If you have checked the global store of POCO in Lazada, one thing we noticed is that the only products being sold are accessories—and that there are no phones being sold there. There are suspicions that Lazada are reportedly restricts the sale of phones and tablets from outside of the Philippines, thanks to new alleged new rules from Philippine Customs.
To further see if the POCO Global store is not the only one affected, we checked other Global stores—and it seems that the Global stores of Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Black Shark are also affected by this new scheme as well, where there are no longer phones in their shops.
We scoured through Facebook pages to find answers as to why this Lazada restricts the sale of grey market units lately, and we found this response from Lazada logistics. In its reply, it appears that the eCommerce platform is following the new policy from Philippine Customs, where phones and tablets coming outside from the Philippines are not allowed, along with products that are valued at more than Php 10,000.
“From now on, the platform will remove the above products and block the corresponding packages. Intercepted packages will be returned to the merchant,” the statement said.
We don’t know how this will affect the global launch of the POCO F5 series on May 9, though it seems that only their Lazada store is affected–the listing for the POCO F5, along with other POCO phones, still remains on their Shopee store.