I always hear stories about the dangers of buying from WIsh.com, Aliexpress, and recently Temu. I’ve jokingly called them “buyer beware” sites even. Yet people still use them, and there’s just as many positive results as negative. But I’ve also heard about unexplained card charges, data hacks, pyramid-scheme-like behavior, etc. So which of those sites, or other similar sites, is the “safest” if I DID wanna shop there?
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.
Aliexpress has been reliable in my experience.
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.
Those disconnects are just time-out based. It’s just stupid configuration. Last time I contacted support on AliExpress, the person on the other side asked me to just send dot every 10 or so seconds to keep the chat live.
Temu is worse than TikTok when it comes to exfiltration of your personal data.
That article states that another app they made and distributed in rural China did this. As far as I’m aware there’s no evidence temu does.
Certainly means they aren’t trust worthy but there’s no evidence temu is dangerous right?
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’ve had good luck with various items, largely from Aliexpress, I can’t really talk about which one could be the safest, so to speak.
Advice to keep an eye on: things are likely to be exactly what they describe it to be. And I do mean exactly. Say you get a AA battery charger, when you get one from your corner store, you’ll expect it to charge the batteries in a timely manner. From Ali, the charger might take 12+ hours to do its job or maybe overcharge it. Or it’ll work perfectly.
So, only get the ultra cheap stuff from these sites if you don’t really care about it.
I buy cables from aliexpress.
Ive only had a few ones be broken on arrival, but i also always order 3 or more. (Mostly usb, audio cables etc)
You can open a dispute and get a refund or partial refund in those cases.
I have not and i will not use the other two you mention.
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 haven’t tried wish, but my experience with ali and temu were great with a few notes: Check the dimensions on anything you order sometimes the pictures can be decieving for certain items… I stopped using ali when Trump stopped their ability to sell vapes (was easily $10 per item cheaper vs local smoke shops) As far as I have tried the “games” on temu are useless and unwinnable so I wouldn’t bother with those; however the price of the items on the actual store are very competitive and good deals can definitely be had. Temu>Ali for shipping time, temu always has my stuff at door within 3wks unless you paid for extra shipping AliExpress would typically take 60-90 days. Ali>temu for item diversity/availability/options because Ali has been around for longer they have more listings. Although this seems to be getting better every day on temu… I can’t remember what payment I used on Ali but temu let’s you pay with Cash app/PayPal which is ideal because I just load exactly what I need on that acct before I use it to place the order which won’t allow for additional charges. Everyone gets data hacked everywhere any way. Temu is kinda pyramid if you play the stupid games but like I said it seems unwinnable (or you need to refer 100 people for a $50 item which I’m not dedicated enough for) but other than that they’re pretty alright. My wife used wish and usually ended up okay but sometimes stuff wouldn’t be as listed or they’d use a Chinese size chart which makes a large shirt=small usa standard shirt but ymmv
Never tried temu (likely never will) but I’d be careful, it looks a lot like chinese spyware-like … I’d happily pay a little more and get stuff on Amazon, or other stores (brick-and-mortar included) rather than dealing with temu.
It’s quite a bit more through Amazon. For the little junk I buy on Temu, it’s like 500% more on Amazon.
And CapitalOne gives extra cash back when you shop at Temu through a browser instance. It works out well.
I’ve had nothing but normal experiences with Temu and AX.
I guess it’s worth it for me, also I haven’t seen nearly as much as 500% for the exact same item (possibly for “similar” items but I can already tell the quality). And I’d rather not deal with companies like temu. Anyways, good for you if it works for you.
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 $10, so if it breaks I’m not crying about it breaking me financially.
Well, if you save your payment info on any site (especially sketchy ones) you can get a “you just bought with no returns” 3k$ worth of crappy Chinese phones delivered to your house that “you bought and got the goods, so it isn’t aliexpress’s fault no returns.”
“Payment of $3,000 to totallylegitnoscam.tokyo has been declined due to exceeding current available balance of $2.57”
if you save your payment info on any site (especially sketchy ones) you can get a “you just bought with no returns”
There are protections against this. The CVC is not recorded with “saved payment info” and if a seller accepts a payment with no CVC, it’s much much easier to dispute it with the CC company.
