Have you bought direct from China?

BigRonW

Over a selection of posts, I've been encouraging readers to buy electronic goods direct from China, because my perception of China's situation is that they're moving rapidly out of the "metal bashing" phase of economic development and becoming a country that's capable of designing its OWN products. In my view, if one product is - say - only 80% as good as another, but it only costs 33% as much, then (excluding peculiar external factors) only a fool or a snob (or perhaps and Apple Fanboy?!) would insist on paying three times as much for a marginal improvement. China produces (for example) a range of Android tablets under brand names that are totally unknoiwn here in the West - Onda, Windows, Ainol, Haipad... And from my experience, they're often surprisingly good, particularly considering their low cost.

Buying a totally unknown brand of something that - even if comparatively cheap is nonetheless quite costly - from a retailer on the far side of the planet can be pretty un-nerving the first time you do it. What if the retailer takes your money and doesn't come up with the goods?!

I'd like to hear from anyone who I've encouraged and DID buy direct from China how they got on. Was it easier than you expected? Were the goods of acceptable quality? How was the price? My own experiences have all been positive, as have those of my friends. If you've ordered something from CHina because I suggested it and encouraged you to make the jump... please share what you learned from the experience. That way, it won't just be ME saying "There are some real BARGAINS to be had here", and other posters responding with spurious gossip about how terrible Chinese products are, and how risky is is to buy things direct.

missile

Only once bought from China. Merchandise was fake. Never again.

paddyrg

Hi Ron,

I know you're on a one-man crusade for people to buy direct from China! My experiences predate you joining here, but hope they will be useful to people nontheless.

China is brilliant at copying, especially copying external features, often whilst not copying internal features (or making internal features mis-report themselves). This is what makes people wary about buying direct. Examples - power breaker units which look the real deal with CE markings etc, but just a length of highly dangerous wire inside. Or again, a USB flash memory stick reporting 16GB to the OS but actually with 512MB with a very clever rolling overwrite bodge so it never seemed full and smaller, recent files were fine, but it lost older stuff by design. Fake eating chicken eggs made from industrial chemicals and plaster shells. These are not made up examples, they are all quite real and indeed rather creative in their own ways.

Then take the fake designs and fragrances and cosmetics sold directly into the UK and international markets via .co.uk and similar websites. Sometimes not just lower qualiy, but toxic, dangerous. Or fake fags that contain even nastier nasties than real ones, with higher arsenic and mercury for instance. Or electronics advertising various features whilst skimping on other assumed features (eg HDMI out but a low-res resistive touch-screen with gammy colours and 2 dead pixels). There is a deeply embedded culture of external appearences but lack of quality that makes people rightly nervous.

Now I am not saying ZTE and the like are not capable of making good stuff, a lot of foreign-owned companies in China make excellent quality kit, and I am sure there are right-minded domestic companies that wish to do so also. There are probably some excellent engineering skills going into tablet manufacture for the local market premium lines as well as the regular ones. The problem is knowing which is which.

I have directly imported primarily via DX and AliExpress. Both are aggregators and agents offering a degree of consumer protection, and they know they need to do so as there are so many dishonest thieves on sites like AliBaba. I know and know of people who have been badly fleeced doing business in China. One guy whose company placed a £145k order went back to find the factory had changed name despite having the same owner and management and his money gone. In fact, that was in the FT last weekend. Or a personal friend who has taken all his China production of vehicle parts and accessories back from there due to constant quality corner-cutting and quality issues despite paying a premium for them to make the stuff properly. Fact is, you cannot have the same expectations of quality and consumer protection as you can at home.

So, yes, I have bought through DX and AliExpress and had some good and some shonky stuff. Prices are generally pretty keen, but then you need to consider the whole package to work out whether the headline saving is as big as it first looks. You have to take the headline price and add shipping (add a percent or so for international currency conversions if billed in USD), then allow for VAT (+20%) and duty (depends on product category but can be sizeable - say another 20% or more) on import. Add another £8-15 clearence fee depending on who clears the package. Unless you paid for DHL etc, the package could easily be 20-odd days (much longer with DX for instance), so you have lost some effective novelty/playing time from the moment of impulse anyway! Don't be disappointed and try to return it under the distance selling regulations (DSR's) that protect UK distance purchases though, they do not apply.

