When Xiaomi first hit Philippine shores, we were overjoyed because this would give us and many other a chance to get a ton of value for their money when it came to smartphone purchases. Sadly, they had to pack up and rethink their strategy because their thrust of selling on online only didn’t seem to work. Many of preferred and, to this day, still prefer going to a brick and mortar shop to peruse the item we’re going to buy and test it out before we drop some serious G’s on it.

A lot has happened since they exited the Philippines, Xiaomi came back and online stores like Shopee-pee-pee-pee-pee-pee-pee have cropped up alongside Lazada and many other more. In fact, we’re just fresh off the 12.12 Sale where we picked up some goodies too. The landscape for shopping online has improved greatly and they’ve even offered better payment options as well.

Despite the climate changing for online sales, there’s still some distrust over the platforms and this could possibly be one of the reasons why…

You see, like many of you, we took to Lazada for their 12.12 Sale to grab some pretty great deals on things we’ve been holding off on buying. I personally managed to snag a bag from Herschel for my “Every Day Carry”, among a couple of other things to help along with the work we do here at Unbox; everything paid for to maximize the deals I was getting. While a lot of those things have safely arrived, one item seems to have been misdelivered.

While I was out with the wife to do some Christmas shopping and to catch Aquaman, I got a prompt that one the items that I ordered had been delivered. Sadly, when we got back from errands and date night, the package was nowhere to be found. We had asked someone to wait for the delivery for us but no one arrived at the time the supposed delivery happened. There was so-called “Proof of Delivery” which were pretty much scribbles that were meant to be a signature but nothing more than that.

UPDATE:

Another friend just shared that when an item was delivered to their house, the person who received the item did not sign anything but their “Proof of Delivery” had someone’s signature on it. It was probably the delivery person of LEX PH who signed for the package itself, which they OBVIOUSLY shouldn’t be doing.

Their couriers, LEX PH, have a bit of a track record for being shady. We’ve seen it in stories that have cropped up on our Facebook feed, have had friends share their bad experiences, and a quick Google search gives you loads of horror stories about the delivery service. Well, it looks like it was my turn to have it happen firsthand. We’ve already filed our complaints and still waiting to hear back from the company but what can we do protect ourselves from these things from happening?

The best thing to do is definitely order things with the Cash on Delivery option. You won’t have money out of your pocket until the product arrives safely at your doorstep; plus, worst-case scenario, the item gets canceled if it doesn’t get shipped out; annoying, yes, but definitely the better than having your money taken. This is something we almost always opt for but since we were trying to maximize on discount, we decided to fork over the cash.

We’re still waiting to hear back from them after lodging our complaints and we’re hoping it goes smoothly. If you have any horror stories from Lazada in the past or during your order from the 12.12 Sale, let us know how it was resolved in the comments down below.

UPDATE:

The package finally arrived and it was because of the courier. They gave us multiple reasons as to why it was marked as delivered and had some scribblings as “Proof of Delivery”, none of which made sense. We’re happy its here but, again, something has to be done about the service of the couriers. The site itself has gone through leaps and bounds of improvements though so we hope that the peeps at LEX PH gets their affairs in order.