4 ms·

Yep, I relatively recently learned about Aliexpress and it seems like most American retailers are just a local cache for them. But if I can order sketchy Chines

Yep, I relatively recently learned about Aliexpress and it seems like most American retailers are just a local cache for them. But if I can order sketchy Chinese knick-knacks directly and skip the markup at the cost of a bit more waiting time, I'd just as soon do that. I've also found the Chinese customer service speaks English just fine and have been great whenever I've had to deal with them.

cogman10 4y ago
It's gotten really bad, particularly on amazon. Search for anything and you are likely to find the same item with 50 different brand names but all essentially the same garbage from aliexpress/wish. For example, here's a search for "bike trainer" [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bike+trainer&crid=KCCRWTVZHHQ7&sprefix=bike+trainer%2Caps%2C228&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bike+trainer&crid=KCCRWTVZHHQ7&sp...
- _jal 4y ago
  I dropped Amazon (again) a while back. I'd gone back to using them during the plague, and got lazy. What jolted me back was multiple delivery failures in a row followed by a shitty "give me my money back" experience. Right now, Amazon combines the honesty of flea markets with the reliability of a stoned teenager. I'm back to shopping at physical stores, and am enjoying it, at least at the moment. And when ordering things, I try to go direct or find retailers who care about their reputations.
  - cogman10 4y ago
    Yup, I've been doing the same. Amazon is for things I don't care too much about if it's a knock off. But generally speaking, I'll try and by stuff directly from the manufacturer or in store. I really wish online shopping wasn't so messed up.
    - silasdavis 4y ago
      'Direct from manufacturer' can be much worse when they themselves have outsourced fulfilment to a warehouse in Ireland as their European agent with limited to no support contact.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    The worst I've got recently is from the Amazon locker team. The recently sent me a notice that they'd "learned that my package had been delayed". I don't mind that much; shit happens, but that passive language just disgusted me. No, you weren't able to deliver my package on time Amazon. I'm sorry if Jeff Bezos sticks you in a solitary wellness pod or whatever Orwellian punishment he's dreamt up for people who delay packages, but it's the job you picked.
    - algoatecorn 4y ago
      I would guess that many Amazon fulfillment employees did not feel they had options when seeking employment.
      - hotpotamus 4y ago
        I don't know much about how Amazon is structured, but I doubt it's the low wage soldiers who are writing the automation that sends emails out to notify you of delays. Of course, they're all working class stiffs compared to Bezos and the rest of the senior leadership.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  And the information customers want is missing! Customers want to know the VALUE of a product. I am looking at barrier hose crimpers for air conditioning lines. Okay, there's about a dozen identicalish looking ones on amazon with a price from 100-300 dollars, and a reputable united states manufacturer starting at 2500+. How do I know what's the best option? I really don't care about the price, I want to know if the price is worth it. If these different products are different or just rebranded, I want to know.
inasio 4y ago
There's a story in the news this week about an undercover Russian spy that had a jewelry shop/brand in Italy [0], one funny detail about the story is that the jewelry was actually sourced from Aliexpress [0] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1563060250269589505 https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1563060250269589505
- elliekelly 4y ago
  This thread is wild. It's shocking they'd issue consecutively numbered passports to spies. Using random numbers seems like it would have huge benefits for essentially no cost.
  - yetanotherloser 4y ago
    I won't tell them if you don't!
  - atyppo 4y ago
    I'm not an intelligence expert so this is purely spectulation. However, this assumes lots of things. Perhaps the Russians are truly that sloppy. However, more likely in my eyes is that this is a strategy to make them appear dumb and sloppy. The US claims to not send spies into foreign countries without the cover of a diplomatic passport (whether or not this is actually true, I don't know. However, this is one of the reasons a lot of people formerly in the intelligence community believe that Paul Whelan was not a spy). Most other Western countries claim to follow this standard. Perhaps this is Russia's version of "obvious" spies?
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/what-does-alexei-navalny-say-the-duped-russian-spy-admitted-about-his-poisoning https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/what-does-alex... That's the call where Alexei Navalny tricked an FSB agent into admitting they had poisoned him. I think often people try to come up with too clever explanations for stupid behavior. Sometimes it's just stupid behavior. Often times this is the catalyst for conspiracy theories - it's a nice explanation for random or stupid events.
MarkusWandel 4y ago
A facebook friend posted a picture of a bangle that she'd bought off an e-commerce site in the neighbourhood of $20 that was disappointing. I simply did a google image search on the picture (the e-commerce site's listing) and sure enough, it hit on Ali Express for something in the neighbourhood of $1.80, free shipping.
- elliekelly 4y ago
  So much of the "handmade" jewelry from Etsy comes directly from AliExpress now.
  - andrewia 4y ago
    I've found it to be 50-50 or less in my recent experience, but there's an interesting reason why. I recently shopped for a fidget ring and found AliExpress had lots of options, but none that fit my size 14 fingers. So I checked Etsy and was pleasantly surprised to see only ~20% of their listings were rings from AliExpress. Another 70% of listings were for rings that all had similar designs but were slightly unique from each other, each with unique listing photos, and all with minor flaws from being handmade. Eventually one seller had an honest bio that describe themselves as a "jewelry making village near Jaipur, India". I believe many pieces are actually handmade to a degree, in what I presume to be a series of small rural workshops with correspondingly cheap labor. They are probably given order lists by middlemen who run their own Etsy stores and are willing to deal with the logistics and customer service.