Something about your description sounds right and wrong. US companies may do that, but what about “one click purchases” via google and amazon? Surely they saved the CVC and ali/sketchy site don’t care as much about data breaches
Nah, Amazon is super easy to dispute purchases. Hell, you can probably just tell Amazon directly that it was a fraudulent purchase and they’ll return it, at least for smaller purchases or infrequently enough.
Nothing’s happened to me personally from Temu, and I’ve spent maybe $90 over five deliveries. I will say I went in thinking, “What’s the worst they can do? Nobody can mess up making a laundry hamper, right?” and they went below and beyond in terms of quality. It made me laugh, to be honest. The things aren’t all unusable, but quality is pretty clearly inferior. With heavy loads of laundry the ribbon serving as a handle did break.
You wanted something to hamper your laundry process, you got it. I see no issue.
…Good one.
Yeah it really came out ok in the wash
Amazon
If it’s on Amazon and one of the apps OP named, you’re paying for a dropshipper
I’d pay dropshipping fees just to get Amazon’s no-questions-asked full refunds if anything goes wrong, including delays, broken or incorrect items, or just poor quality (and of course, those two days free shipping with prime if you have that). Amazon, in my experience, always rectified any issue promptly. Those other ones … well, you can try your luck, I guess.
But what if it isn’t available on Amazon?
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Well played.
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Because of the rise of online stores and the decline of brick and mortar, there’s actually a lot of stuff you can’t reasonably get without shopping online now.
Such as?
Anything from Radio Shack.
Like what specifically? Go Google something obscure! Quickly!
People in rural areas have significantly fewer options at their disposal for shopping. Say someone likes to cook as a hobby and can’t find herbs and spices that aren’t common in their area. Cardamom, Ceylon cinnamon, five spice. Or advanced culinary equipment and ingredients. Things like a mandolin, agar-agar, dry ice. I like to make craft cocktails at home as a hobby. If I had to rely solely on the liquor stores in my home town my bar would be less than half the size it is and I would have very little of the equipment I use to make ingredients. I’m also an amateur mycologist. I never would have gotten into the hobby if I didn’t have access the the resources I do online.
What am I supposed to do? Abandon my passions because the materials aren’t locally available?
Anything from a specialty hobby. I’m a falconer, I don’t think there is a single brick and mortar store in the US for that.
Presumably back in the day it would have been mail order thru specialty magazines? Genuinely curious
I’m not really sure. Falconry in the US mostly stopped after colonial times and didn’t come back until the 1930s or so. The first clubs weren’t formed until early 60s and formal licenses weren’t until the 70s. I’ve seen magazine articles about mail ordering hawks, falcons, and eagles. I think most people made their own equipment and some stuff was sold word of mouth. I do know there was a lot of scouring of old (1600s and earlier) books for diagrams and instructions. I’ll see if one of my books has stories or I’ll ask some of the original members if I can remember.
Here’s a short history on US history: https://www.n-a-f-a.com/page/History
My book from 1976 just says that bells and hoods are “available commercially” so I’m not sure. They did have club magazines going that far back so I’m sure there were ads in those.
Not what they asked.
Ok grandpa
I’m not a grandpa I’m just not so convenience focused that I need help deciding which slave and children labor outlet is safest for me.
Don’t act all high and mighty, half the products you purchase are probably still child labor produced
I do my best to make purchases that cause the least amount of harm to any living creature involved with its production. It’s not high and mighty, it’s the right thing to do. Why don’t you do that?
you’re mostly being judgy on the internet towards strangers, so there’s that
also, I don’t know where you live (nor do you know where op lives by the way), but as an example I asked the other day in one of the only electronics shop in my town, if they had Thunderbolt 3 cables and they just answered “no”. I have a ton of examples like that: video projectors, canon proprietary cards for their cameras, printer ink for my printer, a case for my phone, a new piece for my turntable, a new battery for my bluetooth speaker, etc.
I don’t know where you live
Meanwhile, @the_q:
y’all
Texas, probably.
I’m not being judgemental! You guys attacked me cause I said something y’all didn’t like.
You assumed op were young because that allowed you to display your wisdom, while answering a question they didn’t ask. when someone pointed that out and someone else said that ordering online had advantages because you could find things you otherwise wouldn’t, you got defensive.
Because it’s not my responsibility to fix the world that billionaires fucked sideways?
Yeah pass the buck…
