5 ms·

How so? Devices like this are manufactured in China. Any "US vendor" is reselling them

by NavinF 2y ago

ninjin 2y ago
The grandparent is getting a bit too much flak here I think. "Vendor" to me means "seller", so a more charitable interpretation is them asking for someone selling them other than AliExpress. Possibly (and reasonably) because enforcing consumer protection rights is easier under your own jurisdiction. I am saying this as someone that has done a fair bit of shopping on Ali and have had mostly a good (if not great) experience with them. The low point would have been recently when a package never arrived, despite tracking showing that it had arrived. Ali have their famous refund guarantee, so I thought I would invoke it and contacted both Ali and the seller. I was told that I needed proof that the package had not arrived by contacting the shipping firm. One slight problem, I had never been informed of the company responsible for shipping. I asked, got a non-response response and closed case. Contacted support, got a friendly response "I will handle it! Do not worry about it!" and then the same non-response response after it got escalated. After a lot of back and forth, Ali just closed the whole case permanently at which point I reached out to PayPal to invoke my guarantee with them which worked and was settled within 15 or so minutes. So, yes, I can imagine someone potentially preferring a local vendor over Ali as I am currently holding off purchases from them until my blood stops boiling.
- NavinF 2y ago
  > enforcing consumer protection rights I can imagine how that would be a problem in a few countries, but he was asking about the US. Pretty much everyone here pays with a credit card. If AliExpress doesn't refund you, you can just open the bank app/website and click "dispute" next to the transaction. The bank will immediately reverse the transaction and ask the seller's bank for proof that the seller did what they promised. > package never arrived, despite tracking showing that it had arrived That one is tricky. A lot of US companies will also refuse to refund you just like AliExpress. You'd have to go through the bank. Or paypal I guess, tho there are no laws forcing paypal to refund you. The package was likely stolen by a porch pirate.
  - ninjin 2y ago
    I am not familiar with the US system enough to comment much on the former. But you are missing the point about my recent experience with Ali (plus, there are no "porch pirates" where I live and services range from solid to rock solid). Packages getting lost is fine, mistakes happen (although I suspect in my case that the seller sent it to the wrong address). Telling me to provide evidence while being unwilling to provide me with the company I should contact for it is not fine and sufficiently "not nice" that I am now turned off by them despite other positive experiences.

How so? Devices like this are manufactured in China. Any "US vendor" is reselling them

by NavinF 2y ago

How so? Devices like this are manufactured in China. Any "US vendor" is reselling them

The grandparent is getting a bit too much flak here I think. "Vendor" to me means "seller", so a more charitable interpretation is them asking for someone selling them other than AliExpress. Possibly (and reasonably) because enforcing consumer protection rights is easier under your own jurisdiction. I am saying this as someone that has done a fair bit of shopping on Ali and have had mostly a good (if not great) experience with them. The low point would have been recently when a package never arrived, despite tracking showing that it had arrived. Ali have their famous refund guarantee, so I thought I would invoke it and contacted both Ali and the seller. I was told that I needed proof that the package had not arrived by contacting the shipping firm. One slight problem, I had never been informed of the company responsible for shipping. I asked, got a non-response response and closed case. Contacted support, got a friendly response "I will handle it! Do not worry about it!" and then the same non-response response after it got escalated. After a lot of back and forth, Ali just closed the whole case permanently at which point I reached out to PayPal to invoke my guarantee with them which worked and was settled within 15 or so minutes. So, yes, I can imagine someone potentially preferring a local vendor over Ali as I am currently holding off purchases from them until my blood stops boiling.

NavinF 2y ago
> enforcing consumer protection rights I can imagine how that would be a problem in a few countries, but he was asking about the US. Pretty much everyone here pays with a credit card. If AliExpress doesn't refund you, you can just open the bank app/website and click "dispute" next to the transaction. The bank will immediately reverse the transaction and ask the seller's bank for proof that the seller did what they promised. > package never arrived, despite tracking showing that it had arrived That one is tricky. A lot of US companies will also refuse to refund you just like AliExpress. You'd have to go through the bank. Or paypal I guess, tho there are no laws forcing paypal to refund you. The package was likely stolen by a porch pirate.
- ninjin 2y ago
  I am not familiar with the US system enough to comment much on the former. But you are missing the point about my recent experience with Ali (plus, there are no "porch pirates" where I live and services range from solid to rock solid). Packages getting lost is fine, mistakes happen (although I suspect in my case that the seller sent it to the wrong address). Telling me to provide evidence while being unwilling to provide me with the company I should contact for it is not fine and sufficiently "not nice" that I am now turned off by them despite other positive experiences.