ALIEXPRESS: Experiences and Tips

Okay, so I recently said that i would make a review on a couple of aliexpress orders that I made. Well...apparently i purchased from fraudulent sellers and i am now waiting for my refund. So, instead of a clothing haul review, i decided to post up some tips in terms of ordering on aliexpress.

To be honest, i have only made one successful purchase on aliexpress and that was for jewelry.

Basically, the best thing to do if you see something you want on aliexpress is to make sure that:

-the seller has good feedback at least in the 90% range. preferably a lot of feedback too. IF they don't have a lot of feedback I would be cautious of buying from them. Also, it's best to check when they started selling items on aliexpress; the older the date, the better. new accounts lately are usually scams.

-if the prices are too good to be true that means they are a scam. I was stupid enough to actually fall for a few of those shops. I knew they were too good to be true, but i just couldn't help it because the prices were so damn cheap, so i took a risk because who knows, what if its legit right? WRONG. if you see clothes or even appliances sold from a shop for a few cents WITH free shipping, and they barely opened their shop a month ago with no feedback, they are 100% fake. some of them try to look legit by saying that it is a new seller promotion and limit you to only purchase 3 items from them.
now, there is also another case scenario in which the item is only a couple of cents to dollars; please be sure to check if the shipping is free or not. some clothes may be 1 cent but when you look at the shipping, it costs $14 lol.

-if you find something you really like, do not purchase it immediately. Chances are that you will find cheaper prices if you search for it. Aliexpress has numerous sellers and all of them are competing to get you to buy from them, so when you search for the items you will usually find a lot of the same item at different prices.
usually, when I want to search for something I would check on the free shipping box, 1 piece only and click on the price to see the lowest priced items first. you can also check the sale items to see price drops on items that last a specified number of days.

the reason i check the 1 piece only is because many of the times, you will see a really cheap shirt, but they'll want you to buy in bulk, so if you don't want to be purchasing 2+ of the same shirt, its best to check that box. 

-JEWELRY: jewelry is often really cheaply priced here, but here are the cons: be prepared to buy a lot because depending on the seller, they request you purchase a minimum of about $5-20 of jewelry from them (you can basically pick any jewerly they have in their shop as long as your total reaches their minimum amount), or else they will not take your order. honestly, the jewelry i purchased was pretty good except a lot of the plastic packaging for my jewelry broke lol. i wanted to give some away as gifts too lol. oh wells. also, a lot of gems from numerous of my jewelry broke too.... 

as for if the pics are true to the item: some were, and some were not. i ordered a white fish earring and i got a pink fish instead... basically just the wrong colors, everything else was okay though. another problem i had with my order was that some of the items i ordered were not shipped to me, but the seller i purchased from was nice enough to inform me of that and gave me other items as an apology as well as a refund for those missing items. 

-CLOTHING: honestly, it is really best to make sure the measurements they provide fit your size. if they do not provide measurements, i do not even bother. honestly though, please keep in mind that these clothes are produced in China so their clothes are sized smaller than what you would expect in the USA. Some shirts also say plus size, but it is best to still check the measurements. if there are reviews for the item, the better. A majority of clothing feedback always say 'excellent' or 'good', which is just horrible, but if you dig deeper, some buyers leave pretty useful feedback. 

Also, sometimes the measurements are not accurate. Some do note that there may be a 2-3cm difference in the clothes, but i have had worse experience in which the shirt do not even look like the stock photo. This happened to me when i purchased from wholesale7 and the worse thing was that they charged shipping by the weight of the item, causing a $4 shirt to be $10 and a total waste because i never wore it, ever. 

as for now, i have learned to not even bother purchasing clothes online unless i for sure know that the size is right or if it's cheap, and by cheap i mean $5 or less, with free shipping. that way, i wont lose that much if the shirt doesn't turn out right. 

-SHOES: i am utterly sad because the biggest size I have seen them offer on this site is a size 40, which is like a size 8 in US sizes. I wear a 9.5, which is like a 41 :/ i am very sad because i have seen really nice flats for around $3 but i am not able to purchase it because they don't have my size! 

-PROMOTIONS: once in a while, aliexpress will have these crazy promotions in which they sell their items for a really cheap price. a while back, they had really cheap clothes for sale, but i missed out on it :/ they also have superdeals daily, which is cool but i also havent had the chance to actually get anything from those. the reason is mainly because i havent really seen anything i liked on those and even if i did, they are sold out already :/ 

BUYING AN ITEM: if you ever do buy an item, please note that they take freaking 24 hours to verify your payment...after that, you will be given the time in which it takes for the seller to ship out your item. around this time, i think it is best to actually message the seller and ask when they are shipping out your items or something of the sort, just to make sure you actually get a reply. i have heard that many sellers actually give out false tracking numbers to buyers just to make it seem as if they shipped out your item to scam you. 

i honestly do not understand why they do that because you can just cancel the order before the date for your item to ship expires and get a refund. well, i dont know much about these since i have read many issues about the refund process and how some people never got their refunds. I guess its just a risk you have to take. 

as for those scammers, i honestly do not understand why they waste so much time setting up a shop and load it with fake inventory just for people to report that they are fake and have their shop closed. aliexpress does state that the seller does not get their money until the buyer states he/she received the items lol. unless that is fake as well, but i dont know.  

SHIPPING TIMES: shipping times can take ages since they are shipping from China after all. the fastest i have ever received an item from China was 2 weeks and the longest was 2-3 months( i was starting to believe that my item was lost too) i think it varies but if you're willing to wait for your goods then go for it! :) 

hmmm...i think that's about it. i will update if i remember anymore stuff. hope this is useful to all!