Is it Safe to Shop on AliExpress.com?

[Bigly]

I haven't watched the video yet but I've ordered dozens of items and 95% of the time they were all delivered. The other 5% I got a refund for it promptly!

[djuroue]

I bought around 200 items until today, and i didnt have any problems. It is pretty safe shopping site.

[ElitesEngineering]

I'll sum 16 minutes in 5 seconds for you: Yes, shop on it the same you would on eBay.

[jadelee]

most important part of aliexpress: reviews are gonna be your best friend! make sure to look at the picture reviews and try and find up close pictures to see what kind of material it is. if there is no type of up close material pictures, check the item specifications for the item. for clothing, t shirts are usually polyester which have a kind of shiny, swimsuit-like feel to them which i personally find looks quite cheap, so keep that in mind.

[aygulmemet]

I've been scammed twice so here's my advice:
1. Only confirm that you received your order AFTER you test it out.
2. Orders should not take over 10 days to ship. Cancel your order and get it from a different store instead.
3. NEVER cancel a dispute if the seller asks you to.
4. Don't believe in resends. Always get your money back first.
5. Always ask to EXTEND your buyer protection period. You are not able to open disputes if it expires.
6. If the seller ignores your messages then contact a live chat agent.
7. Never use your real name or phone number for shipping. They can call and harrass you.

Any money transaction outside of the dispute page is INVALID. You will see no receipts and have no Aliexpress Case Management Team to back you up. Dishonest sellers pretend to refund with that "7-15 working days" bullshit. Never believe in them and DO NOT WAIT. Freaking open a dispute already. Sellers delay it ON PURPOSE so that your buyer protection will expire. You will not receive any money back.

[rexnex]

The golden rule when buying from aliexpress is dont spend any more than you can afford to lose .

[MrTway]

so aliexpress is basically the Chinese Ebay, got it.

[carolstrachan]

I've made over 120 orders on Aliexpress all with no problems. I buy crafting goods which are good quality for a great price. I've had only a few orders where something was our of stock and received a refund with no quibble. I've had delivery from 9 days to 4 weeks and that's been because of customs delays. I love shopping there and will continue to do so. After all, 95% of all branded crafting goods are made in China anyway!

[sibel]

I’d stay away from the beauty products.... got me seriously sick and had to go to hospital and got put on steroids for a month :(

[quantumchang]

If Aliexpress wasn't a safe platform to buy stuffs, then Jack Ma wouldn't be as rich and respected as he is now. Think about it. Aliexpress is just as safe if not safer than ebay and Amazon because the seller don't get paid until you, the buyer has received the goods and are satisfied and then has to confirm on Aliexpress that you've received the goods before Aliexpress releases payment into the seller's account. This forces the sellers to be honest with their products and to find the most reliable and fastest shipping method to send their products to you. It's for their own good that you receive the goods and are satisfied with it in order to avoid a dispute escalated.


Aliexpress is extremely strict with their sellers. If a buyer reports the seller of being dishonest, and if proven to be true, they'd be penalized or even kicked out of Aliexpress for good. China has a social credit rating system on individuals and any dishonest business dealings will be very bad for that individual. This improves efficiency and productivity for China because ultimately what drags any countries down is corrupted, blood-sucking leeches that cares not for anyone else except their own interest.


The only complaint I have for Aliexpress, as I do with ebay and Amazon, is that product diversity is extremely limited when compared to what's available on Alibaba. But sellers on Alibaba are fishing for big fish, retailers, not little fish like end users.

That's bad for end users but good for sellers from outside China having the chance to make a 10 fold profit margin on cheap products they bought in bulk from Alibaba and resold at 10 times the cost to overseas end users. Jack Ma should encourage vendors on Alibaba to put more products on Aliexpress because at the moment it's not fair for Aliexpress buyers to have less product diversity to choose from than Alibaba.

[dunks]

I've been purchasing items from AliExpress for over 3 years and with the exception of one very small item that arrived broken and not replaced by the seller my experience has been 100% satisfaction.

[pattydahlgren]

Thank you, I was contemplating shopping through AliExpress but was nervous and now u have eased my decision. Thank you.

[meercreate]

Yes, their escrow system is superb. Good prices too, but expect long shipping times

[dagandreassen]

I have been using AliExpress for about 6 years and have only had 1 that never got delivered. I normally get my products within 3 weeks. If you have a account there you will get an email where it says you're products have been shipped, and it takes up to 3-4 days only. For women that want to order clothes, don't order the size you use at home but at least 2 sizes bigger. My wife's own experience. And also if you look at the price, don't expect everything you order to be so genuine as they look like. But overall but my wife and myself have never had any problems except once and have only good things to say about them. The seller will contact you if you haven't received your order because if you forget to do so, they will not get the money you paid for it and in worst case they will be removed from Ali's webshop.

