[Not sure if this is the exact place to post, but i guess bargain-hunters are the most likely to use this site]
Be very careful buying expensive (eg. electronic) goods from AliExpress/AliBaba.
Even though they claim to offer buyer protection through Escrow, the harsh reality is:
1. I have informed them of an obvious fraud, and they have ignored it. Meanwhile another user on this site was ripped off on Alibaba/Express in a similar way (see below).
2. Their mediation process is very slow - taking 10 days to even start. Then they seem rather blase about the whole thing (see point 1) and biased towards the vendor
3. If you return the item, YOU will probably have to pay for tracked postage, which can be alot.
4. Even then, the vendor can claim that they received a used, damaged or different object. Tracking cannot prove otherwise. So you lose your money and all leverage.
_____________________________________
My experience + probably one other user
I bought what I thought would be a Boox from there, and got this instead:
http://www.aliexpress.com/fm-store/7...d-writing.html
It looks like the same thing happened to another user on here, Lexy:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...boox+australia
"MJ" and "LV" on Aliexpress are the same person, and have one of the cheapest ads for "Boox" on the site - but the person admitted to me they don't actually have them.
The most they would offer me is half a refund. They refused to pay for postage back unless I posted the item first.
I no longer believed a word they said (see point 4 above) and got a successful credit card chargeback from my bank.
************************************************** **
More importantly, I sent extensive evidence to AliExpress showing:
- I had received a completely unrelated item
- the vendor admitted they don't actually stock boox
- and all the other details
and warned them that the vendor was STILL advertising a product they didn't have.
They completely ignored this. Instead they continued meandering back and forth between me and the vendor with their standard, moronic (it has to be said) "mediation" process.
Now at least one other person on this forum has been ripped off, probably by the same vendor.
************************************************** **
THE NEW BAIT & SWITCH SCAM
This whole thing is clearly a "bait and switch" fraud - which I have discovered is now not uncommon amongst the millions of traders in China.
Traders who can't compete by getting popular products at an affordable price will instead claim to have a popular product.
They will send you a vaguley similar product worth much less than what you paid (eg. a cheap clone product. In my case, they sent a completely different CLASS of product - a MID instead of an ebook. This is like ordering a racehorse and getting a mixed-breed COW!)
Knowing that many people can't be bothered wasting more time - or even money - to send it back, they often accept it, delivering a healthy profit to the vendor.
(This is what they tried in my case: their first tactic was to say: "It's nearly the same, why don't you just accept that one!?" UNBELIEVABLE!)
In my case, I would have lost $US 150 to these people.
Instead, the good old Commonwealth Bank of Australia (a formerly government owned bank that still has a scerrick of customer service left*), got me a chargeback - and the vendor and the fools at AliBaba are still going through the mediation process lol!
_______________________________________________
This whole post is an act of contrition on my part, because I mentioned the Alibaba site on this forum, which may have contributed to other people like Lexy using the site.
(My only previous experience with them had been positive. I bought a beautifully made, very affordable 15-minute hourglass from a Chinese vendor on there, which arrived promptly and well-packed..but electronics, never again!)
_______________________________________________
* To all you partisans who scream 'socialism!' the minute the government gets involved with anything lol