DroiX- dissapointed in QC for refurbished products and customer service

I, like many others here, are happy to pay a premium for GPD devices from DroiX because of their reputation for strong customer service.

I hadn’t seen many reviews of their refurbished products, but I decided to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, my experience has been very disappointing. The refurbished GPD Win Max 2 (2024) I received arrived with a broken left joystick. Refurbished devices are advertised as fully functional, and while I understand GPD devices can sometimes require minor tinkering, this was not a small issue but probably a hardware defect. Kendy (or whoever is managing his email) also agreed that it was likely a hardware problem.

I contacted DroiX support who really wanted me to accept a replacement. But the Max 2 arrived faulty straight out of the box, so my confidence in their quality control is really low- they should have caught this before shipping it.

To make matters worse, they required me to pay for return shipping. I used the most affordable standard international option through my national postal service. Under Australian consumer law, overseas businesses selling to Australian customers are required to cover reasonable return shipping costs for faulty products.

Despite this, customer support is only offering to reimburse a small portion of the cost as a “goodwill” gesture, which is simply not acceptable.

Overall, not a big deal yet and hopefully they ackowledge the defect and refund me soon, but the whole experience has been frustrating and the service hasn't been very frank. They also need to educate themselves on consumer laws of a country if they sell there.