Avoid sellers on Aliexpress

[NerdENerd]

I have just been scammed by every seller I tried on AliExpress. I ordered from multiple seller for IO boards, memory modules and USB hubs. All 5 of the sellers hit me with the same scam, I got private messages for every item I ordered all along the line like the following

Dear friend, we are sorry to tell you that your order can't be shipped due to customs reason. Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused. Could you please cancel the order and choose "other reasons"? We will return the money to you. Thank you so much.

or

Dear buyer, we kindly notify you to cancel this order at the first time due to a temporary crash in the system, there are some problems with your order. We are working hard to fix this problem. By the way, please choose the “other reason” while you cancel it. Because in this way, your refund will return to your card soon.Thanks for your understanding.

I didn't cancel the items in time so I no longer have the option to cancel.

Hopefully PayPal will rule in my favour.

I would suggest not getting tempted by the cheap prices on AliExpress and go with a reputable seller.

[Newsdee]

Where are you located? I had no issues with AliExpress shipping, other than it being infamously slow (a month sometimes)

[NerdENerd]

Australia. I have ordered other things from AliExpress that have turned up.

[rickdangerous]

I really don't understand why buy from Aliexpress when we have products with quality control and cheaper than some of them.

[redsteakraw]

I don't trust anything shipping from China, it may come months latter if you can wait several months then go and risk it. I would say just buy from a reputable seller in your country / economic region.

[spark2k06]

Not everything that comes from china or Aliexpress is bad, and it is also possible to find trusted sellers on that sales platform.

[buttersoft]

I buy from Aliexpress all the time, and while i've had one or two problems they've mostly been related to the language barrier. The 128MB 140MHz RAM module i bought was the cheapest one i could find online, and it turned up as advertised and works well.

[akeley]

As if there were no scammers on ebay/craigslists/etc. There are heaps of reputable sellers on Ali too.

[kolla]

Not everything you order fram AliExpress is shipped from China.

[Duffygag]

No problems for me or anyone that I know of, Aliexpress is as reliable as any other similar website.

[dshadoff]

Those AliExpress sellers list things which they don't have on-hand, planning to buy from TaoBao, in order to flip them for a quick profit.

When the product experiences a price change, they don't keep their listings up to date, and suddenly find that they would be selling at a loss, and then they come up with garbage excuses like those. If you cancel, they don't get penalized. If they fail to ship the product, you can complain about them and eventually get your money back, and they theoretically get some sort of reprimand...

I would be careful about anything purchased there, but many types of products don't have risks like those.

[aberu]

About 1/20 things I have ordered from AliExpress just haven't showed up, they are shipped to mysterious redistributors in the US, and then I don't hear from them for months. But these are cheap electronic components that were 2-3 bucks, so I just chalked it up as the cost of doing business with shady links. In one case it was an OLED for my Arduino Cartridge Reader project, and in the other case it was the clock generator for that same project, both just disappeared.

[Duffygag]

As much as I despise Paypal, when you use it for buying, there are no risks whatsoever in buying whatever from wherever...

[dshadoff]

AliExpress didn't accept Paypal last time I checked.

[aberu]

https://sale.aliexpress.com/__pc/XJew3VffFA.htm

Yup, they do.

Not all sellers accept it though, I think.

[skooter]

I bought my SDRAM from AliExpress. No problems. It took a while to ship/arrive, but it was right at the start of the pandemic (January 2020) when everything in China shut down, so I really can't blame the seller.

People who say you shouldn't buy from China or to buy in your own country usually live in countries where THERE ARE sellers to buy from. It is not the case in Brazil or the whole South America. Moreover, Chinese sellers declare a low customs value so we get our stuff tax free here most of the time. Sellers from USA and Europe would usually put the real values on customs forms and this leads to 60% to 100% of the price of the product + shipment in import fees. So, buying from them effectively costs more than twice for us.

AliExpress has fine buyer's protection rules. If the seller asks you to cancel and use 'other' reason, just don't. Cancel and blame the seller, I think there is an option to cancel because the seller doesn't have the product. This way you will get your money back and the seller may get penalized.

I made around 260 orders on AliExpress over the years. Only a few times I had issues. All the products were unboxed/reviewed on my blog (or they are on the waiting list).

[Reed_Solomon]

If you have problems with items not shipping in AliExpress you can file a dispute in AliExpress. They're pretty good at refunding funds. You get the occasional scummy seller trying to screw you over. Just be vigilant.

[exoticatom]

I bought my SDRAM from AliExpress. No problems. It took a while to ship/arrive, but it was right at the start of the pandemic (January 2020) when everything in China shut down, so I really can't blame the seller.

People who say you shouldn't buy from China or to buy in your own country usually live in countries where THERE ARE sellers to buy from. It is not the case in Brazil or the whole South America. Moreover, Chinese sellers declare a low customs value so we get our stuff tax free here most of the time. Sellers from USA and Europe would usually put the real values on customs forms and this leads to 60% to 100% of the price of the product + shipment in import fees. So, buying from them effectively costs more than twice for us.

AliExpress has fine buyer's protection rules. If the seller asks you to cancel and use 'other' reason, just don't. Cancel and blame the seller, I think there is an option to cancel because the seller doesn't have the product. This way you will get your money back and the seller may get penalized.

I made around 260 orders on AliExpress over the years. Only a few times I had issues. All the products were unboxed/reviewed on my blog (or they are on the waiting list).

I do order a lot on Ali. I am super happy how they handle stuff. In past year I had 1 or 2 issues which were handled professionally by their support.
All in all very satisfied.

Just wondering in terms of memory did you test it on 140Mhz?

[skooter]

Just wondering in terms of memory did you test it on 140Mhz?

Yes. It passed, check this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxQtNE2iz9U

[Duffygag]

Just got a 2.1 hub usb, so far impressed.

[Waifu4Life]

Avoid Aliexpress

FIXED

[mineral55]

Just wondering in terms of memory did you test it on 140Mhz?

Yes. It passed, check this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxQtNE2iz9U

I wasn't so lucky when I got ram from retroscaler/bitfunx. It tested bad as soon as I started the memtest I got 000000001 displayed in red. Looking at the ram board I could see that the pins leading to the connector either had cold joints or inconsistent soldering (you can see a blurry pic of this here).

I had gotten this ram in a bundle with a bad analog I/O board that had solder joints obstructing the SNAC connector from plugging in all the way preventing the assembly from fitting in the aluminium case provided. An annoying thing with this case is that it isn't compatible with standard MiSTer USB hubs because they use a USB connector for power instead of the standard DC one so you are locked into requiring their crap unless you can drill a proper hole for the power.

I also left a negative review and it got removed even though everything I said was truthful and I provided the pics of the bad SNAC port (picture is found in this thread).

Avoid retroscaler/bitfunx and shame on them for selling garbage and shame on AliExpress for implicitly endorsing their shady practices for letting them delete my review of their product.

[german_user]

Personally, I would at least avoid buying higher priced products there. What use is PayPal buyer protection if they ask you to send the product back? Because of the small savings I would not do to Aliexpress and Co personally, especially not if it cannot be shipped and returned from a country near me.