- andrewia 4y ago
  This has become the norm. I am a TikTok user* and there's a lot of ads and organic posts about "innovative new products" that are exposed as dropshipped items from a warehouse in China. And you may have seen "get rich quick" gurus promoting their strategies for opening Amazon stores to resell stuff from AliExpress. I've seen quite a few AliExpress sellers advertise dropshipping ("just send a spreadsheet and we send packages with no receipt") and/or bulk order discounts (to ship the goods yourself with faster, domestic shipping). To be fair, not all direct-from-China goods are cheap crap. I've received excellent USB cables, noise cancelling earbuds, and much more from various sellers. And the middlemen selling on Amazon are offering the convenience of easy returns, fast shipping, and excellent customer service from Amazon. Depending on the seller, [their profit margins can actually be quite thin because Amazon charges a lot for their customer service, warehouses, and return handling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yhc6mmdJC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yhc6mmdJC4). * I know TikTok is quite controversial, for good reasons like data security, lack of ethics, and algorithmic infobubbling/censorship. But I am still a fan and use it because its algorithm was the only thing that was able to string together my liked posts and begin showing content/advice about what mental health disorders I might have. That significantly sped up my diagnoses with my psychiatrist, who confirmed 2 of the 3 disorders.
andrewia 4y ago
I have become an AliExpress enthusiast and agree. It works best when you are willing to wait a variable amount of time for your items. Often, it will only take 2-3 weeks for them to arrive at my home in California. But every 6th package (or so) will slip through the cracks, often at their warehouses in LA County. It's still the best for pricing, and is pretty close to the sources (unless you're hardcore enough to translate Taobao listings and get your own mail forwarding). For example, I got a new smartwatch and wanted some bands in specific colors, and a screen protector. Listings with the exact same images on Amazon were $9-12 instead of $3-4. (And when you compared reviews and pictures, they were probably from the same factory.) Some small notes about AliExpress: - Although most of AliExpress's lower prices come from lower cost warehouses and less middlemen, some of it comes from exploiting discounted postage. [That has been improved since 2019](https://www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com/opinion/trumps-reform-of-upu-looks-set-to-stay.html https://www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com/opini...) but I still get a ton of Kyrgyzstani-labeled parcels that originated from Guangdong or Shanghai/Hangzhou. I don't know if that's above-board or not. - Sellers can sometimes be deceptive. When I was shopping for LED interior lights for an old car, some lumen ratings seemed accurate and even had videos of it being tested. Others had obviously inflated brightnesses despite having a similar number of LEDs are power consumption. In addition, some sellers will sneak an unrelated cheap item into variants of another item, so the listing has a lower price in search results. - Packages now take a few days to be consolidated. This is great for efficiency and often means you get slightly faster delivery in your home country. But these packages can still get lost, so you may have to dispute up to a dozen items at a time. I might have to do this soon with all my smartwatch accessories, and in the meantime, pray my screen doesn't get scratched (or eat the inflated Amazon/eBay price). - Compared to Amazon, they have fewer customer reviews, and don't stack listings for the same item. In disputes, customer service won't always favor you or offer a complete refund for bad items. - Compared to eBay, they have much worse search filtering. You may wish to consider eBay for a balance of cheap prices and faster shipping, especially when you filter for sellers within 100 miles. Sometimes Chinese eBay sellers are cheaper than AliExpress sellers.
haliskerbas 4y ago
Is it actually sketchy then? You get the product and good customer service it sounds like. All Knick knacks are Chinese. Most common goods will be a rebrand of something similar, especially if you buy from Amazon.
- kube-system 4y ago
  That depends on what the item is. Chinese goods that are sold on the shelves of western retailers have passed some scrutiny by buyers of those respective retailers, and, a retailer in your country will be held to account for any legal requirements of selling said products. Things that are drop shipped haven't passed any third party scrutiny and nobody involved in the sales process is held to your local legal requirements. They can ship you an unsafe product that may burn your house down or poison your children, and your local legal processes have no power to make you whole again, nor any affect to discourage sellers from cutting those corners for profit.
wnevets 4y ago
Drop shipping has become a cancer for the online shopping experience.
- bonestamp2 4y ago
  I wouldn't blame it on drop shipping specifically -- many fortune 500 manufacturers drop ship high quality products from their amazon store. The problem is more about the low bar of entry for resellers to list those same products on amazon, walmart, etc. Some of those products will be legit and some will be counterfeit.
vorpalhex 4y ago
Yeah oddly enough buying from Aliexpress gets you better support (and sometimes newer revisions) of products than the middlemen! A lot of the aliexpress sellers are also willing to do custom orders if you ask nicely. This is a case of the middlemen removing value instead of adding it.
- bonestamp2 4y ago
  Agreed. I have a good relationship with one seller and he has even looked for things I've requested in the Shenzhen markets for me when he goes there. It's amazing customer service for me and he gets to sell more product too.
mattbaker 4y ago
> it seems like most American retailers are just a local cache The _other_ Amazon CDN
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
Oh yes. Dropshipping has to be one of the least valuable manifestations of the Internet economy. Waiting earnestly for the invisible hand of the market to give this particular "job" the shove.

