AliExpress is completely fine, nothing sketchy about it in principle. You can find trash on it since it’s a very open marketplace, making it the same as Amazon or eBay.

Except that unlike Amazon, AX doesn’t copy their sellers’ products just to sell them under their own brand and kick the sellers out, nor does it sign monopolistic pacts with Apple. Workers treatment is about the same I guess… So correction, less sketchy than Amazon or eBay.

Wish specialises in dogshit and review manipulation though. Not good for anything more than a phone case, and I’d rather buy those on AX anyway.

Around 2020, after having ordered a few thousand dollars total from AliEx across hundreds of orders, my address suddenly got changed to a non existent random address hundreds of miles away, and around a half dozen orders sent to it. I tried live support three times, and they acted helpful each time but disconnected the support after asking me to wait every single time. I have never ordered from them since and will never order from them again. It isn’t about the money. Anyone can steal from me like this once; that is on them. I will never be stupid enough to let them do it twice; that would be entirely my fault. As far as I am concerned, they have no customer support in practice and they do not rectify their errors.

They settled plenty of issues when it came to sellers making mistakes, but when their system made the mistake, they did nothing. I would not give any vulnerable credentials to such a company. If they can’t manage their infrastructure and back up their mistakes, the mistakes and incompetence will only become bigger with time. It shows the management culture is incompetent.

Aliexpress. I make sure to order stuff tgat was sold 100, 1000, 10000 times and has a good rating and some pictures in reviews. This is just to make sure I won’t order at some place that will cancel my order after 2 weeks. But I never had any serious problems. And a couple of times when I received broken stuff, I received partial or full refunds. I ordered several thousand items from Ali over the years.

I use Aliexpress a lot for things that I don’t care if they are cheap, because it’s hard to make a “bad flyswatter,” for example. I avoid things that might catch fire, like charging cables or some electronics, and avoid hard drives and sketchy stuff. I buy a lot of SBC-related stuff like HATS and stuff for androids.

I bought a computer motherboard off aliexpress. it cost about 1/3 the retail price, arrived with no documentation, install cds, whatever. there was minor damage to the board itself, probably a piece damaged during manufacture and deemed unfit for sale.

this was back in 2017 or something. I’ve yet to replace it, though it might be getting close to time. I was able to get the software it needed off the net with another computer, and with that it worked just fine.

I’ve had pretty decent luck with wish. You just gotta do your due diligence and read the description in full and check reviews. I’ve never gotten duped or something of such poor quality it was useless. But my wife has and even she was like, duh I bought one ear bud.

I’m also almost never buying anything for more then $10, so if it breaks I’m not crying about it breaking me financially.

Amazon

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