When I came across the so called “AliExpress scam” complaint in one forum, I couldn’t help laughing. The angry buyer claimed that AliExpress sent him a wrong item he never ordered. Based on my knowledge about AliExpress, it is no way possible as AliExpress is only a wholesale transaction platform – it does not sell any item, not to mention ship out any item to any customer. Obviously, this buyer was either ripped off by a seller doing business on AliExpress.com or encountered an unprofessional operation carried out by the seller.
In this case, the buyer should report the problem to AliExpress for mediation or contact the seller first to solve the problem. Given such misunderstandings about AliExpress, I think I should share all of my familiar facts about AliExpress, which may help you more clearly identify whether AliExpress scam is a reality or not.
Facts about AliExpress.com
1. An express wholesale channel of Alibaba.com, which was founded in 1999;
2. Officially went live in April, 2010;
3. Mainly serving small businesses, including Chinese small suppliers and global small re-sellers.
4. Accepting PayPal, credit card, MasterCard and bank transfer (TT payment);
5. Offering Escrow service to protect payment from buyers. AliExpress will only release funds to the supplier after the buyer confirms satisfactory delivery of your order. If the buyer is unhappy about the item or purchase, he or she can submit a refund request to AliExpress to ask for a refund or a solution;
6. All orders placed on AliExpress will be processed quickly, mostly within 1 week.
7. Small quantity orders are extensively accepted while for some items, minimum order quantity starts from 1 piece only;
8. AliExpress adopts a set of strict policies to verify each supplier before they are accepted as registered members and start to list their items there. In Chinese foreign trade communities, many suppliers complain that they can’t pass the censor by AliExpress and thus are not able to successfully register with the website.
But as the number of suppliers there is huge, some may willfully escape the verification by difficult-to-spot means. Before you trade with any seller, do remember to check every detail of the supplier, including feedback score, membership tier, item specifications, etc. Besides, in case any problem occurs, make sure to save a record of all communication with the supplier, which will be used as powerful evidence in the event that a dispute between you arises.
9. Once you open a dispute against a supplier, AliExpress staff will take care of the mediation work. However, the whole process may need some time as the platform needs to collect enough evidence to make an impartial ruling. So if you happen to encounter such unpleasant experience, you’d better be patient enough before AliExpress helps you solve the problem.
I personally believe that it’s unfair to spread the “AliExpress scam” voice everywhere while the company is trying its best to help you get through the issue. Nothing is born perfect — AliExpress is still young in cross-border express wholesale business and needs time to improve itself. After all, the wholesale website belongs to the world’s biggest wholesale group and its credibility is unquestionable.
My advice: shopping at AliExpress.com should be cautious to avoid scams committed by certain suppliers – following the guidelines about how to find good sellers there may help you out; before doing enough research on the suppliers, items and services on AliExpress, never assume that the AliExpress scam complaints are 100% true, otherwise you may miss out really fantastic business opportunities; the best way to make sure you are trading with a reliable supplier and will get satisfactory item from the supplier, is to place a very small order to test all the details before you place a bigger order.
I purchased a guitar back on January 25th from Guitar Fantasy Club and after a week still no tracking info so I emailed the seller to see what was going on. Turns out the seller now says they have to make the guitar and after going back and fourth for weeks the seller said the guitar is done and he is shipping but still no tracking info. Then I reply again and seller states the guitar is not done and in the last email he said he shipped it. Hope you all have better luck buying from Aliexpress but DO NOT buy from Guitar Fantasy Club you will get ripped off. My credit card company got my money back somehow but it is now past 35 days and still nothing from this seller.
Kungshu Phan Hardware Store is a fraud. He is merchant on Aliexpress and trust me, whatever he promise, do not believe him.
I’ve bought about 35 items off AliExpress over the last 10 years. Only one minor non-delivery problem, and I got a refund for that. MIND YOU, I never risk buying items with a value I’d be unhappy to lose, that usually means about USD30! And BTW if you want items sent from China with low risk of disappearing and the stated delivery time, choose China Post. The one definitely to avoid is Yanwen Economic Airmail. It’s very cheap for the seller, but SOOOOOOOOOO slow!
BUYERS BEWARE!!! DON’T BUY FROM ALI EXPRESS (OR MS. GLORIA OFFICIAL STORE)!!!! PLEASE CHECK FOR OTHER NAMES THIS CROOK MAY HAVE USED.