cogman10 4y ago

It's gotten really bad, particularly on amazon. Search for anything and you are likely to find the same item with 50 different brand names but all essentially the same garbage from aliexpress/wish. For example, here's a search for "bike trainer" [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bike+trainer&crid=KCCRWTVZHHQ7&sprefix=bike+trainer%2Caps%2C228&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bike+trainer&crid=KCCRWTVZHHQ7&sp...

_jal 4y ago
I dropped Amazon (again) a while back. I'd gone back to using them during the plague, and got lazy. What jolted me back was multiple delivery failures in a row followed by a shitty "give me my money back" experience. Right now, Amazon combines the honesty of flea markets with the reliability of a stoned teenager. I'm back to shopping at physical stores, and am enjoying it, at least at the moment. And when ordering things, I try to go direct or find retailers who care about their reputations.
- cogman10 4y ago
  Yup, I've been doing the same. Amazon is for things I don't care too much about if it's a knock off. But generally speaking, I'll try and by stuff directly from the manufacturer or in store. I really wish online shopping wasn't so messed up.
  - silasdavis 4y ago
    'Direct from manufacturer' can be much worse when they themselves have outsourced fulfilment to a warehouse in Ireland as their European agent with limited to no support contact.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  The worst I've got recently is from the Amazon locker team. The recently sent me a notice that they'd "learned that my package had been delayed". I don't mind that much; shit happens, but that passive language just disgusted me. No, you weren't able to deliver my package on time Amazon. I'm sorry if Jeff Bezos sticks you in a solitary wellness pod or whatever Orwellian punishment he's dreamt up for people who delay packages, but it's the job you picked.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    I would guess that many Amazon fulfillment employees did not feel they had options when seeking employment.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      I don't know much about how Amazon is structured, but I doubt it's the low wage soldiers who are writing the automation that sends emails out to notify you of delays. Of course, they're all working class stiffs compared to Bezos and the rest of the senior leadership.
calvinmorrison 4y ago
And the information customers want is missing! Customers want to know the VALUE of a product. I am looking at barrier hose crimpers for air conditioning lines. Okay, there's about a dozen identicalish looking ones on amazon with a price from 100-300 dollars, and a reputable united states manufacturer starting at 2500+. How do I know what's the best option? I really don't care about the price, I want to know if the price is worth it. If these different products are different or just rebranded, I want to know.

