With AliExpress, it’s smooth when everything is ok. I’ve spent quite a lot with my purchases there. Usually it takes a long time for anything to arrive, but no problem here. When there was a problem, that I received less items than ordered or something was not working, dispute process worked fine. Just never give feedback when you confirm, you’ve received the package. Low star feedback is your strong possible argument in their eyes.
Unfortunately, it has a few holes in their rules. One being that when your order is solved by dispute, (partial) refund or automatic cancellation, you can’t provide feedback and in that case, they (sellers) don’t care at all. Another problem is that right now, customer support is nonexistent. A long time ago, you could send them an email. They have (had) two email addresses, one is undeliverable as no longer exists, the other one does not accept emails either because it’s full. This was bad, but they still had online customer support. This was taken over by bots completely. If you have simple problem, it can help you (it’s more like explaining what you should do, it won’t really help you if you need help). For more complex situation, that can’t be solved with pushing a few buttons, you can’t contact them.
Lately, I had my first bad experience on AliExpress with one seller “”“Elfeland Outdoor Lighting Store”“”. I’ve ordered a flashlight (ThoreFire). After some time, I got a message that they have only last one, that does not work and they can’t get another one, so asked me to cancel the order with reason “other”. I was curious why I should cancel order (it’s in fact a “proposal” to cancel order, other side has to accept it), why don’t they cancel it themself. I suspected that it has probably something to do with seller point system that they don’t want to be affected by not fulfilling the order and that I should be the one who requested it. After checking the cancellation proposal form, there was also a reason “out of stock”, so I’ve used that. Next, they rejected the proposal and sent me a message that I have to change the reason to other. I replied that they don’t have that flashlight to ship, their supplier does not have it, so out of stock is correct reason, I won’t change it and if they want, they can cancel that themselfs. They said that they can’t cancel it (I can’t believe that) and that if I want my money back, I must change reason to other. Again, I’ve refused to change it and be the bad guy (business partner) instead of them (from AE system’s point of view) and told them, that if they don’t want to cancel it, it will be canceled automatically soon. I was confident with how processes on AE works. (For those, who don’t know, seller has a few days processing time and if the time expires and your order is not shipped, it is cancelled automatically and you get your money back.) To my surprise, just before this processing time expired, my order was marked as shipped together with tracking number. I was curious, if they sent the broken flashlight or what will happen, because I have a message (proof) where they said that they have only one that does not work. But, after a few days, the tracking number said that it is still “waiting for pickup” which means that they just printed a label (which I guess does not cost them anything) and never sent anything. It’s ± 6 weeks already and it still says waiting for pickup. So, I’m now waiting for delivery time expiration after which I open dispute and get my money back (I still hope that dispute process works). After dispute process, I won’t be able to provide any feedback and seller’s history will be perfectly clean with all five stars reviews. In a big shopping site with tons of sellers, bad seller can happen, so I was not that much worried about it. What did disappoint me is that after this, that bad seller reliability and feedback score is unaffected and he can continue with this behavior. That’s why I tried quite hard to find any contact on AE support, because I was curious how would AE react as such seller damages their name and business. If this was my first purchase on AE, it’d be my last one and I’d never shop there ever again, but I can’t contact them.
TL;DR beware as there is no real customer support on AE except bots and beware of “”“Elfeland Outdoor Lighting Store”“” it’s the worst seller I met on AliExpress so far.