Aliexpress lost item dispute - what should I expect ?

Inigo_Montoya

Anybody have any experience of the aliexpress dispute process ?

I ordered a cheap item from a chinese seller on aliexpress assuming incorrectly it would probably take a few weeks to arrive & Royal Mail would be used for the last leg of the journey (who, for my address at least, always return parcels to their delivery office if Im not in making it easy to collect them at a later date - within 18 days of the attempted delivery)

As it turns out it arrived much more quickly & YODEL was used for the UK part of the journey which meant I did not get back home to the delivery address until a couple of weeks *after* YODEL had apparently delivered the parcel to a neighbours address

The same day I got back home I went round to the neighbours address who point blank denied they had it - slightly confused at this point I just said I will need to try to contact the delivery driver for clarification

I phoned YODEL customer service who just re-iterated the item had been delivered to my neighbour & refused to investigate further by involving the deliver driver - since their contract was with the seller then only the seller could ask for a copy of the delivery signature or make a compensation claim with them so I couldnt even get a copy of the delivery signature to take round to the neighbour & ask them to explain why they claimed not to have it but had signed for it

At this point I raised my first ever dispute with Aliexpress - it was not clear what option to use so I initially selected "Purchase Protection is running out, but package is still in transit" but later after the seller rejected my refund request saying parcel had just not arrived yet I updated it to "Package sent to a wrong address" hoping that would speed up any possible refund (which it didnt)

What I noted was that the seller waited to reply (officially) to my initial claim till just before it looked like aliexpress were about to become involved & that after they responded the deadline was extended for a further 18 days (I assume the 18 day extension cannot be extended further ?) so it looks like they are trying to drag things out as long as possible

The seller has also been messaging me repeated asking me to close down the dispute obviously hoping Im a bit of an idiot that doesn't realise that closing the dispute means I will never get a refund via aliexpress

They also don't seem to have read the details of the dispute I raised as from their messages to me they seem to think there is no tracking at all which is rather odd - as it turns out the tracking that is showing up in Aliexpress has not updated correctly & ends with "Sorry we missed you. We've left you a calling card" rather than we delivered to parcel to neighbour like it should - i assume this is good for me as the system is not showing the parcel as having been delivered

Does anybody know where I stand with this with regards to how Aliexpress will handle this when they finally step in in 18 days time ?

soolin

Being Aliexpress it is difficult to say how this will go. I assume that since it was of some value as sellers tend to only use couriers for certain things that the seller might dispute this, if it was cheap they tend to just pay out. Ali do say that they will pay out if items don't arrive, so you might be OK .

However, I do have some concerns that this item has arrived, albeit to a neighbour who denies this, and yet the claim is stating categorically that item hasn't been delivered.

Inigo_Montoya

soolin wrote: »

Being Aliexpress it is difficult to say how this will go. I assume that since it was of some value as sellers tend to only use couriers for certain things that the seller might dispute this, if it was cheap they tend to just pay out. Ali do say that they will pay out if items don't arrive, so you might be OK .

However, I do have some concerns that this item has arrived, albeit to a neighbour who denies this, and yet the claim is stating categorically that item hasn't been delivered.

The item was only just over $4 which is why I (incorrectly) assumed they would use Royal Mail & not a courier - that along with delivery in 10 days rather than the quoted 20 to 40 days is what has caused this headache

Because the chinese tracking showing up on Aliexpress is incorrectly saying the item has NOT been delivered (to my neighbour) then I did wonder if being completely truthful & admitting the YODEL tracking is actually saying it was delivered to my neighbour was a good idea but in the end I decided that being truthful was the better option since the item has not actually been delivered to the correct address & I didnt explicitly say I was willing to allow the package to be delivered to a neighbour

apparently there are UK consumer laws about this i.e. see
https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/my-parcel-was-left-with-a-neighbour-who-denies-having-it
but as Aliexpress is a chinese company I suspect they would not have to follow these laws

worst case scenaria is I will have to do a visa chargeback but I'd rather Aliexpress agree to refund me since I never received the product & didnt agree to have it delivered to a dodgy neighbours address (for reasons I dont really care to go into Im pretty sure they got it & are just lying which is why Im annoyed YODEL wont send me a copy of the delivery signature so i can confront them with it & at least make them squirm a bit)

NCC-1701

For the cost of $4 I'd just forget it and move on.

Inigo_Montoya

NCC-1701 wrote: »

For the cost of $4 I'd just forget it and move on.

fair point but im actually interested in learning how aliexpress deal with disputes & more specifically with this particualr scenario where the courier claims to have delivered to a neighbour but neighbours claims not to have it

the knowledge will come in handy if I start to use aliexpress for larger purchases

Rainbowgirl84

I would not use any non UK seller for a large purchase. It can be enough of a problem if a delivery goes wrong with a UK seller as we see on this board several times a week.

Inigo_Montoya

aliexpress eventually refunded me

I think all they looked at was the tracking saying incorrectly that it was still in transit

Not sure what would have happened if the tracking had correctly said delivered to neighbour