Siege M.

Like sister company Aliexpress, Alibaba is like a jungle with mix of Scammers and genuine sellers. Don't be fooled by the advertised extremely low prices. First, the Seller quotes a ridiculously high shipping cost to discourage you from asking them to ship item. Thus you have to find your own freight agent. If you arrange shipping yourself then you run into another group of Psychopath fraudsters- Freight agents!.
Don't be fooled with their enticing words, "Honey", "My love" or low prices "$1 per kilo" "$2 per cbm". As soon as you fall for the trap n give them your item, their story changes. They will either hike the shipping prices by say 1000% and blame it on changing shipping cost OR they tell you they can no longer ship so you have to pay the storage cost and cost of picking your item before they can release your item. Otherwise, they threaten to destroy or sell your item. You cannot raise a dispute because they are offering a "shipping" service and not selling an item per se.

These delays so that your order will already hit "completed" on Alibaba by the time you receive it. This is so that you cannot raise a dispute incase your item arrives damaged or you get the wrong item which is the case most times.
It is not worth the risk, waste of money and headache buying from Alibaba. Not mentioning the poor English of most sellers that could cost you money or risk of receiving the wrong item

I saw a Windscreen de-icer on the Repco website, drove to Repco New lynn and was informed the item is not available instore thus I ordered online. After few days of ordering the order was closed and the money refund. Then I went back online and saw the same de-icer but now, Repco has increased the price of the product from $11 to $16. How horrible is that practice? To learn that first, a number of products listed on the Repco site are actually out of stock (with no out-of-stock information on the site) OR that Rapco receives orders and refund them just to hike the product prices thereafter? Thats disgusting

I saw a Windscreen de-icer on the Repco website, drove to Repco New Lynn and was informed the item is not available instore thus I ordered online. After few days of ordering, my order was closed and the money was refunded. Then I went back online and saw the same de-icer but now, Repco has increased the price of the product from $11 to $16. How horrible is that? To learn that a number of products listed on Repco site are actually no out-of-stock (no out-of-stock information shown on the product) or to learn that Rapco receives orders and refunds them just because they want to hike the product prices? That's disgusting

I am a Platinum member of Aliexpress and have been shopping on the site for several years. I have seen the site go from being one of the best online shopping site but regrettably is something else now. Aliexpress is now a healthy mix of good seller and Scammers in the guise of sellers.

* Aliexpress has successfully replaced human customer service with machines. This simply implies that when you have problems with your order you are basically OYO (On Your Own).

*Comestics. You buy a cosmetics say Acne remover and seller either tells you that u need to use 4 bottles of the item or over a couple of months before product is effective. After using the product for a couple of months you realise that you have been sold a bottle water mixed aroma in the name of Acne remover. You can't give a feed back on Aliexpress to warn other buyers bcos the Aliexpress feedback period has elapsed. Its only you that knows the product is a scam while the Scammer (seller) sells to his next victim (buyer).
* Electronics? Then prepare for heart ache.
Of course there is no way you can test an electronic or computer device over the Internet. So when you order and realise the item is crap, you raise dispute. Aliexpress dispute team decides to refund you but then you have to ship back the electronic usually registered. Then you find out that the cost of shipping back and the device is half the cost of the price you paid for the item. The best you can get is loosing half of the money u paid. But that's not all, Seller can get the device and refuse to refund you. That case aliexpress would only compensate you with vouchers. Say you paid $300 for a tablet, pay another $70 to courier it back to ClSeller in China (you have to use courier bcos u won't want the item to get lost). Total spending is $375 and all you get is Aliexpress vouchers with attached conditions on how u can use the voucher.

The sorry experience on Aliexpress is endless. Just be in for a heart ache.