AliExpress/Alibaba, 3 of 3 orders all suck.

I realize its all different sellers on there but so far every one I have bought I have had bad experiences with.

Yes I have been careful and checked them to make sure they have a lot of feedback and a very high score and have been around at least a year.

My first order was for my brothers work. They wanted 20 XM-L T6 flashlights, so I looked around for a good deal and bought them from AliExpress. $243 for 20 x TrustFire C8’s with XM-L’s. A few days after I bought them the description was changed to Q5 LEDs and the price was changed to about half price. I messaged the seller about it and asked if the ones he sent me were Q5 or XM-L and he said they were all Q5 LEDs (I had previously mailed asking if he was sure they were XM-L T6 LEDs and he confirmed they were). Then I had to refuse delivery when it arrived and wait around 2 months for a refund that was minus the escrow fee.

My 2nd order was for 20 x Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries for $20 (+$7 for EMS), I recived them 2 days ago and before I even opened them up I could tell they weren’t what I ordered as they were about double the weight of the batteries I was expecting. Anyway I opened them up and found 20 x Energizer Advanced Lithium AA batteries instead. Not only did I get the wrong batteries but it was mailed with regular postage instead of EMS that I paid for, I converted to USD and postage was around 43 cents. The seller has not replied to my mails. It also has a fake return address on the envelope.

My 3rd order was for 10 x 32GB USB thumb drives, I recived them yesterday and it all looked good. I planned to use them to back up all my games but when it come to copping the games over they all transfered at less than 1mbps (supposed to be 10mbps) and when I tried to load the games from USB the files wouldn’t work as they were all corrupt and missing. It turns out they are faked even though they are identical to the real ones. After downloading some program to test them, they are around 7GB each and with the slow transfer speeds they are pretty much useless. When I was talking to them via live chat before I bought them they had perfect English and we were chatting for about 45 minutes, now all of a sudden they don’t understand what I am talking about and wont give me any answers.

Over the last 10 years I have placed over 400 orders through eBay, only 2 of them I have ever had any trouble with and eBay always favours the buyer in disputes.
With Aliexpress they always favour the seller.

I know people have bought from there without any problems, but I am done with dealing with them based on my experience.

Anyway… just had vent a little, I am disappointed and out of pocket once again.

Wow that sucks, I’ve never deal with Alibaba before and I think I’ll never do.
I have a friend that buys often from there, but recently he was scammed with USD2000…
Maybe it worth to pay more from eBay but be assured.
Thanks for your feedback, I was considering a little bit alibaba but now I’m decided to don’t even enter the site.

I’m not sure I’m ready to take the risk with an outfit like that. It’s nice to have the selection, but it seems there’s very little protection, if any at all.

I’ve had a few orders. All good bar one. Still in dispute. I’ve been buying quite a bit lately. It does pay to ask questions first. Could also go down the credit card route if not happy.

I have had some purchases with ali express. Some average orders for which I left 3 star feedback as their product descriptions can be misleading. Now I receive emails from the sellers sooking about my feedback saying it is not fair and will cost them money. F-me. I bought 5 garage remotes that won’t work. Can’t get my money back and the seller is afraid of losing business.
I asked for variable mhz cloning remotes set to 433.92 mhz and was sent fixed remotes at 433.92 mhz that won’t clone my 433.92 mhz remotes. I thought if they don’t work I can try them on other remotes that have different mhz. I asked the seller if they were adjustble frequencies and he said yes but when he posted my order he messaged me saying he sent me remotes fixed at 433.92. Lost in translation ecetera. No offer of refund, partial refund, credit. Seller didn’t even offer me to return them. I even bought two more remotes off him that should work at full price.

Moral to this story is ali express won’t back you. Read all descriptions carefully and ask questions and clarify what you will be getting. Majority purchases have been good but most sellers don’t use paypal so there is little recourse. Their live help is a robot and will admit to being a robot too.

EDC how do you put feedback on aliexpress?

similar to ebay. Once you confirm you have received your order you can do it.

