

i.e. effectively in this example, 5 employees are enough to keep a day to day operation "status quo", and every additional employee effectively reduces the overflow

[101Solo]

Has anyone had an issue where their card provider has specifically listed dbrand as "high risk" and so blocks all payments?

 

Edit: I'm currently trying to find out why curve marked dbrand as high risk

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, 101Solo said:

Has anyone had an issue where their card provider has specifically listed dbrand as "high risk" and so blocks all payments?

 

Edit: I'm currently trying to find out why curve marked dbrand as high risk

Could be that people who use stolen credit cards buy from them a lot.  Similar to how buying gift cards online could be considered "high risk" to the CC company

[JohnFSkinedy]

regardless of everyones oppinions on this. it would seem there is no smoke without fire and LTT should have a duty to take this kind of thing seriously. 

[MarkPol88]

If you personally had any problems with dbrand - go to sponsor complaint topic, LMG crew usually peruse that thread for information on their partners.

But if you think that LMG is obligated to react when one of their sponsors (and good friends at that, if you can believe what Linus says) have longer than normal support time (which they openly admit to, there is nothing "shady" about that) then you will be disappointed in my opinion.