Excuse me, do you like saving money?

Howdy, Steemians.

I have been ordering things from Chinese E-Commerce sites for more than 3 years, and so far have over 450+ orders (some stuff for resale, but most for myself). I have ordered clothing, toys, electronics, matcha tea, mineral salt deodorants, fancy artisan soap, motorcycle gear - pretty much, everything other than perishable food items.

Below is my story, and how I got into online shopping.

[the video is attached below]

As long as I remember myself, I always liked saving money. Maybe it stemmed from the fact that I was used to not having a lot of extra cash, so I had to get creative with my spending.

At some point in the past I was in the market for a new phone, because my old one was getting way too old. So when a coworker mentioned that there is a website where you can get extremely cheap tech from China that wasn’t all that awful, he had my complete attention.

I have even placed an order, but the next day I realized that being on a cheap phone plan, my network is using older AWS frequency band, and the phone that I paid for would not work on it. Thankfully, the order has not been shipped yet, and the seller agreed to cancel it. I have searched the website for another phone, but there weren’t any that would work on my network; so I decided to buy one locally instead.

However, while searching for the phone I came across a few other products at suspiciously low prices. I have shopped on eBay before and I had trust in PayPal, which they accepted on that site, so I decided to give this site another try, and ordered a bunch of smaller stuff: an SD card, earphones, a USB car charger adapter, and some other things that I don’t remember.

About a month later they started arriving. There was an issue with one of the products that took a while to sort out with the extremely slow customer service responses (4 days each time, IIRC), another did not come at all; but all things considered, I knew that I was hooked.

But I knew that I didn’t want to deal with DX.com again. Fool me once, shame on you, and I didn’t want to let them fool me again. So I started looking at alternatives.

One day my trimmer broke, and I started looking online. That is when I came across AliExpress. They had one on “sale” for about $22, that supposedly was marked at 75% off with a timer ticking away the savings. The sale ended up being not real, as I found the same trimmer for under $20 later, but it's a story for another day (spoiler: most daily sales are hoping for impulse first-timers, and are not worth it). But as I said, I couldn’t pass on a deal, and I was pretty naive, so I ordered it. It came a few weeks later, it worked fine, so I went ahead and ordered a few other things like stickers and a water bladder for camping. They did not have PayPal as a payment option, but by then I had gained knowledge of how credit card chargebacks work, so I decided that I can take that risk.

After the first positive experiences, I started ordering more things off AliExpress, and eventually almost entirely stopped using other sites like eBay and Amazon (except for the occasions where I needed something fast, but did not want to pay retail stores prices), as I quickly realized that most of these things are made in China anyway, and I could save much more money just by waiting a bit longer.

Some of the stuff that I bought:

$1 socks

$18 mechanical watch

$20 reflective jacket

In this story I will focus on AliExpress, because it is the site that I use the most often.

About a year ago I have started a YouTube channel, with unboxings and lists of products. Most of them are under $10, but there are more expensive things like this $250 4k camera. I am attaching my unboxing playlist below. I do want to mention, that the product links have affiliate code in them, so I will get a referral commission should you decide to buy something, but this does not affect the way I describe the products, as I try to be as objective as possible about the things that I bought, and read feedback left by others if it's something that I did not buy (in product compilations, for example).

New shoppers can abide by this simple mantra:

1. Do not expect too much.
2. Keep your expectations proportional to the price of the product.
3. Use common sense when ordering. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

My tips for the best online shopping experience.

– Before you buy, make sure to check product feedback. There will be a section for it on the bottom of the page. AliExpress community is very active, and many people leave detailed reviews with pictures of the product. Whenever possible, only buy things with feedback.

You will notice that a lot of feedback is left in Russian (which is my native tongue), as AliExpress is the #1 E-Commerce platform in Russia. There is a checkbox above the feedback section that will enable automatic translation of the feedback left in different languages to the one you can speak/understand. It is not 100% precise translation, and certain words don't get translated very accurately, but it should give you a general idea of what to expect. The site language can be switched at the top right corner of the page.

– Don’t buy clothing from famous designer fashion brands, as it will likely be fake. AliExpress cracks down on sellers that sell it, but it can still be found. Instead, there are a lot of Chinese brands with the quality that is comparable to the things you buy at stores, just much cheaper (including more high-end Asian clothing brands). Good examples are Simwood - men's clothing; Artka and Miegofce - higher end women's clothing; Icebear - higher-end winter clothing; and Toyouth - clothing from a Japanese designer named Ceci (you can read her story here).

However, this does not include electronics: there are genuine products from global brands like Samsung and Lenovo.

You can also look for products from brands that originate from China, like Xiaomi, Huawei, Meizu, Bluedio and KZ. Xiaomi and Huawei have a lot of different types of products, I especially like Xiaomi (translated from Chinese as 'millet', valued at US$46 billion) because of the way they crowdfund product concepts and designs, and of how they are involved with community. Meizu is smartphones with pretty decent specs and 1/3 of the globally-known brands' prices. KZ make earphones, Bluedio makes speakers and headphones/earphones.

– Keep an eye out on the delivery time. AliExpress will send you emails when the order is about to be closed. It is often happens that there is a backlog with the mail, which is not really seller’s fault, so I ask for Purchase Protection (e.g. 60 days maximum allocated for the delivery) to be extended for another few days. If the Protection is about to run out, and the seller is not replying, you can open a dispute. Usually, US buyers get their packages within 3-5 weeks if sent with regular mail, and 4-6 for Canadians. It used to be less, but not anymore. Also, the season plays a noticeable difference (more people shop during March, October, and November).

– If there is a problem with the item you purchased, try to mediate with the seller directly. If you can’t come to an agreement, you can escalate it to the AliExpress Resolution Team, and they will step in and decide who is at fault. Out of all my orders I had 11 issues total, 10 of which were closed by the AliExpress team in my favor, and one was mediated with the 50% refund for the drone batteries. If you are not happy with the resolution, there is an option to appeal. I can talk more about my experience with disputes, if there is any interest.

– Expedited delivery options for US/Canada are EMS and e-Packet. E-Packet is usually cheaper than EMS. Both take around 2-3 weeks to arrive. There also are FedEx and DHL, but they are pricey, and you might need to pay for brokerage fees.

– If you need to ask a question, keep your questions brief and the language simple. Many sellers use online translators, or speak limited English. No need to be rude or patronizing, they work very hard, and for long hours so that you can get a pair of cheap socks.

– Stay aware. Most sellers are honest, hardworking and reasonable, but there are some who aren’t. Don’t give your payment info to the seller directly (they don’t process payments, AliExpress does); if the item does not arrive, start a dispute, if you’re offered compensation via PayPal it’s up to you whether you want accept it (AliExpress seems to adjust seller ratings whenever there is a refund or a dispute, so they prefer to do PayPal refunds instead). You can insist on a normal refund, or if you decide to accept PayPal, don’t close the dispute before you get the refund. Many people are against PayPal refunds, but I’ve had no problems with them. You may want to ask them to send it as a personal payment (they can’t be reclaimed) for an extra piece of mind.

This pretty much covers it, but the full article with more pictures and links can be seen on my blog: https://aliholic.com/shop-aliexpress-safe-real-scam/