Sorry to say this, but buying flash memory from china is a no go, its big NO.

EDIT. As Sashix already said in a post below, flash memory nowadays is drit cheap and there is no reason to buy from dubious chinese sellers and risk your money.

+1

99.9% will be fake!
Now a days, at least here in Spain, you can buy in computer shop a true, 32 GB flash (Kingston, Sandisk, Patriot… and not chinese crap) for about 17-19 Euros ($21-24). They are quite slow, 5-10 Mb/s write speed and about 20 Mb/s read speed. Very cheap, IMHO.

Whatever, shame on those sellers! |(

I bought an XM-L T6 C8 off ebay not so long ago, but when it arrived it was actually a XR-E Q5. I contacted the seller who offered me either a 50% discount to keep it, or to pay for return postage in advance of a full refund. He actually seemed genuinely sorry, and asked me some questions about how to tell the difference. I obliged with some detailed information, at which point he vowed to contact his supplier for clarification. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people (included eBay sellers) have ultimately been scammed by the same Alibaba supplier.

I bought what I thought was “BRAND NEW” Microsoft mouse from aliexpress and got jacked. The mouse had hand turd inside the grooves and was beat to hell. See the pics below.

Also bought a ASUS video card and it ended up being totally bootleg fake version. Im tired of being ripped off by these people, never again aliexpress/alibaba.
Not to mention I asked the seller to send as gift before buying it, later found out the seller didnt, had to pay another $60 dollars in tax to customs for their mistake.
Could of got a real ASUS card after all the costs.

Here is the item I got:

Here is the ad from aliexpress:


Ali Baba (Arabic: علي بابا‎ ʿAlī Bābā ) is a character from medieval Arabic literature. He is described in the adventure tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (علي بابا والأربعين حرامي).

Some concepts seem to have made the transition from fantasy tale to business model. :wink:

I’d use a candle in a jam can before I’d buy a flashlight from AliBaba/Express.

I’d tried a few sellers, maybe I’m lucky so far, all items been good & correct.

Alibaba
some 10AWG R/C use power cables, okay.

Aliexpress
A123 26650, 18650, Li-ion 18650 batteries, all from same seller, all good
bench power supply, adjustable temp soldering + hot air gun repair station (Baku 878L), so far so good.
led signal relay, also so far so good
2-3 multitools, 3-4 foldable knives, also fine.

Sorry to hear this.

But thanks for letting us know.

What bench power supply did you order? I've been in the market for one for a while.

I think the days of “sending gifts” are gone: a bunch of sellers I’ve seen on ebay recently say in their ads they won’t do this anymore.

I have also given up Aliexpress,

My first order come with wrong item, but similar shaped, mp3 player speaker.
Got refund about half of the price, and gifted the speaker to my sister.

Second order was a solar charger. it was stated 11000mah, but inside there is 4x2200mah battery.
Solar charging was not working, and it melted on the sun when trying to charge it.

If you can find same product on ebay, don’t try Aliexpress.

And what pisses me off is when I do a search for something on Google and all that comes up is Aliexpress. I have to do a -aliexpress -alibaba to keep sane.

Rich

just buy 1 item at time, your vulnerable to being scammed when u spend lots of money.

Howly mowly, that mouse looks 10 times worse than my 8 years old wireless Logitec I had to retire a few years ago :open_mouth: B*tches :angry:
On the other hand, who pays 25 bucks for a wired optical (not laser) mouse? :bigsmile: You have plenty of them at Amazon, for example.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_keywords_2?rh=n%3A172282%2Cn%3A!493964%2Cn%3A541966%2Cn%3A172456%2Cn%3A172493%2Cn%3A11036491%2Ck%3Amicrosoft+mouse%2Cp_4%3AMicrosoft%2Cp_n_condition-type%3A2224371011%2Cp_36%3A1253503011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A3354537011&bbn=11036491&sort=price&keywords=microsoft+mouse&ie=UTF8&qid=1355464971&rnid=3354530011