Hoping someone can point me toward specific parts of EU regs for returns

Mega_Maniac

mattyprice4004 said:

I wish you the best of luck, but my experience with Aliexpress is that you'll be fobbed off and get nowhere.

Me too, I paid via PayPal as well so I'll try the argument with them. They usually do not force the sellers hand when it comes to return postage, but there is an outside chance they will accept my argument. 

At the moment I am trying to twist the sellers arm directly, I'll update if I have any success anywhere. 

Mega_Maniac

In the end I didn't need any of this. I initially talked to the seller who at first agreed to pay 50% of the £40 return postage, when pushed they upped this to 75% which I figured wasn't worth any more haggling. 
However as they were replying so slowly (at one point no reply for 3 days after requesting the 75% payment for the postage) I raised a dispute with AliExpress.
After a couple of days of going through the AE dispute process of "AE suggest a £40 refund" - and refusing these steps the seller must have got another sale in the UK and asked me to send it on to another address and they would pay the full postage cost (£12). Just waiting on the refund now, but this is protected by both AE disputes as well as PayPal (probably) so I don't really doubt I'll receive this.

Anyway, all's well that ends well.

KeithP

I wonder what will happen if the new buyer in the UK either  a) claims the goods weren't received, b) claims the goods are faulty, c) decides the goods aren't suitable and wants to return them?

One thing is certain... you now have a good understanding of international law on those issues. 

Mega_Maniac

KeithP said:

I wonder what will happen if the new buyer in the UK either  a) claims the goods weren't received, b) claims the goods are faulty, c) decides the goods aren't suitable and wants to return them?

One thing is certain... you now have a good understanding of international law on those issues. 

I think they will have just sold it on AliExpress then had it turn up like they were using drop shipping. The 'new' buyer might nevr know. So any problems they will be dealing with the seller. 

It is true that by booking the delivery myself any reports of 'not receiving' would have landed at my feet, but that would have been somewhat covered by insurance, and, well, it all worked out anyway - money is 

theonlywayisup

Mega_Maniac said:

In the end I didn't need any of this. I initially talked to the seller who at first agreed to pay 50% of the £40 return postage, when pushed they upped this to 75% which I figured wasn't worth any more haggling. 
However as they were replying so slowly (at one point no reply for 3 days after requesting the 75% payment for the postage) I raised a dispute with AliExpress.
After a couple of days of going through the AE dispute process of "AE suggest a £40 refund" - and refusing these steps the seller must have got another sale in the UK and asked me to send it on to another address and they would pay the full postage cost (£12). Just waiting on the refund now, but this is protected by both AE disputes as well as PayPal (probably) so I don't really doubt I'll receive this.

Anyway, all's well that ends well.

When I read this I thought it was resolved.  But it seems you haven't had the refund yet?  I have no experience of Aliexpress disputes but plenty with Paypal.  If you do need to default to Paypal you will need proof of delivery for the return, hopefully you have that. 

Mega_Maniac

theonlywayisup said:

Mega_Maniac said:

In the end I didn't need any of this. I initially talked to the seller who at first agreed to pay 50% of the £40 return postage, when pushed they upped this to 75% which I figured wasn't worth any more haggling. 
However as they were replying so slowly (at one point no reply for 3 days after requesting the 75% payment for the postage) I raised a dispute with AliExpress.
After a couple of days of going through the AE dispute process of "AE suggest a £40 refund" - and refusing these steps the seller must have got another sale in the UK and asked me to send it on to another address and they would pay the full postage cost (£12). Just waiting on the refund now, but this is protected by both AE disputes as well as PayPal (probably) so I don't really doubt I'll receive this.

Anyway, all's well that ends well.

When I read this I thought it was resolved.  But it seems you haven't had the refund yet?  I have no experience of Aliexpress disputes but plenty with Paypal.  If you do need to default to Paypal you will need proof of delivery for the return, hopefully you have that. 

I have now had the refund, although the post you quote was in fact before this happened. There was a very small chance that the seller was a con artist and was getting me to post the item to an address of a friend in the UK and then commit a PayPal rerouting scam, but I verified the address was genuine and I considered the risk the seller would scam me very low and not worth insisting that they therefore paid for all shipping directly. 
Ultimately the sellers of AE are not much different to the sellers on Amazon Marketplace, granted - the laws are very different, but AE has similar incentive to ensure a positive experience for international customers, and as evidenced by their response to the dispute (that the seller must pay return shipping to China, despite this not being AE 'policy') they do respond to valid concerns.
I am in no way suggesting AE is as safe a place to spend £300+ as Amazon, but I make a lot of orders from AE/Banggood et al and my experience is almost always positive, and when it is not I have (at most) lost about £40 in one order (on a £1400 projector, which wasn't objectively faulty but I considered the picture quality inadequate, so shared the return postage with seller (which I never asked for, was expecting to pay it all))