inasio 4y ago

There's a story in the news this week about an undercover Russian spy that had a jewelry shop/brand in Italy [0], one funny detail about the story is that the jewelry was actually sourced from Aliexpress [0] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1563060250269589505 https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1563060250269589505

elliekelly 4y ago
This thread is wild. It's shocking they'd issue consecutively numbered passports to spies. Using random numbers seems like it would have huge benefits for essentially no cost.
- yetanotherloser 4y ago
  I won't tell them if you don't!
- atyppo 4y ago
  I'm not an intelligence expert so this is purely spectulation. However, this assumes lots of things. Perhaps the Russians are truly that sloppy. However, more likely in my eyes is that this is a strategy to make them appear dumb and sloppy. The US claims to not send spies into foreign countries without the cover of a diplomatic passport (whether or not this is actually true, I don't know. However, this is one of the reasons a lot of people formerly in the intelligence community believe that Paul Whelan was not a spy). Most other Western countries claim to follow this standard. Perhaps this is Russia's version of "obvious" spies?
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/what-does-alexei-navalny-say-the-duped-russian-spy-admitted-about-his-poisoning https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/what-does-alex... That's the call where Alexei Navalny tricked an FSB agent into admitting they had poisoned him. I think often people try to come up with too clever explanations for stupid behavior. Sometimes it's just stupid behavior. Often times this is the catalyst for conspiracy theories - it's a nice explanation for random or stupid events.

MarkusWandel 4y ago

A facebook friend posted a picture of a bangle that she'd bought off an e-commerce site in the neighbourhood of $20 that was disappointing. I simply did a google image search on the picture (the e-commerce site's listing) and sure enough, it hit on Ali Express for something in the neighbourhood of $1.80, free shipping.

elliekelly 4y ago
So much of the "handmade" jewelry from Etsy comes directly from AliExpress now.
- andrewia 4y ago
  I've found it to be 50-50 or less in my recent experience, but there's an interesting reason why. I recently shopped for a fidget ring and found AliExpress had lots of options, but none that fit my size 14 fingers. So I checked Etsy and was pleasantly surprised to see only ~20% of their listings were rings from AliExpress. Another 70% of listings were for rings that all had similar designs but were slightly unique from each other, each with unique listing photos, and all with minor flaws from being handmade. Eventually one seller had an honest bio that describe themselves as a "jewelry making village near Jaipur, India". I believe many pieces are actually handmade to a degree, in what I presume to be a series of small rural workshops with correspondingly cheap labor. They are probably given order lists by middlemen who run their own Etsy stores and are willing to deal with the logistics and customer service.
andrewia 4y ago
This has become the norm. I am a TikTok user* and there's a lot of ads and organic posts about "innovative new products" that are exposed as dropshipped items from a warehouse in China. And you may have seen "get rich quick" gurus promoting their strategies for opening Amazon stores to resell stuff from AliExpress. I've seen quite a few AliExpress sellers advertise dropshipping ("just send a spreadsheet and we send packages with no receipt") and/or bulk order discounts (to ship the goods yourself with faster, domestic shipping). To be fair, not all direct-from-China goods are cheap crap. I've received excellent USB cables, noise cancelling earbuds, and much more from various sellers. And the middlemen selling on Amazon are offering the convenience of easy returns, fast shipping, and excellent customer service from Amazon. Depending on the seller, [their profit margins can actually be quite thin because Amazon charges a lot for their customer service, warehouses, and return handling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yhc6mmdJC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yhc6mmdJC4). * I know TikTok is quite controversial, for good reasons like data security, lack of ethics, and algorithmic infobubbling/censorship. But I am still a fan and use it because its algorithm was the only thing that was able to string together my liked posts and begin showing content/advice about what mental health disorders I might have. That significantly sped up my diagnoses with my psychiatrist, who confirmed 2 of the 3 disorders.

