Be careful buying ANYTHING from ALIEXPRESS

[krudawg]

Yeah I know, you are rolling the dice when buying Chinese made tools but here I am with a post about getting burned by ALIEXPRESS.  Last January I ordered a Livter trim router bit.  As of today (we are in late March now) and the tool has not shown up.  Several emails to ALIEXPRESS has gone un resolved.  They even asked me to go to my local Post Office and ask where it is - They had no record of receiving anything from ALIEXPRESS with my name on it or anything from ALIEXPRESS for that matter  during that time frame.  I asked for a refund and they came back to me with "It is not lost" and it will arrive soon -Well it has not.
Anyway, Steer clear of ALI BABA because their customer service is terrible.

 

[woodferret]

The lower tier tracking/trackless shipping options are rife with issues.  So much so they've done their own processing facilities under the AliExpress shipment options.  Sadly, you have to keep at the messaging for those others and a watchful eye on the timeout.  They refunded me last time, but the headache makes me just use the AliExpress shipping options for high value goods.

 

[ChuckM]

Once the shipment date passes, ask the seller for a refund, and as soon as he or she refuses to refund (with whatever excuses), contact Aliexpress (Ask Eva). Sooner than you can realize, you'll see the refund, once Aliexpress gets involved.

In terms of process response and loss of shipments, Aliexpress is close to Amazon. But even though the same product may be made in China, I prefer Amazon (if filled by Amazon) because of the much shorter delivery. There're times that I must use Aliexpress when such offers are not available from Amazon, or the saving concerned is significant to justify the waiting. For the record, I've never been burned by any online transactions done with Amazon, Aliexpress or eBay (my total online purchases (not counting those with brick-and-motar stores) since the 90s probably have racked up in thousands).

PS If the seller offers to reship the item instead of a refund, don't take the bait. If it never arrives, you would pass the claim period because the second shipment is supposed to take another month or two.

 

[Ron B]

I bought a Festool 2200 accessory kit for too cheap and it was all a big scam.  The name of the company was the same as a dealer I bought from before, with one letter dropped. Originally I thought the company was in the British Isles, or maybe mainland Europe.    Then I realized it was HongKong, then later mainland China.  When I did not receive the accessory kit, through e-mails they claimed it was mailed, and even sent me a tracking number.  A few weeks later I get a cheap necklace worth maybe 15 cents that I knew I did not order. My fraud antenna were up so I immediately checked and saw the tracking number on the necklace was the same that should have been on the accessory kit.  I immediately called the credit card company and filed a dispute.  I then contacted the seller and they said it must have been a mistake, to send them pictures of the necklace, and everything else to delay the process. The e-mails were bad English and always calling me "friend".  I know they were hoping I would throw the necklace and package away, then when I complained about not receiving the accessory kit, they would have proof that a package with that tracking number was delivered and I would be thinking a porch pirate got it.  Anyway, I filled the paperwork out with the credit card company, killed them with documentation, and dodged that arrow.  Or so I thought.  A couple of weeks later I was contacted by the credit card company asking if I bought two first class tickets from China to Peru.  Thankfully the credit card company caught that, and that account was closed.  Now I get a lot of scams on my e-mail, and am sure they probably sold my info on the dark web. 
.

 

[ChuckM]

As far as I know, Aliexpress sellers don't see the credit card info. I provide, as it's processed through the Aliexpress payment processing system, not directly with the sellers' own payment systems.
https://www.security.org/digital-safety/is-aliexpress-safe/

I think Amazon works the same way.

But if I have any doubts with any little known merchants, I use Paypal if possible as cancelling a credit card account is a lot of extra work (rearranging all the auto payments, etc.), even though the credit card issuer will protect me.

 

[luvmytoolz]

I've only had to rely on refunds a couple of times from Ali and had no issue whatsoever. Parcel delivery times for us in OZ can be up to 3 months so we take that with a grain of salt. They generally always turn up sooner or later.

 

[ChuckM]

6 to 8 weeks are the norm for Canada, but if they have a local (home-based) distributor (which existence you don't know about because they don't tell you), it is 1 week to 10 days. Once in a while, an order can take over 10 weeks however.

 

[RussellS]

6 to 8 weeks are the norm for Canada, .............Once in a while, an order can take over 10 weeks however.

You must be a little more patient than me.  6, 8, 10 weeks?  Once 2, 3, 4 weeks go by, I'd consider the order dead and cancel it.  Or more properly for the company to automatically cancel it and call or email you and say its canceled due to us not being able to deliver on time.  Its out of stock and the order is not going to be filled.  Which is fine.  I realize retailers buy a product from a producer or wholesaler and then sell it and cannot count on restocking the original item they bought/sold.  I would put taking 10 weeks or over to deliver a product kind of like ordering medicine and it taking 10 weeks or over to arrive.  You might be dead before the medicine arrives.  No need for the medicine if you are dead already.

 

[ChuckM]

My patience isn't that thick  [big grin]...any item that is needed for an immediate project can't wait for more than two weeks (which is usually the max. Amazon delivery time if it's from the States).

Only for nice-to-have /nonessential and hard-to-find items can I afford a delivery time in a month and longer. We don't have a store like McMaster-Carr here in Canada...and they don't sell to Canadian consumers unless it's a business account. Aliexpress sometimes fills that void, if Amazon can't.

 

[PaulMarcel]

We don't have a store like McMaster-Carr here in Canada...and they don't sell to Canadian consumers unless it's a business account.

I love McMaster-Carr, but I'll use Grainger first since I can pick up locally and they ship-to-store for free. I see there's a Grainger-Canada. Maybe that would help.

