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Buying electronic items on AliExpress?


Larry

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I've been looking at some electronics items on AliExpress, and I've been surprised at the price difference to similar/same items on Amazon.  What is the sentiment here on AA about AliExpress?  If you've bought from them, has it worked out OK?  I'm curious about folks experiences.

 

 

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Not sure I've bought physical items from there - generally their reputation isn't exactly the greatest.

 

But I not too long ago bought one of those cheap Windows 10 licences (for like 6 bucks or whatever) - the listing mentioned if you had activation problems to install Teamviewer then they'd sort it remotely (as if you'd do that, utter madness)

 

So anyway, the thing didn't licence properly and I let them know and rejected their offer of "remote assistance" - then they just sent me another (working) one.

So far so good - not revoked or anything in the several months since.  The Windows 7 licence on this (my main) computer lasted maybe 15 months before being pulled by MS.  But it was from another site and cost me even less.  The Win10 licence is on an NVME drive on this one pending replacing the Win 7 install when I can be bothered finishing the remainder of the move.

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Completely off topic, but....

 

Windows 10 easy, I purchased Windows 8 many moons ago, got the free upgrade to 10.

The installed Windows 8 on a second PC completely valid license, then got a free upgrade to Windows 10.

 

Works every time

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Generally a Windows 8 key will always activate 10 successfully - big reason being that MS want it erased from history.

The added bonus being that Win 10 keys are good for 11, so in theory it should work backwards there as well.

 

But re Ali - it's sort of like eBay, you can't thank or blame the host site too much for behaviour of the sellers.  You get whatever set of protections (and in eBay's case a lot of that comes from PayPal).

 

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I’ve bought quite a lot from there and pretty happy on the whole. It takes a long time to arrive with some shipping methods. AliExpress standard shipping is relatively quick (2-3 weeks), some others take months.

 

I don’t go there for quality tools, still have got a lot of useful things: 220-110v adaptor, rc car, rc boat, tl866, old chips, smd tweezers etc etc

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I've purchased from AliExpress, in general it's worked out bar the LONG delivery times. Biggest rule, read the feedback, it could save you a bad purchase. The old rule of thumb also applies, if its very cheap it's either a poor copy or made cheaply. That said, the items I got have all worked out of the box, one was surprisingly well made and they did what they said it would do. Do take some of the specs with a pinch of salt, hence the read the feedback, you'll find all the stuff people have found in there.

 

Things to avoid, SD cards / flash drives with terrific spec, it won't be what it says, especially if it's dirt cheap.... Some of the clone gear (not direct copy) is ok.

 

As always, if you want super spec high quality gear then you get what you pay for, if it's impossibly cheap then there are BIG risks..

Edited by Mclaneinc
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I've gotten some repair and upgrade parts for for older Nintendo handheld consoles. Some were very nice indeed. Especially the backlit screens for Gameboy Color and GBA. I've also picked up a few radio kits that weren't too bad, (and some that really sucked) for very cheap.  Just be prepared to wait for 4 to 6 weeks for your product to arrive.

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Yes, that's where it comes in handy, spares for old machines (not IC's, many many fakes on there) like new buttons etc etc. And if you want an NES clone that has 1001 pirate games (mostly the same game) then you are spoilt with choice :)

 

Re the IC's, people should have a look on youtube about how the Chinese farm these old IC's, if see it you would think twice about buying them, it's quite shocking how savagely it's done..

Edited by Mclaneinc
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I've bought quite a few flashcarts, cables, and other bits and bobs over the last year. All of them bar one were perfectly fine and delivery surpisingly quick (2-3 weeks to Poland). At some point I had a parcel coming from Spain over 1.5 months and got 3 things from China in that period.

 

The dodgy one was a super cheap GDemu board (14USD) which I bought kinda on a chance, and no surprise, the seller sent me only an SD card, claiming that this was what the ad was for. But his page had a description totally for the board itself, with exact wording and measurements. I opened a dispute for total refund (including the postage) without returning the goods and won, kinda surprisingly, because I had heard that "Ali sides with sellers".

 

And that's the thing, a lot of bad rep Ali gets is from people hating on China in general and just repeating the somethin somethin cheap chinese junk mantra. In reality, it's an online marketplace same as all the other ones, and the same rules apply.  It's not like there are no dishonest people on ebay, Amazon or - especially! - Craiglists or the bloody Gumtree. So, read the feedback, filter by "orders" - the more sold the better-  don't buy too-good-to-be-true stuff, and you should be fine.

Edited by youxia
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I've only bought from them once and was very suspicious of them just because of their name and where they were located. But boy did I get surprised. My order (I don't remember exactly what it was - it was about two years ago) came super quick and I didn't have any problems with them whatsoever.

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I've bought a couple of flash carts which work ok. Joystick extension cables which are fully wired , so perfect for making 7800 controllers and 2 replacement screens for a Sony DSLR camera. The first really cheap one did not work but the second one has been fine for the last year.

Also bought the stuff to make an SDrive max, first screen didn't work so arranged for a replacement and they sent the whole order again, this time fully working 

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I'm currently waiting on 12 items in 7 orders, and I'd say it's pretty typical that I've always got that many orders going with them.

 

I've bought some expensive stuff there successfully. Including a Time Harvest supergun, screen mods for gba/ngpc, numerous flashcarts/ODEs, Neo Geo repros, great deals on PGM games--the place is usually great.  And when it's not, it's an escrow deal and I just get my money back. Same deal with the 'sometimes I don't get what I ordered' situations--once I ordered a dragon world pretty chance, and got a dragon world 3--guess who now has a free dragon world 3 (this guy).

 

Currently I'm waiting on one of those fancy Gulikit controllers.  (I probably should have bought that on amazon, though--there are regular sales on it)  Also I'm waiting on a set of MiSTer SNAC controller adapters for much less than from other sources.  Mind I'm just around 1 month into the wait on those (which is the long side of typical for china), so I've got to keep an eye on my email in a couple week in case I have to claim them. tracking says they're a state over "upgraded to combined shipping" (meaning 'waiting on the last package before we hand over to usps')

 

Looking through my pictures, this setup is mostly from aliexpress:

0oDqmNPm.png

Edited by Reaperman
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I’ve been buying from AliExpress since some years ago. It worked pretty well, using standard shipping. I just had 2 issues:

 

1. Used Cainao súper economy service once, and it took 6 months to arrive. Never use it again.

2. I ordered some sst39f040 flash roms for some cartridges I made. About 80% didn’t work properly, but I’m not sure if it was a cartridge design issue or not.

 

besides that, every other product worked fine. Clothing, electronic parts, even Atari Jaguar cartridge cases!

 

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Slightly relates, I brought from an Ebay seller only to find out he was based in china despite making it clear he was a UK seller. (I've since seen him on Aliexpress). The item was a hair trimmer and it was indeed coming from China so I wasn't pleased and warned him that if there's an issue with the item I'm only willing to send it back to a UK address as per the deception. The guy replied straight away and refunded me and told me to keep the USB charged trimmer.

 

I use it every week, works a treat.. Offered to pay for it again but he said no and that he was sorry for the little lie.

 

So yeah, the wait times are long but to be fair, I'm waiting for something posted in the EU and it's been weeks, deffo posted, had confirmation from Royal Mail saying they would let me know when it's in the uk and that was the last I heard. It wasn't a tracked item so I have no avenue to go down, hate to see the sender lose out..

 

 

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