AliExpress No Like PayPal.

Too bad AliExpress doesn’t use PayPal. I won’t and haven’t ordered online tru credit card for a while now. I just wished they would do PayPal in AliExpress. Then I can go bug Simon lol.
Just wondering why Jack Ma shuns PayPal?? Must be some red tape milkshake going on.

You can actually use PayPal to buy Convoy from Simon. Just tell him you want to use PayPal, and he’ll give you his PayPal account. After sending him money he’ll send you the goods. That’s how I got my L6 lights.

P.S. Simon from Convoy is one of the most reliable vendors.

He’s on bg also isn’t he

What do you mean?

Oh yeah I heard somewhere he prowls around BG too and forgot about the PayPal addy thing hehe. Simon, here I come!

Convoy is also on banggood

[17,99€ 33% OFF]Convoy C8+ SST40 2000 Lumens 6500K 5000K 18650 Flashlight Flashlight from Lights & Lighting on banggood.com https://banggood.app.link/hasww5wmY3
Convoy store

Correct. But Simon is the guy from Convoy, and he has his personal shop on Aliexpress. When you buy Convoy from Banggood, then you’re dealing with Banggood when it comes to after sales, and not with Simon. Simon is known to have one of the best after sales service in the (Chinese) flashlight world.
You can actually get a 15% discount by telling him you’re a BLF member. Nevertheless there are members here who pay full price out of respect for Simon. When BLF members choose not to use a discount for a flashlight purchase, then you’re doing something exceptionally good as a vendor.

I buy from both , I didn’t know it was like that , I’ll stick to aliexpress now and buy direct from Simon

Thanks for the heads up

Chris

Yep. He’s wonderful…

And the generally-touted reason for that is that PP charges rather obscene fees to the merchant (Because It Can), which AX doesn’t want to absorb. Okayfine, but when I get nicked for almost a buk extra on an order where that’s a pretty significant percentage of the order, I just pass altogether.

First AX started hitting me with tax (and after the place-order stage, so you don’t know until after that you thought you were paying 10bux for something, only to have it show up later as 11bux instead). Then tack on another 80¢ for the “privilege” of using PP, and forget it. I all but stopped ordering anything at all via AX.

Now, I think the tax is shown before clicking on [place order], but that’s when you see with all the add-ons that you could be paying an extra 20–25 on small orders.

Oh, and goodbye free-shipping, also, unless you’re okay with untracked Press Your Luck Express which takes 90-180 business days.

Yeah… no.

It’s not Ali, it’s the individual vendors that chose whether to take PP or any other various means of payment (and most do take it, often as the sole option.)

And Ali charges like what, $1.99 extra? to use PP Express International while the CC services usually only tack on a view cents, if anything at all.

Other day when attempting to order another flashlight there (of course) the vendor did not take PP and my VISA payment was declined by my bank. Had to call and verify with them, turned out to be an extra security measure on the part of the vendor. PITA but eventually my order went through and I still don’t see a foreign transaction fee — though its possible that might be tacked on at the end of the CC billing period. Should have asked the agent, D’oh!

Of course not every vendor that takes CC over PP runs that same security check. So think in the future I’ll always select VISA when available to save the fee Ali charges on all PP transactions.

It is good IMO. No need to paypal fees. I pay in my local currency.
Mike

They are Not the only ones.

PAYPAL SUCKS!

Order a HT70 from Banggood. It is defective. Filed a dispute. PP’S resolution is. I send package back at MY expense and must have insurance and tracking and then I get a refund.

Confirmed again by USPS.It would cost me $77.50 . Light is worth $140. I would then NET a refund of $62.50. Why should the buyer be penalized like that?

I think commies own PP.

If there’s a problem, Banggood also sucks. In late December, I received a seriously defective Astrolux MF01S from Banggood. I provided Banggood Customer Service with all the information they asked for: pictures of their shipping label, SKU code, batteries used (new Samsung 30Qs), and five videos showing the light malfunctioning and the side switch not working. Banggood refused to give me a refund or pay for return postage.

After opening a PayPal dispute (which was an ordeal since I purchased the MF01S using PayPal’s “guest checkout”), I was told I’d receive a full refund if I returned the light to Banggood using any shipping method with a tracking number.
I mailed the MF01S to Banggood on January 6 via USPS First-Class Package International Service with tracking number. The package reached China on January 12.

I still haven’t received a refund from PayPal or Banggood. My credit card company (Chase Amazon Visa) refused to give me a refund since I can’t prove the package was delivered to Banggood. USPS First-Class and Priority Mail tracking numbers don’t work inside China (and several other countries). So I’m out $80 for the flashlight and $23.50 for return postage, all for a defective product which I proved (with 5 videos) was useless.

Banggood has a facility in the U.S. (in the Los Angeles area) and it carried Astrolux MF01S flashlights. If I’d been allowed to ship the package to a U.S. address then the return postage would have cost less and the USPS tracking number would show delivery. PayPal, however, required me to ship the package to an address in China. UPS quoted a price of around $150 to ship the package to China; FedEx wanted over $80.

In the case of products ordered from China, IMHO PayPal provides precisely zero “protection” since the expense of return shipping, with a tracking number that works inside China, will likely cost more than the purchase price. I find it incredible that Chinese merchants can ship packages to the USA for a couple dollars and USPS will scan the package all the way to delivery. Yet if you mail the same product to China, even paying 20 times as much for postage, China Post will not scan the USPS tracking number inside China. I submitted two negative product reviews about this defective MF01S and, predictably, Banggood refused to post them. Several people have received defective Astrolux MF01S flashlights (some owners made YouTube videos on them), yet out of 123 reviews on Banggood, the company has failed to post a single negative review.

Yep, you got banged good!

…and not in a good way.

I fail to see the humor in that. Abinfantry and I both lost money along with time and aggravation. You would not be laughing if it happened to you.

Banggood may suck, or not suck, depending on how your orders have worked out for you. They know what they can and cannot get away with and they play to their advantage well. Before I started ordering things from Chinese sellers I did a little research. I found out that how bad a Chinese company is or isn’t is based only on the interaction you have had with them. I have had almost zero problems with them, therefore I have no animosity against them. Others haven’t been that lucky and wish they would go out of business tomorrow. All of the deals gone bad at Banggood play out with many other Chinese sellers everyday.

I guess what I was trying to say was, it didn’t take much research for me to find out that I was taking a risk by not being able to affordably return merchandise to China. Knowing that, I couldn’t very well build an animosity towards a seller when I knew the risk I was taking and that I knowingly took it.

PayPal doesn’t really suck either. Unless you are trying to return something to China. Are they asking you to do anything that you wouldn’t normally do with a local seller? It’s not really their fault that shipping prices are what they are. Their guidelines for disputes are spelled out pretty clear.

Does it suck? Sure it does. But we all chose to do business in a country knowing the risk, used a payment system knowing the risk and chose to do it anyway. If you didn’t know any of the risk then you didn’t do your job as a consumer. I don’t mean to sound brash or even a bit of a, well, insert curse word here, but it’s the truth.

Being as optimistic as we can, we hope nothing happens and we go full bore at it anyway.

:+1: I believe that accurately sums it up. I have placed many orders with BG, GearBest, AE FastTech, Kaidomain, and others over a number of years. A few problems, but not many. Most of the problems resolved okay. A couple of them needed a return of goods to China and I left it at that, knowing it was not worth the expense of shipping. That was a chance I took when I placed the order; the terms are available if one seeks them out and reads them. We, in the US are somewhat spoiled when we try to compare the service level from a Chinese seller to a US company like Amazon, HomeDepot, etc.