Why I Involved DTI With My Recent Buy&Ship PH Experience

I recently purchased a Samsung phone in eBay worth almost $1000. I have used Buy&Ship PH before so of course I chose them as the forwarder for this transaction. I have no problems with them other than long wait times for delivery but I can live with that.

When it arrived in the Philippines, Buy&Ship chose NinjaVan to deliver it to my address. I was suspicious when the package did not move for 5 days. I even started contacted NinjaVan and Buy&Ship during the third day it was stuck. The reason they gave is that there must be a backlog. On the 5th day, I was shocked when the status of the delivery is cancelled. So I contacted NinjaVan why and they told me the item was lost during transit.

NinjaVan told me that they will refund Buy&Ship and not me since Buy&Ship is the sender. So I contacted Buy&Ship for the refund and they told me that the max refund they can give me is $100 because that is in their terms and conditions. I was also told by Buy&Ship that I should have bought an insurance for such an expensive item.

I could not accept their policy on refunds. Why do they even make the insurance optional if they only have $100 maxumum refunds. Then I started reading The Consumer Act of the Philippines (Republic Act No. 7394) which states that if items are undelivered, I am still entitled for a full refund. I commented this on their Facebook and Instagram and instead of responding to me or even just messaging me on private, they just blocked me!

At this point, I just sent this complaint to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). In a few days, DTI responded that it's hard to file a complaint to Buy&Ship because there are no publicly people to call out. They also have no physical address here in the Philippines. Because of this, DTI just forwarded this complaint to the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC).