Based in Dubai! Customer Support nightmare. Avoid at all costs, believe me!

1 star. AVOID — buy local instead!

I bought a "new grade" iPhone 15 Pro from Revive along with an extended warranty, and it turned into the worst purchase I've made.

First, know who you're dealing with: despite the South African website, Revive operates out of Dubai. If anything goes wrong, you'll struggle to reach a real person. Support runs through multiple layers of AI, including a voice call centre that repeatedly failed to understand me.

Delivery was the first red flag. The site promised around two days; it took roughly a week and a half. Not a disaster on its own, but not what was advertised.

When the phone arrived, the battery health was poor, and—the real issue—it would only charge wirelessly, not via cable. I logged a warranty claim, which can only be done through the website using preset issue categories that don't let you properly describe the actual fault.

From there it fell apart. They dispatched a courier without telling me, so I wasn't there for collection. Instead of rescheduling or notifying me, the website simply cancelled my claim with no update. I had to start the entire process again, fighting through the AI layers before finally reaching a human, re-registering the warranty claim, and getting the phone sent off.

That's when I learned the phone goes to DUBAI — three to four days in transit. About 4/5 days after it arrived, a technician emailed to say there was nothing wrong with it and that I now had to pay R3 800 to have it returned or forfeit the extended warranty package I'd paid for (roughly R1500) and use it as credit for return shipping.

Worse, there was fine print at the bottom of his email that stated that if I didn't reply within 48 hours, the phone would be sold to cover storage costs. Given their Dubai working week (closed Friday and Saturday, open Sunday), it's easy to miss that window over a weekend. I only caught it just in time on Monday evening!

So I forfeited my extended warranty to get my phone sent back. A week passed with no tracking link and no update. When I chased it, they claimed their system showed it as "delivered"—it wasn't. You can imagine my stress. A new, R16 000 iphone stuck in international limbo, with a company I can't visit, and battle to get hold of! I just had to hope that I could get them to find it. They could easily have just not answered my mails and I would not be able to do anything! More calls, more AI layers, before all of a sudden DHL finally sent tracking. They still have not sent the tracking details after more than a week. Haven't heard a thing from them. DHL eventually delivered it 5 days later.

I received the original phone on 7 July. After this entire ordeal, I only got it back on 24 August — well outside the claim period — and by then they still hadn't provided proper tracking through support.

The worst part is that when the phone came back, they had replaced the charging cable. The cable was the fault all along, not the phone, yet they're still stripping my warranty, and I now have to fight to get it reinstated.

My advice is to find a local seller in South Africa you can actually speak to, or even drive to. This was an absolute nightmare, and I would not recommend Revibe to anyone. Ever.