Aliexpress

[cteno4]

Aliexpress is a Chinese (Alibaba) online store that is just a portal for small sellers to sell thru. They provide a path to many odd bits and pieces (electronic components, tools, etc) that can be hard to source elsewhere or more expensive. A few sellers sell things like Outland building models, architectural figures, and the like. I’ve used them for several years for little bits and pieces with ok luck. It’s helped as a lot of these odd bits that use to be available thru ebay, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to find many options for some of these items there or the price and/or shipping has gone way up. Like ebay you will find a number of sellers with the same item with a wide range of quantities, price and shipping costs, so you have to poke around to find what suits you best.
 

Shipping to the us is usually like 3-6 weeks with the economy shipping (I’ve never tried any of the express shipping options). Each seller ships orders out separately. The shipping is from a number of shipping agents, with some coming over directly, some getting trans shipped through countries like Kyrgyzstan and some being trans shipped thru a shipping agent in the us. Tracking can be decent or pretty spotty depending on the shipper. One of the shippers is aliexpress’s shipping service and at times several orders placed near each other can get collected at the aliexpress shipping agent in China or once in the US (I’ve had both happen) and rebundled into a single package.

 

SOME ISSUES THOUGH

There are a few draw backs to aliexpress though to be aware of

 

Fragile Items

most of the packaging done by aliexpress sellers is pretty minimal, but fine for some resistors or a pair of pliers. Larger and fragile items can easily get trashed in shipping. I naively ordered a larger assembled building from a seller thinking it would be sent boxed up and it was sent just wrapped in some bubble wrap in a plastic bag. It arrived pretty battered up and after going thru aliexpress’s dispute system they only refunded 20% for the damage. Returning was not an option as shipping would have been way more than the price of the item. Aliexpress says some sellers have a free return policy where they send you a shipping label to return an item, but I’ve never see that.

 

Bundled Shipments

Since some shipments are snagged at the shipping agent and bundled with other sellers shipments to you, there can be issues If the shipping agent screws up and don’t put everything in the bundled package as the old tracking is gone for all the individual orders and they are all pointed to the bundled package tracking number. Seller of course shows they sent it and the bundled package shows as being delivered so it’s a push and shove to get a refund if an order is not in the bundled package. I had this happen last year with 8 orders over a few days being bundled into one package and it showed up with only the smallest and cheapest item in the package. Rest were poof. After extended dispute mediation all were refunded except one (apparently even though the loss was by aliexpress shipping agent bundling they make the seller refund, so they tend to fight it if something more expensive) which I’m now working on getting the credit card to dispute. A way to avoid the bundling is to place orders a few days apart from different sellers, but still a PITA.

 

Dispute Process

Aliexpress’s dispute process is to first try to come to an agreement with the seller. If after 14 days there is no resolution they step in and try to resolve it. After that they make a decision. You have one opportunity to appeal their decision, but the result of that is final and you can’t discuss with with them and they give no reasoning for their decision. It’s very unclear if you resolve anything with the seller like them resending the item if that is covered under the supposed aliexpress buyer protections. Also if the item looks to be delivered the clock is set for a short window to deal with issues and then closed to where a dispute can’t be filed if the agreed upon action by the seller did not happen. Not the level of buyer protection that you get from ebay. Aliexpress says there is a 80 day satisfaction window, but it’s unclear how that works.

 

Customer Service

Left the big one for last! Aliexpress now has basically no customer support you can talk to in any manner. They use to have chat that you would access after going thru eva their little ai help system. Now though there is no way thru eva to get to a real person. There is no phone or email support. Nothing. This change is now making me less likely to use aliexpress except for very cheap things and just write off the loss. If the credit card mediation works I may just end up resorting to that after the aliexpress dispute system if that does not work.

 

Summary

while aliexpress is a great place to find some odd pieces at great prices direct from China, it’s lack of customer service and decent buyer protection along with a wide variety of seller responses makes it a risky supplier. Buyers need to go in eyes wide open and prepared but rewards may exceed risks.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[katoftw]

I stay away from these Chinese online sellers. Their data protection is poor or they are dodgy.

 

I have been subject to CC fraud after using Aliexpress, Wish and Alibaba.

 

Use at your own risk. And make sure you have good protections on you CC.

 

Customer service and a refund/return policy are non-existent. While they do have it in text. It ain't worth the keystrokes you can read.  There is a massive risk of failure to receive items as described. eg colours etc etc or damaged.

 

While their products are stupidly inexpensive.  A purchaser needs to decide if buying inexpensive products is worth the risk of one package every now and then being wrong/damaged. And the risk of CC fraud.

Edited February 7, 2022 by katoftw

[cteno4]

Yes my luck has been ok so far. Two things lost and one damaged in transit. Weighting that and hassle against savings and getting the odd bit is the calculation. I’ve learned now to keep it to small things that are hard and/or expensive to find elsewhere and not doing large orders.