Some people have got lucky with Chinese vendors misrepresenting the item value on the customs clearence and so not getting hit with taxes and fees - but this tax fraud really cannot be relied upon when pricing up goods.

You will of course need a safe UK power adaptor. Having caught cheapo imports getting very hot and smoking before, worth using one actually safe and certified for UK use from a reputable vendor, so add another tenner or so. Now you can fire up the unit. It may be easy or difficult to change the language, and you may find the instruction pamphlet in Mandarin less than helpful. But, assuming for a second it was easy, and you get set up, and it actually does meet the spec on the website (which is the case more times than not, but the margins vary by seller), you have a new toy to play with that saved a few quid. Hoorah!

However let's say you get unlucky and it is one of the few units that develop a fault (same true of any manufacturer, although some makers cutting costs for off-brand items will use cheaper components and have poorer tolerencing and soldering for instance). Are you on your own with a dead toy? Will the vendor even accept it back for repair? They are under no obligation to do so. Sale of Goods Act is no use to you. They can simply ignore you. Then again, you may have a good vendor (and there are plenty) who offers a repair free of charge - you simply pay for postage (to and from China - I suggest you insure that postage too as things go missing disappointingly often). What can that cost? Well, cheapo surface mail, it will be another 20++ days either direction, or you can send it via a premium carrier which is not cheap at all. Again factor in the cost/hassle of doing the correct legal paperwork or risking paying import duty/taxes and fees in both directions (back into China then back back into the UK).

Most goods will not fail like this, it is true, but they all have the potential to do so which you must factor into your costings.

So a headline price of $160/£100 may cost you £148 landed plus a £10 adaptor plus no consumer rights if it goes wrong, or even isn't to spec. Sure, that exact same unit may be £200 on the shelves of Argos, but if it isn't to spec, or goes wrong, you return it and have a refund/repair/replacement in a heartbeat and for free.

I am by no means saying there are not bargains to be had, but it is absolutely not without time/cost/risk to get them, which should be factored in. Is it worth it for everyone? No, probably not, especially when they factor in having a (clueless, but probably less clueless than the punter) shop assistant walk them through the features and be there to help them learn where the 'back' button is. I just want to complete the picture a little.

Lifeforms

I would not buy electronics direct from anywhere in the far east. The whatifs column is far higher than the Yay!cheap working product column. I have rights by buying in this country, not luck, actual real rights and come backs.

You would be better encouraging uk retailers to buy/import/stock and safety check anything electronical and thus giving people a far better option, bigger supply, and rights. (but then we come to the same position, the products would cost on a comparable rate to our own imported products)

Of course most of our electronical goods come from china/far east in one way or another, but they're properly made, tested, sold, and have rights because we buy in the UK, dearer or not. The market that is cheaper, is the unknown market, the riskier market, the one that basically you could be screwed in so many ways, from a bad product, to a physically dangerous product. That market is the one that you really don't know about, whether your goods are good, or are a waiting timebomb.

Frankly when it comes to consumer bodies advising that a lot of stuff comes over fake, then I will listen to them every time over anyone else. It might be a jaded view, but there is just too much evidence that shows for that.
Just the sheer number of programs that cover it (fake Britain, customs programs, police raids on market stalls etc) I'm still ultra wary about buying battery replacements that obviously come from far east, because of the hype about them exploding, catching fire, surging and ruining equipment.

Mrs_pbradley936

I have bought from China and been very pleased. Not huge sums - I might think twice about that but I bought a handset for Skype and an HDMI cable both very cheap and both work well. I got them via Ebay.

spaceboy

I bought a headphone valve amp from china. It's good. I changed some of the valves for Russian versions.

denwhatshisname

BigRonW wrote: »

with spurious gossip about how terrible Chinese products are, and how risky is is to buy things direct.

Rather one sided piece you have written.