SOMETHING LEGALLY NEEDS TO BE DONE IMMEDIATELY ABOUT THESE CROOKS!!!
ATTENTION LAWYERS; TO WHOM IT MAY APPLY, IF YOU CAN HELP, PLEASE HELP US IN GETTING HONEST AND RIGHTFUL JUSTICE IN OUR FAVOR. As you can see, there are others who have been ripped off by Ali Express.
THIS EXPERIENCE ON ALI EXPRESS HAS BEEN HORRIFIC!!!! I RATED 1 STAR ONLY BECAUSE THERE IS NO ICON TO MARK FOR ZERO.
I bought an item from Ms. Gloria Official Store an Ali Express seller. SHE IS A FRAUD AND AN OUTRIGHT THIEF!!! To this day, she has both the returned item AND MY MONEY. DESPITE MY SENDING ALI EXPRESS MORE THAN ENOUGH PROOF, THEY HAVE DONE NOTHING TO HELP ME TO GET MY MONEY BACK. THEY ARE CROOKS! REACHING A LIVE AGENT IS VERY DIFFICULT. THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM IS A RUN A ROUND. ONE REP WAS OUTRIGHT TOTALLY DISRESPECTFUL IN THE BEGIN. THE LAST ONE WAS VERY SMIRKY AND NON CHALANT/SARCASTIC SHOWING NO TRUE REGARD OR CARE IN HELPING ME TO RESOLVE THE ISSUE. WHEN I ASKED TO SPEAK TO A SUPERVISOR. I WAS TOLD THAT SHE WAS NOT AVAILABLE. THE “ATTITUDE” THAT THIS REP GAVE ME WAS AN “I’M NOT PUTTING YOU THROUGH TO A SUPERVISOR, “YOU’RE NOT GONNA GET YOUR MONEY BACK” “YOUR LOSS” “TOO BAD”. I SENT ALI EXPRESS A DETAILED LETTER OF THIS HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE, AND HAVE NOT RECEIVED ANY REPLY. THIS PROBLEM HAS NOW CAUSED GREAT STRAIN BETWEEN MYSELF AND THE BANK THAT I HAD WONDERFUL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH FOR 6 YEARS. BECAUSE OF MS. GLORIA AND ALI EXPRESS MY BANK ACCOUNT IS NOW IN NEGATIVE IN THE AMOUNT OF THE MONEY THAT SHE STILL HAS, AND HAS ACCRUED OVERDRAFT FEES, BRINGING IT TO A TOTAL NEARLY 1/3 OF MY MONTHLY INCOME. a PROBLEM I WOULD NOT BE HAVING HAD MS. GLORIA/ALI EXPRESS GIVEN BACK MY MONEY. CAUSING MUCH ADDED STRESS TO MY FINANCIAL STATUS WITH MY BANK AND OTHER AFFAIRS. THIS HAS BEEN A GREAT STRAIN ON MY HEALTH. I HAVE INFORMED ALI EXPRESS THAT I HAD A HEART ATTACK LAST YEAR AND DON’T NEED THE STRESS. THEY DON’T CARE. I’VE WRITTEN OTHER DEPARTMENTS, NO HELP.
MAYBE IF ENOUGH CUSTOMERS WHO HAVE BEEN RIPPED OFF BY THESE CROOKS CAN GET TOGETHER AND TAKE JOINT LEGAL ACTION, WE CAN PUT BOTH ALI EXPRESS AND MS GLORIA OFFICIAL STORE/OTHER DISHONEST MERCHANTS TOTALLY OUT OF BUSINESS!!! AND HAVE BOTH THEIR LICENSE REVOKED!!!! INCLUDING ANY OTHER NAME THAT THIS MS. GLORIA/OTHERS HAS GONE UNDER. AND ALERT THE PUBLIC OF THESE RIP OFFS!
IF THIS IS POSSIBLE, ATTORNEYS, AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME!
YOUR HELP WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
THANK YOU.
P.S: TO HONEST MERCHANTS ASSOCIATED WITH ALI EXPRESS, PLEASE REMOVE YOUR BUSINESSES FROM ALI EXPRESS, AND PLEASE TAKE THEM TO SITES OF INTEGRITY; AS ASSOCIATING WITH SCAMMERS COULD POSSIBLY HURT YOUR REPUTATION/BUSINESS. PLEASE KNOW THAT CUSTOMERS TRULY APPRECIATE BUSINESSES OF INTEGRITY.
