It depends heavily on what you're buying; Parts for projects, or cables - mostly great. Pet toys - usually fine. Small household tools and other utilitarian bit

It depends heavily on what you're buying; Parts for projects, or cables - mostly great. Pet toys - usually fine. Small household tools and other utilitarian bits - good as long as it can't get bent or dented en route. (Western) Name-brand products - don't go there, they're more expensive or fake. I've bought around 400 things on AliExpress, with an average value of, guessing, about A$7.50. I'd say just under 10% had a problem that needed a full refund -- mostly just not arriving or arriving beaten up. I only had to complain bitterly when a surface-mount component fell off a PCIe card and I refused to accept their recommendation to fix it myself. Fewer than 2% of goods had a disappointingly short life span. Meanwhile, the price is at most a third of what I'd pay to get the same (or seriously similar) product locally. Doing the math very roughly, I've probably paid about A$3k for stuff that would have cost A$10k. And all I had to do was wait 1-3 months for everything.