AliExpress can offer great deals, but it’s also very easy to get scammed, receive a cheap knock-off, or even end up with nothing at all. The search engine isn’t very helpful, often mixing reputable merchants with sketchy ones and real products with junk.
So far, I’ve found the AliUp extension, which seems fairly helpful. I wish there were third-party websites with independent reviews, but I haven’t found anything truly helpful or comprehensive yet.
So, what are your tips for buying on AliExpress or similar platforms?
Part of it is just getting a feel for Chinese goods and using that to determine what is a good deal or what is a scam. I’ve worked with a lot of Chinese suppliers for a long time so I have a sixth sense for their bullshit.
Generally I avoid anything that could be a safety risk (e.g. Mains power) , and keep an eye on the photos to see if they look too good to be true. Official stores are good, as are items with many purchases and reviews that include pictures.
There’s plenty of official stores on Ali and a rule of thumb is to stay away from “no name” products and products that are obvious copies of other brands.
Counterfeit products are the main reason I’d ever shop ali
Sometimes, counterfeits or unknown brands are so similar to the real deal that it barely matters. I’d say that basic electronics (alarm clocks, kitchen scales, calculators, SD security cams) or even RAM is fine. With appropriate expectations, parts like video or USB cables, hubs etc., small home improvement items (hooks, screws) are fine too. Avoid categories where a lot of items have fake specs (storage devices, LED bulbs, anything that claims a runtime on a Li-Ion battery). Power electronics (especially if using mains or non-tiny Li-Ion batteries) can be downright dangerous. For novelty items and electronics modules, it’s usually easy to find text or video reviews on other websites because they’re easy to uniquely describe. Remember to consider ways in which the product can be utter crap despite high reviews citing good first impressions; it also helps to have practical knowledge of testing the properties of the items and fixing common issues.
Avoid categories where a lot of items have fake specs (storage devices, LED bulbs, anything that claims a runtime on a Li-Ion battery)
I’d say be aware rather than avoid. E.g I bought a $10 camping lantern that claimed 2.5 times its true capacity, but it still runs for hours and is a great, well designed, if flimsy, product for the price.
Well, depends on how much you’re OK with some problems. I knowingly bought a “2 TB (64 GB Extended)” flash drive, tested its sectors and reprogrammed it to 32-in-64-GB for wear leveling and bad sector avoidance because it was still a cheap 32GB USB drive. I made sure to label it for “non-critical use” such as movies.
As for camping lanterns, ones charged from mains might have a nasty habit of shocking their users. (The YouTube channel contains a huge number of cheap Chinese charger teardowns and most don’t meet safety criteria. Usually, there is just 1 or 2 layers of thin tape between mains and the output you can touch.)
You can even have that flash drive for free if you claim it wasn’t sold as advertised!
It was advertised as “2 TB (64 GB Extended)” at a local clearance sale (not AliExpress), which was basically correct though I would prefer “64 GB but misprogrammed so everything can get corrupted at any time”. When buying it, I didn’t yet know if I could reprogram the chip but the low price was justified for the pretty aluminum case with a USB-C port and place for a custom PCB. I decided to buy it also to prevent another, less technical person from using it and losing their data. The store was getting rid of inventory for very cheap and would close soon so no more fake drives would be ordered.
If it seems to good you will be disappointed.
I try look for higher sold numbers and review amount. Than looking for the sellers rating and also numbers.
A lot of brands have official AliExpress shops which you can reach via their website.
On the other side, get yourself a limit you’re comfortable to “lose” and buy expensive stuff locally.
The sort option by “orders” is good for this. Far from infallible but still useful.
You don’t
Their refund tends to work well, even if the seller tries to convince you to send the piece of shit back to them. Just say “seller will use the item to fraud another customer” when refusing to send it back (if it was an obvious fake thing, like “8tb pendrive”). Ali will almost always side with you
Seller once asked me to ship it back, when I told customer support how much it would cost to ship it back (twice the cost of the item itself) they just refunded me.
You have to pay for shipping back? I’ve always had free returns at USPS.
Maybe the return situation is different in Canada, or they fixed that issue a while ago (I didn’t have to deal with an item to return since).
Never buy from a seller with no feedback or sales.
Been a heavy (1k+ items) alibaba and aliexpress buyer for about a decade. I think I have only been scammed as in not receiving the item or receiving a different item a couple of times and never had an issue with ali returning my money from escrow.
To the issue of item quality I have a couple of takeaways. First, number of orders are listed for each item, I usually stick to items with at least a dozen + sales. There is a way to sort by number of orders. The second would be the is it to good to be true rule. You can definitely get good, sometime amazing deals on ali but for example, if on amazon you are seeing a 20,000 mah battery packs going for $50 on amazon and then you see it for $10 on aliexpress, good chance you will get a 5,000mah battery labeled as 20,000mah. For a 10$ pair of kicks, they’ll show up but are likely going to be pretty low quality. Finally would be name brand goods, these are likely going to be either counterfit or greymarket (like where the legit factory just runs the production line a bit longer). Quality will vary greatly from trash to indistinguishable from the original.
One final thought is sellers are usually pretty accommodating in my experience because they are looking to win those bulk orders. Ask them for more details, pics, etc. For some things like clothes, they may have different qualities they can sell.
What have you bought to make it to 1k items? How do they all fit in your home?
The few times I’ve used AliExpress I’ve had expectations met in terms of product quality, exceeded in terms of customer support and disappointed in terms of promised delivery speed.
I don’t get the sense most people are any different.
It’s a marketplace, you get what you pay for.
Buying new, unreviewed products can save you money, since sellers often list things cheaper to get a few buyers and then increase the price.
If you’re buying something branded and it’s less than 1/2 of the US price, be prepared for it to be different than in the photos.