THANK YOU.
gwenee tiki bradley
July 1, 2019 at 11:12 pm
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“BUYERS BEWARE!!!DO NOT BUY FROM ALI EXPRESS OR MS. GLORIA OFFICIAL STORE!!! THEY ARE CO-SCAMMERS!!!!”
MY LAST EXPERIENCE ON ALI EXPRESS HAS BEEN HORRIFIC!!!!
I bought an item from Ms. Gloria Official Store an Ali Express seller. SHE IS A FRAUD AND AN OUTRIGHT THIEF!!! To this day, she has both the returned item AND MY MONEY. DESPITE MY SENDING ALI EXPRESS MORE THAN ENOUGH PROOF, THEY HAVE DONE NOTHING TO HELP ME TO GET MY MONEY BACK. THEY ARE CROOKS! REACHING A LIVE AGENT IS VERY DIFFICULT. THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM IS A RUN A ROUND. ONE REP WAS OUTRIGHT TOTALLY DISRESPECTFUL IN THE BEGIN. THE LAST ONE WAS VERY SMIRKY AND NON CHALANT/SARCASTIC SHOWING NO TRUE REGARD OR CARE IN HELPING ME TO RESOLVE THE ISSUE. WHEN I ASKED TO SPEAK TO A SUPERVISOR. I WAS TOLD THAT SHE WAS NOT AVAILABLE. THE “ATTITUDE” THAT THIS REP GAVE ME WAS AN “I’M NOT PUTTING YOU THROUGH TO A SUPERVISOR, “YOU’RE NOT GONNA GET YOUR MONEY BACK” “YOUR LOSS” “TOO BAD”. I SENT ALI EXPRESS A DETAILED LETTER OF THIS HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE, AND HAVE NOT RECEIVED ANY REPLY. THIS PROBLEM HAS NOW CAUSED GREAT STRAIN BETWEEN MYSELF AND THE BANK THAT I HAD WONDERFUL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH FOR 6 YEARS. BECAUSE OF MS. GLORIA AND ALI EXPRESS MY BANK ACCOUNT IS NOW IN NEGATIVE IN THE AMOUNT OF THE MONEY THAT SHE STILL HAS, AND HAS ACCRUED OVERDRAFT FEES, BRINGING IT TO A TOTAL NEARLY 1/3 OF MY MONTHLY INCOME. a PROBLEM I WOULD NOT BE HAVING HAD MS. GLORIA/ALI EXPRESS GIVEN BACK MY MONEY. CAUSING MUCH ADDED STRESS TO MY FINANCIAL STATUS WITH MY BANK AND OTHER AFFAIRS. THIS HAS BEEN A GREAT STRAIN ON MY HEALTH. I HAVE INFORMED ALI EXPRESS THAT I HAD A HEART ATTACK LAST YEAR AND DON’T NEED THE STRESS. THEY DON’T CARE. I’VE WRITTEN OTHER DEPARTMENTS, NO HELP.
DON’T BUY FROM ALI EXPRESS OR MS. GLORIA OFFICIAL STORE!!!! PLEASE CHECK FOR ANY OTHER NAMES THIS CROOK HAS USED.
MAYBE IF ENOUGH CUSTOMERS WHO HAVE BEEN RIPPED OFF BY THESE CROOKS CAN GET TOGETHER AND TAKE JOINT LEGAL ACTION, WE CAN PUT BOTH ALI EXPRESS AND MS GLORIA OFFICIAL STORE/OTHER DISHONEST MERCHANTS TOTALLY OUT OF BUSINESS!!! AND HAVE BOTH THEIR LICENSE REVOKED!!!! INCLUDING ANY OTHER NAME THAT THIS MS. GLORIA/OTHERS HAS GONE UNDER. AND ALERT THE PUBLIC OF THESE RIP OFFS!
IF THIS IS POSSIBLE PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME!
In 2019 I purchased numerous items from Aliexpress mainly electronics , household items and sport clothing . In the less
than 60 calendar days I have opened 15 disputes because the
Chinese sellers solled me either completely defective products,
wrong sizes , goods other than described and in two cases the
sellers did not ship anything but produced a fake tracking number.