 

[ChuckM]

Yes, I've shopped at Grainger a few times, but it doesn't carry a lot of the things that M-C does. For example,https://www.mcmaster.com/c-clamp-pads/

 

[Michael Kellough]

We don't have a store like McMaster-Carr here in Canada...and they don't sell to Canadian consumers unless it's a business account.

I love McMaster-Carr, but I'll use Grainger first since I can pick up locally and they ship-to-store for free. I see there's a Grainger-Canada. Maybe that would help.

I screwed up ordering from McMaster’s robot last week.

I needed about a half ounce of nylon set screws and placed the order. Seconds later I realized I should get some of another size and placed a second order in less than a minute from the first. And hoped somehow the orders would be combined, and I’d only pay one shipping charge. Nope. The next day two small padded envelopes were stacked on my doormat and two $8.95 shipping charges appeared on the credit card.

If I’d bothered to pick up the phone and talk with one of McMasters excellent order takers I could have gotten the orders combined even after the initial mistake.

 

[luvmytoolz]

My patience isn't that thick  [big grin]...any item that is needed for an immediate project can't wait for more than two weeks (which is usually the max. Amazon delivery time if it's from the States).

Only for nice-to-have /nonessential and hard-to-find items can I afford a delivery time in a month and longer. We don't have a store like McMaster-Carr here in Canada...and they don't sell to Canadian consumers unless it's a business account. Aliexpress sometimes fills that void, if Amazon can't.

You'd hate living in OZ then! For most stuff we pretty much only have two choices, get absolutely reamed on pricing locally or overseas, or save money and wait a massive amount of time!

I'm after the 3/8" set of tambour router bits from Canada, with the terrible exchange rate and shipping costs it's many hundreds, same 1/2" set from Ali is around $75AUD. If Ali had the 3/8" set I'd buy it in a flash even if I have to wait over 2 months for it.

 

[ChuckM]

About tambour router bit set...three to four years ago, I paid almost twice the amount for the Amana set (toolstoday) that Canadian vendors (e.g Dimar, about $150 Cdn or less) charged for theirs, because I didn't do my homework. I thought only Amana Tool had that kind of specialty bits. Had I known about the Canadian sources (and there're at least two!), I would've, of course, bought the set from one of them for lower shipping fee and lower product price.

 

[mino]

Aliexpress is a marketplace platform for small shops/sellers. Alibaba being their B2B thing.

Roughly in between getting stuff from 3rd party sellers on Amazon and from established sellers on Ebay.

That is all too easy to forget.

There are reliable sellers there.
There are big ODMs supplanting their sales through the platform even.
There are a lot of scammers.
And then there is the huge grey zone, where the listing is not-honest-but-not-really-false. Often that is just from lazy translation, so a good deal can be behind.

Best advice is to not buy stuff you do not understand (the inherent value of) or do not know the critical properties to watch for explicitly in the listing.

From 100+ purchases of stuff, so far no scam with me.+
A couple misunderstandings (worse material than hoped, but cognizant of the price ..).

I would never order 10+ pieces of something until after I have verified the seller/item combo with a test order of 1-2 pieces.

I had a couple orders refunded by Aliexpress. Some automatically when the seller did not ship in time.

EDIT:
From the OP, it does not seem they really spoke with Aliexpress.

This is a common mistake - do talk to the seller, BUT place any claims/complaints (also) with the platfrom if not resolved/cleared immediately/fast.

As for shipping, it is possible local shipper lose it too. THAT IS NOT YOUR PROBLEM, insist on "not delivered".
Especially for small packages of high value which are easy to put in a pocket ... this is a notorious issue when ordering CPUs, memory etc. The package just "vanishes" during local delivery ... your bit was likely in that category too.

 

[ChuckM]

Whether it's Amazon, eBay, etsy or Aliexpress, I try to avoid:

New sellers with little feedback/rating
Sellers with poor feedback/rating
Sellers with little transaction history

regardless of how "attractive" their prices seem to be.

Recently, I bought something on Amazon, and a confirmation of delivery was emailed to me, even though nothing showed up at my door. I contacted the seller and Amazon, and within minutes, Amazon refunded me (the seller might not even have had a chance to read my email). Minutes, not hours or days. It had to be some kind of auto process that they used to deal with some of the (low value) refund requests.

I reordered the same item from the SAME seller (because of its sales history and rating), and it showed up in a week or so. Lost shipments are not the end of the world.

I consider myself a "pro" in online purchases; I had a Billpoint account before I have opened my PayPal account. One online merchant that I have never done business with and do avoid is Banggood (sp.?), because it bombarded my hotmail account (created for just that) with ads even after I unsubscribed them.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

I have always been leery of AliExpress and BangGood, never shopped with either of them. They just seem ripe with scam-ability. I'm not even particularly thrilled by Etsy. It just seems like the potential savings are not worth the headache, if there is a problem.
I have purchased a few 3D printed things from ToolCurve and they worked out ok, but I didn't see much of an alternative? Some day I would like to get a printer of my own, but I'm too busy for something new right now.
So many of the recognized brand goods are made in China, that it's somewhat hard to avoid, but somehow it feels like the potential to get scammed is lower if you stay away from buying direct.

 

[woodferret]

Banggood is so-so.  I've bought from them but if something is broken or missing, they'd want you to take a video of it - not just pictures.  Still got refunded but it's odd to try and take pictures of something missing though. 

 

[luvmytoolz]

Banggood is pretty good, lots of good quality tools at very decent prices and shipping is usually better than Ali.

 

[me_two]

I have bought several items from Banggood. All the items were delivered on time.
The last item is delayed. Got a Email from Banggood asking if I wanted a refund or wait for the item.
The quality and price are pretty good.