Question for you,

A) Have you ever had to return good to China

B ) Have you ever been bit with duty issues on buying goods from China

This is also incorrect

BigRonW wrote: »

a range of Android tablets under brand names that are totally unknoiwn here in the West - Onda, Windows, Ainol, Haipad

You can find UK stockists for these.

Lifeforms

Funnily enough, this came up in my news feed today:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/19/chinese-online-retail-giant-360buy-spreads-worldwide/

BigRonW

denwhatshisname wrote: »

Rather one sided piece you have written.

Question for you,

A) Have you ever had to return good to China

B ) Have you ever been bit with duty issues on buying goods from China

This is also incorrect

You can find UK stockists for these.

To date, I've had almost zero problems with importing Chinese items - possibly because I apply common sense before making the purchase. There was a time when the Chinese were producing "ChiPods" - fake iPod lookalikes that also played video (curiously BEFORE Apple produced their first video iPod) Video needed to be converted to a strange proprietory format before being copied to the gadget, and then someone at a Chinese university worked out how to get memory chips to misreport their capacity; Chipods started appearing that were claimed to have far more RAM than they really did have - and EBay were totally (and shamefully!) uninterested in investigating the fraud. Word got out, and "Chipod" prices plumetted to a new equilibrium: Once you realised that an "Eight Gigabyte" Chipod was really only going to be a two gigabyte model (and that the "tweak" could easily be removed) then the price was really quite attractive. The problem wasn't so much "Being cheaped" as KNOWING you were "being cheated" and making decisions based upon reality. I gave away several Chipods to my various nephews and neices - they offered really GOOD value for money.

My "best bargain" arose from the discovery that Chinese sellers have ceramic knives on offer for ridiculously low prices. I'm into cooking, and ceramic knives are in a class of their own when it comes to sharpness. (And, as they're made of synthetic diamond, they tend to STAY sharp) The disadvantage is that the blades (any ceramic blades, not just Chinese ones!) are as brittle as glass, and can shatter when dropped onto the kitchen floor. Originally only available from Japan (at a massive cost), they can be bought direct from China for as little as a fiver each, through DX (or if you prefer, through Amazon althpough at a cost that's about 50% more per knife) They make excellent Xmas presents. I've by now bought dozens of them.

As for "You CAN find UK stockists for these"... There's a garage in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, who's the "Official UK stockist" for Trabant cars. Having a UK stockeist is (fairly obviously!) NOT the same as being "well known in the UK".

I could, fairly easily, produce reams of statistics to show that crossing the road is DANGEROUS, and that many MANY people get run over every day of the week. I could produce an endless srtream of sob-stories from people who've lost loved ones in vehicular/pedestrian accidents. But I could also point out that millions of people cross the road every day and come to no harm whatsoever. I think that the latter is the cause I'll continue to promote, and will leave the "DON'T CROSS THE ROAD! IT'S JUST TOO DANGEROUS!!!" message to others.

denwhatshisname

Your post makes no sense at all and avoids the questions.

I, for one, would call Play.com a "well known" company

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/31341131/634349553/Ainol-Aurora-7-Inch-IPS-HD-Capacitive-Android-4-0-1-2GHz-1GB-8GB-WIFI-Tablet/ListingDetails.html

You have also failed to realise that your contract is with the supplier, based in China, and the cost of shipping an item out to china, even for a minor fault, is slightly excessive in comparison to dealing, with say Play.com (a well know supplier).

The price differential in dealing with a UK supplier, as opposed to a chinese one, and the relative benefits make it a far more pleasing option to most - moreso as you cannot be hit by custom charges.

chubb3g114

I have bought many items from China for a number of years but only through Ebay using Paypal. I have had problems with some of the items but all were settled amicably.
There was a time when the item would take ages to be delivered but not any more, last year I bought a tapestry to hang on the wall, ordered on Friday and delivered by courier on Monday.
Last month I purchased a Tablet PC, Flytouch 8 and it is fantastic just one draw back there was only a quick start guide in poor English but there is always Google ready to help.


chubb3g114