AliExpress shopping advice?

[tamada]

I am interested to hear the online shopping experiences from any members who have purchased from AliExpress. Payments, conversion rates, delivery times, etc..

Looking at a particular Nokia smartphone that's not available in Thailand. It is on the UK market but has a lower spec.

ta
tam

[jackspratt]

I have bought phones from AliExpress without any problems. That goes for 99% of the other purchases I have made from them.

Prices are good, I pay with my Oz credit card so have to accept that exchange rate. For smaller purchases, I pay COD with Thai Baht.

Delivery is generally good (3 - 10 days), except during peak sale times, including the fast approaching Black Friday sales, and also New Year and Chinese New Year sales. For a phone, you may or may not cop 7% VAT here - the luck of the draw.

However, you need to vet your seller(s) very carefully. My mate down south bought what he thought was a great value brand name phone, literally 1000s (Baht) under the going price. Specs were fantastic, but all (very cleverly disguised) nonsense.

He got a refund from AliE.

Also compare specs very carefully, as Chinese versions may have different operating systems, cutting out of full Android apps (Play Store etc). You need to look for International/Global version ROMs before you proceed, unless you are confident enough to flash your own ROM after getting the phone.

As a final issue, can can almost kiss goodbye any thought of warranty, unless you get it from a highly rated vendor eg Nokia Official store itself.

[tamada]

Cheers js, loads of very relevant info there. The price quoted is the same as if I waited for it to show up on the UK market in Q2 next year so it's not a "too good to be true" offer. I'll double-check on the network specs though. At first glance it's the same as my current Nokia, bought in UK, works here and the countries I visit regularly. Nokia has two factories in China and a third in Korea so these will probably be export models (shows all the language modules available). But I'll ask about the play store thing. It comes with a 1-year warranty.

[tamada]

Thanks js.

[glalt]

I am interested to hear the online shopping experiences from any members who have purchased from AliExpress. Payments, conversion rates, delivery times, etc..

Looking at a particular Nokia smartphone that's not available in Thailand. It is on the UK market but has a lower spec.

ta
tam

I ordered a set of binoculars from AliExpress. The seller claims he made a mistake with the price so he substituted a much cheaper set. The advice from AliExpress was to simply send them back for a refund. Going to the trouble of boxing them up and paying postage for the return was too much of a hassle so I just kept them.

I also bought an inverter that was supposed to be pure sine wave. It was plainly labeled pure sine wave. The seller finally refunded my money and I was able to keep the non pure sine wave inverter.

I also bought a large pure sine wave inverter for my solar system. One of the capacitors sprung an oil leak and the inverter stopped working. The seller asked my to remove the case and take a photo of the oil leak. They then immediately sent me a replacement and to just keep the defective unit. The replacement is still working fine and I have since ordered two smaller units of the same brand. All three work great.

Like Lazada, some sellers are dishonest and Lazada has been no help at all. That said their return system is easy to use and does work well. It irritates me that the dishonest sellers are still able to keep cheating customers by selling counterfeit items and actually shorting people. I had ordered a set of diamond sharpening stones. Five in a set. I received one. The seller agreed to send me the other four. I never received them. The seller said he would check the warehouse. That was the last I ever heard from the seller. No message replies. I also ordered an LED flashlight and charger. I received a cheap charger and no flashlight. Lazada did nothing about this problem. I simply got cheated.

[tamada]

I ended up buying the lower spec Nokia in England as Argos had it on special with 35% off.