 

so far I’ve had no fraud activity on the cc I use with aliexpress (and other overseas orders), it’s the best for this sort of thing as you can have it email you with each purchase and see a fraud happening right away along with no foreign transaction fees. At least the cc transaction and cc data are handled by aliexpress and not the sellers (pretty much the same as ebay).

 

i made the topic as we have talked about aliexpress now and then here and there, but with their recent customer support going poof I thought I would summarize all the issues with them.

 

jeff

[Madsing]

I use AliExpress a lot. I agree with all of Jeff’s comments, but my experience is overall more positive.

- I live in Asia so the shipping time is usually around a week.

- I have had no payment issue.

- In case of problem, “first stage mediation” has always worked for me, 90% of the time with a very satisfactory result (full refund without any delay). I remember two cases that didn’t work so well:

  - The seller had sent the wrong part (wrong LED size). I didn’t want to send the parcel back (too troublesome). He refunded 50%.

  - Quality issue. An electrolytic capacitor was mounted the wrong way on a circuit I had purchased (I bought two sets, both were wrong). It literally exploded on my workbench. The seller never replied and I didn’t receive any refund as I didn’t want to ship back the circuit. Luckily I was able to repair it.

- Same conclusion as Jeff: I only use AliExpress for small inexpensive things.

[JR East]

I agree with @cteno4 & @Madsing. On top, I would let you know that I usually take care with brands as lots of sellers are selling counterfeit goods (I had issues with spare Samsung batteries,etc ...) and this can be sometimes dangerous. 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2022 by JR East

[Cat]

I've only used them for buying hard to find niche items in bulk at superb prices for tabletop gaming bits.  Haven't used it a lot, but luck has been good so far.  
 
I am now very wealthy in 7" telescoping radio antennae (perfect for flight stands for aerial gaming) and in very large rolls of sparkle gel foam sheets (perfect for cutting out shoals for naval gaming).  Can't find those sorts of things anywhere else at prices like they have.

[chadbag]

I recently ordered two guitars from them (to be used kind of as project guitars though my daughter will play them as I mod and work on them).  They were not cheap.  Have not yet received them.  I'll let you know.

 

Otherwise it has mostly been electronic components, reading glasses, some DCC decoders, and I did buy a bunch of "n scale" trees which arrived just fine even though they were just in a "bag."   All cheap and inexpensive.   I've had relatively good experiences.   Except that some things take forever to arrive.  My daughter did have me get one thing -- a plastic bin for organizing pencils -- 3d printed -- and it never arrived.  The seller promptly refunded without issue.

 

I avoid stuff which could be counterfeit.  I know the guitars are no-name China guitars and most of the electronics components are basically unbranded.  I know it is all cheap Chinese crap.  (But at least it is sold by Chinese stores under their own names -- what irks me is "made in China" on US branded items)

 

They now take Apple Pay as well through their app so you can hopefully avoid the fraud since they never see your CC number (if you are an Apple user).

 

[cteno4]

So some good news, the lost combined shipment from 3 months ago where they had refunded all but two of the orders in the combine shipment and I had a very long dispute with aliexpress over the last two they did not refund and they are going to refund. I was going to call the credit card tomorrow, so they just have gotten the vibes!

 

one of the missing orders was for a roller loco treadmill. I ordered another one few weeks back an only one replacement roller set showed up not the whole unit. Seller is reshipping so I hope it works on the third try!

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Lately I’ve been finding some good deals on Aliexpress for various scenery materials like trees, ground cover, and grasses. Have to shop around to find the best prices and the ones that will get you free shipping (with total order >$10]. Recently got a number of cheap trees for like 15 cents each that with some tuning, trimming and extra sprinkles of foam are very fast trees for denser areas. Also cherry blossoms out of wrapped wire that are quite decent. While I’ve made a lot of trees over the decades a number of different ways, these do save a lot of time. Of course some are pretty bad, to uniform trees shapes. They also tend to veer a bit more to larger scale stuff, but if you look around you can find reasonable n scale materials. Also a the cheap Chinese architectural figures for a couple of bucks for 100 as well as seated ones. Also animals like cows, sheep, and horses.

 

jeff

[chadbag]

As a follow up I did get the guitars.  They were quite nice for the money...

 

[cteno4]

I must admit for the vast majority of stuff from aliexpress I’ve done really well and happy with what I got, especially for the price. The few snafus are completely drowned out by the great values, it’s just when there is a snafu on a $3 it can still annoy you and just takes remembering to let it go, it’s just 3 bucks and you have done well with way more things to balance it all out!

 

shipping is at about a week or so now for me in dc.

 

jeff

[tossedman]

I've had good luck with the orders I've made through Aliexpress. A few things have taken so long to get here that I'd forgotten what I had ordered. It's like a mystery package has arrived. Most orders don't take that long though. Three weeks seems to be about the longest now as opposed to three months.

 

Cheers,

 

Todd