Aliexpress dispute team is working very slowly and in same cases
the cover their fraudulent sellers . 90 % of my disputes after
escalating the cases to my credit card , online low enforcement
and else were solved on my favour and got the money back which
was on AE hands for more than a month. Do not trust and AE and
their sellers no matter their feedbacks and dont let come to time
exhausting disputes . Stay away from AE but if you must buy from China try GearBest is substantially better and more reliable
I skimmed the posts to see. I’ve ordered lots of little things off aliexpress in the past year and I’ve only had one bad experience and that was due to shipping. Item managed to make it part way through its country of origin but got lost between there and arriving in Canada.
Otherwise I’ve had computer cables, pens and children’s toys all show up. In some cases they’ve shown up in as little as a week!
PS who buys a $699 item from China? You’re just asking for trouble!
I would not go so far to claim that the whole Aliexpress is a scam, but the delivery time guarantee is for sure a scam: https://forum.webseodesigners.com/off-topic-f15/aliexpress-guaranteed-delivery-time-is-a-scam-t1248.html
Do not do business with andredi15 on eBay, possible scammer. Labels the hiking backpack as being in Toronto Canada. Day before I was to receive it, he informs me shipper is from China. Now don’t hold any hope of ever seeing the bag or money ever refunded. Shipper is aliexpress, have now been threatening lawsuits.
I guess you think that continually extending our orders solves the issue but it doesn’t because if you guys don’t want to ship out the seeds they just sit there indefinitely! I have over 300 packets of seeds sitting in a warehouse that I have already been waiting several months for now and still you keep extending the time so you can continue to stall. I’m sure this is NOT the first complaint for this same reason and of course the reason you have NO supervisors to handle this problem! I don’t know how you can call that fresh seed or make your customers wait except that there is really nothing that we can do about it but I for one will not order any more seeds from this company ever again and once I receive them, if I ever do I will send a complaint to the Better Business Bureau and maybe then you will understand how frustrating it is to be a customer waiting for their products that they paid for months ago!!
I must admit my experience with Aliexpress has been varied. Their dispute mechanism is clearly a joke and is so disjointed that you can in no way make sense of it. Also the fact they refer to you as “friend” clearly sticks in my throat. Guess what? Friends don’t rip each other off. May as well have called me a dopey prick for dealing with your company. The dispute process is not transparent. The site needs to be cleaned up as eventually buyers will take their business elswhere. ALIEXPRESS should be renamed ALIBEAWARE. Clean up your act or lose business because you cant hide online. WESTERN SAYING — You can fool some of the people some of time but don’t think you can fool all of the people all of the time.
I found AliExpress to be a fraud. I have placed an order for a EU converter tip for my MacBook charger for less than 4 bucks (including shipping). After I entered my info and placed the order I didn’t get neither a confirmation email nor a webpage that usually shows that my order was successfully placed, etc. Instead, the webpage I was redirected to said that I should sign up for an account for better ordering experience. But what happened to my order that I have just placed… well, no one knows.
A few seconds later I received an email stating that in order to confirm my order, I need to sign up and create an account by clicking on the confirmation link. (Note that no order number of any kind or reference to the item I’ve ordered was in the email.) So I created an account. Upon signing up, there was no indication of any kind that I have ever placed an order. So what happened with all the entering my address, phone number, cc number, etc…!?
I also needed an EU extension cable for my MacBook – which I forgot to place – so I figured now that I am registered I am going to place an order for the cable (for 8 bucks). In the EU they sell the cable to 30 bucks (!) so I figured for eight bucks I will give it a try, after all here was 149 five-star ratings regarding the cable and the shipment, so I figured it must be ok (unless all the ratings were fake).
After placing the order for the cable, my credit card was charged within 11 minutes! (I know this because I received an email from the cc company stating the charge.) So I opened my browser to go to AliExpress (just for the heck of it) to check the order. Note that I have NOT logged out from my AliExpress account from the previous session, I just simply closed the browser. This time, however, I was asked to login again in order to “verify my identity”. However, I was not able to because I was informed that there was “unusual activity” on my account and so my account is locked. In order to unlock it, I have to go through hoops of verification, of which the final one was to provide my mobile number to get a verification code. Well, I happen to be one of those rare individuals who doesn’t have a mobile phone. I do have a home phone, but that cannot receive SMS – obviously. So basically I am completely locked out of my account within 11 minutes, after I placed my first order and after my card was charged.
