Originally Posted by
timtak
Pretty good. It is pretty much the same as the Asian (generally Chinese) sellers on ebay.
There are some charging exorbitant postal charges on Aliexpress too.
The "price plus shipping" order on ebay works but on aliexpress sellers put one cheap item, like a replacement mounting screw in their listing of bar end mirrors and the ordering uses the cheapest item in the listing pushing theirs to the top even though the mirrors themselves may be more expensive, so the price listing on aliexpress is useless. I end up bouncing between a lot of listings to find the cheapest one (there is a more to love selection at the bottom of each listing and the related items are often there).
The arbitration process tends to aim for compromise rather than a full refund if the item is slightly not as described. E.g. gloves in the wrong colour were reduced to half price. Or pedals that were difficult to clip into (and I have not used for that reason) again half price not a full refund. But I have only gone to arbitration about 4 times in several hundred purchases.
But I get all my cycling miscellaneous there (lycra wear, gloves, helmets, brake pads, spd-sl cleats, cables, missing links, grips etc). The quality is generally lower, but the price is about 10% - 20%.
Oh, and I am next door to China, in Japan, so shipping only takes about 10 days but it can take longer.
I have written this so many times I should just save a copy for posting. I did vendor evaluations in the PRC in 2005 to 2010 and the issue is the Chinese culture which is if a seller take advantage of a buyer it is good on the seller, no shame as in Western cultures. If you buy a Pearl Isumi glove from Aliexpress it may be an end run after 20 thousand PI gloves and perfect quality, , but after the 10 thousand they might not have the quality components as PI had and the PI QA/QC people on site are gone and it could be a end run that ran out of the thread, leather , dye, etc. and they substituted crap, Producing a PI look item made with crap.