andrewia 4y ago

I have become an AliExpress enthusiast and agree. It works best when you are willing to wait a variable amount of time for your items. Often, it will only take 2-3 weeks for them to arrive at my home in California. But every 6th package (or so) will slip through the cracks, often at their warehouses in LA County. It's still the best for pricing, and is pretty close to the sources (unless you're hardcore enough to translate Taobao listings and get your own mail forwarding). For example, I got a new smartwatch and wanted some bands in specific colors, and a screen protector. Listings with the exact same images on Amazon were $9-12 instead of $3-4. (And when you compared reviews and pictures, they were probably from the same factory.) Some small notes about AliExpress: - Although most of AliExpress's lower prices come from lower cost warehouses and less middlemen, some of it comes from exploiting discounted postage. [That has been improved since 2019](https://www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com/opinion/trumps-reform-of-upu-looks-set-to-stay.html https://www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com/opini...) but I still get a ton of Kyrgyzstani-labeled parcels that originated from Guangdong or Shanghai/Hangzhou. I don't know if that's above-board or not. - Sellers can sometimes be deceptive. When I was shopping for LED interior lights for an old car, some lumen ratings seemed accurate and even had videos of it being tested. Others had obviously inflated brightnesses despite having a similar number of LEDs are power consumption. In addition, some sellers will sneak an unrelated cheap item into variants of another item, so the listing has a lower price in search results. - Packages now take a few days to be consolidated. This is great for efficiency and often means you get slightly faster delivery in your home country. But these packages can still get lost, so you may have to dispute up to a dozen items at a time. I might have to do this soon with all my smartwatch accessories, and in the meantime, pray my screen doesn't get scratched (or eat the inflated Amazon/eBay price). - Compared to Amazon, they have fewer customer reviews, and don't stack listings for the same item. In disputes, customer service won't always favor you or offer a complete refund for bad items. - Compared to eBay, they have much worse search filtering. You may wish to consider eBay for a balance of cheap prices and faster shipping, especially when you filter for sellers within 100 miles. Sometimes Chinese eBay sellers are cheaper than AliExpress sellers.

haliskerbas 4y ago

Is it actually sketchy then? You get the product and good customer service it sounds like. All Knick knacks are Chinese. Most common goods will be a rebrand of something similar, especially if you buy from Amazon.

kube-system 4y ago
That depends on what the item is. Chinese goods that are sold on the shelves of western retailers have passed some scrutiny by buyers of those respective retailers, and, a retailer in your country will be held to account for any legal requirements of selling said products. Things that are drop shipped haven't passed any third party scrutiny and nobody involved in the sales process is held to your local legal requirements. They can ship you an unsafe product that may burn your house down or poison your children, and your local legal processes have no power to make you whole again, nor any affect to discourage sellers from cutting those corners for profit.

wnevets 4y ago

Drop shipping has become a cancer for the online shopping experience.

bonestamp2 4y ago
I wouldn't blame it on drop shipping specifically -- many fortune 500 manufacturers drop ship high quality products from their amazon store. The problem is more about the low bar of entry for resellers to list those same products on amazon, walmart, etc. Some of those products will be legit and some will be counterfeit.

vorpalhex 4y ago

Yeah oddly enough buying from Aliexpress gets you better support (and sometimes newer revisions) of products than the middlemen! A lot of the aliexpress sellers are also willing to do custom orders if you ask nicely. This is a case of the middlemen removing value instead of adding it.

bonestamp2 4y ago
Agreed. I have a good relationship with one seller and he has even looked for things I've requested in the Shenzhen markets for me when he goes there. It's amazing customer service for me and he gets to sell more product too.

mattbaker 4y ago

> it seems like most American retailers are just a local cache The _other_ Amazon CDN

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

Oh yes. Dropshipping has to be one of the least valuable manifestations of the Internet economy. Waiting earnestly for the invisible hand of the market to give this particular "job" the shove.