I decided to contact customer support. CUSTOMER SUPPORT!? Right. WHAT CUSTOMER SUPPORT!? They don’t have any!!! They have a page with 16 faces on it claiming they have 24/7 customer support, but they DON’T! There’s no email or phone number. So where is the 24/7 support!? They have an “online chat”, which is basically a bot!!! It’s not a human!!! You are talking to an AI (artificial intelligence) robot – so you are not actually talking to anyone.
There you have it. Basically I have an $8 charge for an order that I am not able to check on because my account is locked. I cannot unlock my account because I don’t have a mobile phone (and even if I did, after this $hitty experience I don’t think it would matter for they would just steal the number to send me endless amount of SMS spam). And I also can’t contact customer support because there is none.
They do have a Twitter account where I was able to send a quite unhappy DM to them. Not sure if they will react, but at this point it doesn’t matter. I will contact my credit card company and will dispute and cancel any charges.
AliExpress is a fraud. I have no idea how is it possible for them to exist at all.
I just received a package with ink cartridges, on a printer I do not own, nor have I ever visited or ordered from this company. Then I get an email telling me to confirm delivery, or do I wish to dispute. Funny thing, they want you to create an account to dispute, because they do not have a US phone number to call.
I will not create an account, don’t know why they sent me stuff. If they send me a bill, I will send back the product. Funny they did not give me an address to return either.
My order is 87626474172505 paid 699$ 4th Nov.2017 i received defective item immediately notify seller and agreed to return the item to get my refund, re shipped item back and reach destination since 6th Dec 2017, and it is in the custom for long time and the seller not taking action to take or clear from the their own custom. its been 4 months up today 5th Feb 2018 with no refund or news or decission by the Ali express. The Ali express customer service are useless keep promising only with no action being taken care for the buyer ., i will stay away buying from ali express or never. it takes them forever or no refund at all like me.. PLEASE DONT BUY from ALI Express…there is NO buyer protection..they have seller protection..
I don’t agree with your defense of Aliexpress as a recently ripped-off buyer. I purchased a dress on Aliexpress for a wedding. The seller guaranteed delivery of the product within 40 days or I was entitled to a refund. (It was touted as “Buyer Protection” all over their site.) Bottom line – the product took 57 days to ship and both the seller and Aliexpress (in a formal dispute) did nothing to remedy the situation. Not to mention the dress was absolutely nothing like the photos, I uploaded evidence showing this clear as day and I got absolutely no help from customer service. The seller actually had the nerve to say it was really my fault for not purchasing the express shipping. I will never order from this site again, it’s just terrible.
An author is either paid or completely retarded (probably, both, though).
I`m bored that the most in aliexpress try to cheat. If 5 or 10 of 100 description is not correct i can understand. But unfortunately is more than 60 to 70 or more of 100. I mean it`s very difficult to compare the products and prices. I have to find out which information is fake, strange or not written at all, cause it don`t let seam the product nice. I need to spend hours to be hopefully shure to get what i really want. And in the end i`m frequently disappointed. The prices compared with the products quality is mostly not really cheap. I try to find a quite cheap price for acceptable product quality, but with wrong or incomplete description it`s quite impossible. That why i will not accept wrong description at all anymore. It`s not fair for honest competitor and not at all for costomer. If just made a mistake than sorry for, but i think you all understand what i mean and if you are really honest you`ll agree this! As well the customer service of Alliexpress is not really reachable. They want to keep the service as cheap as possible, but it`s on our cost in the end. Any one who shop at alliexpress and see wrong or incomplete description have to open a dispute and write this as reason. Maybe the rules of alliexpress and the behavior of the seller will become costomer friendly and more honest.
Your post is very inaccurate, based on many reviews that I’ve seen where many have never received their item and were charged.
Aliex may only be a platform for some of the vendors that defraud some people, but that doesn’t make aliexpress innocent – they do not have more prevention or communication between the customers to alleviate it, which makes them just as guilty.
Buy at your own risk, it is similar to shopping on Craigslist – only with the sketchy people solely being accessible via msgs. I would say IF you’re going to risk being scammed, use PayPal, so that there may be more protection. Don’t trust putting your debit card info in on that site filled with scammers.