[furzkram]

German customs don't believe "gift" declarations anymore. Even when a plausible value is declared, they require the buyer to bring a printout of the original order to prove the declared value is correct.

[lalnuntluangachhakchhuak]

99% of the plausible problems are related to shipping and customs duties in the receiving end. Most of the sellers in Aliexpress are polite and responsive.

[pangpang]

I’m pretty sure it’s safe. But if u want to be 100% sure I’d recommend you to only buy from shops that have good ratings AND pictures. I never buy from shops that have no pictures since the comments could be bots (just what I think) And if u don’t receive an item from a high rated shop (which actually almost never happens) u will obviously get a refund since they don’t want their ratings to be low. Another tip is to look at how many times the product had been bought. But ok, I make it look like everyone scams there while that doesn’t happen very often, so YES aliexpress is totally safe to use, don’t worry! These are just some tips y’all could use incase u guys doubt.

[GotBespoke]

Great video! I haven't purchased from Ali yet, but I've been interested in doing so many times over the years. I always do my due diligence before shopping on sites like this and this video helped to serve as part of that process. Without a doubt, I feel more comfortable with the idea of making a purchase and it did reaffirm that my common sense take on purchasing from places like this will likely keep me safe and serve me well overall. Also, covering the petition process when something goes wrong made me feel much more prepared to deal with any issues should they arise and certainly more at ease hearing about your success when it came to those situations. So...Many thanks from the U.S. and have a lovely week!

[Ace_of_DiscaL]

Very well said: "please order with a little bit of common sense"! Also, please keep the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival in mind (23rd day of the 12th Chinese Lunar Month-Lasts about 23 days), because it will cause you delays with sorting/tracking log/shipment/transit.

[XSpImmaLion]

Great video, matches my own experience.
I think it's also worth mentioning that several of the big eStores these days all work exactly like Aliexpress... including for instance, Amazon.
The recommendation for SD cards and HDDs/SSDs is also valid on Amazon: only buy if you know the precedence to be reliable. Difference being that I'm not sure if Aliexpress has reliable guaranteed shops for that category of products.
Years ago I bought a Sandisk microSD card from Amazon. When it got here, the packaging seemed ok, the sd card reader looked kinda suspicious, but the reported sized matched.
But I do standard testing for all cards I buy, so h2testw it.
Turned out it was fake. 8Gb card with hacked firmware to look like it was a 64Gb card. It wasn't all that much cheaper too, and everything seemed fine. It was right when Amazon started selling a whole ton of stuff from 3rd parties.
I got in contact with Amazon, sent all my investigation to them, and got a refund. But just so people know... other bigger and more well known stores are not free from stuff like that.
Scammers are everywhere. I've seen retail stores selling SD cards that seemed too cheap, they were probably fakes. I'll usually warn them about it whenever I can, because lots of sellers don't really know the mess they are getting into.

As for Aliexpress, I've been shopping there for a couple of years now, zero complaints. I haven't bought too much stuff so far, but I have bought some relatively expensive stuff like smartwatches, smartphones, a smartphone gimbal, among others.
It takes extra long to get here because brazilian customs is several times worse than UK, US and most other countries, so in some cases I can wait almost half a year for products to go through customs, but they do arrive. This isn't only for Aliexpress, this is for all international purchases. So far, every product I bought arrived well, and has been exactly as advertised.

In fact, nowadays I tend to buy more from Aliexpress than Amazon.... ironically, Amazon in Brazil has failed. It only sells books and eBooks here because they couldn't solve the problem with import taxes that Brazil has (it can go from 60 to 120% the value of the product plus shipping). And buying from Amazon in the US for instance, I think they got fed up with complaints and just implemented a system where they pre-charge taxes for products coming to Brazil... but their pre-charge is usually around 140% of the product value, which is too much and completely unfair. When they started with that, they'd refund part of the charge that wasn't spent up to 3 months later, which is just too long. But the last products I bought I didn't even get a refund, so I just stopped shopping there.
On Aliexpress and eBay it still works as Amazon did a couple of years ago. They send the product, and let customs sort out the appropriate taxes for every case. Products gets stuck and takes a long time to go through, longer than Amazon which now uses their own system, but the taxation is fair and with no inflated costs.