AliExpress Refund Nightmare

cgfw201

Ordered from AliExpress last month for the first time. Needed a new phone screen and it seemed the only place to get one.

10 days later the package turned up, and it was completely empty. Just cardboard, no screen.

Immediately reported to AliExpress, their "Buyer Protection" blurb seems pretty robust.

Anyway, refund immediately rejected, needed to supply "more proof". Hard to supply more proof of something that isn't there.

Tried again, 6 times, each one rejected straight away.

Is this standard practice or is there another way to get money back from these scammers? Will be the first and last £177 I spend with the platform either way. 

whalemoney

They're useless.  I ordered a few things a while ago that never arrived.  I did a chargeback and just got my money back that way.  Did you use credit card or debit card?

soolin

You need to be persistent with Ali Express, don't give up at the first hurdle. Send photos of nothing (I have actually done that) and keep trying.

There's no guarantee with Ali, despite what they say but they do often give in if you are polite but persistent.

GabbaGabbaHey

I've bought quite a lot of stuff from AliExpress sellers and have rarely had any issues, and have always had a refund when there has been a problem.

As mentioned, you need to be persistent, and willing to send a photo or video showing that "nothing" arrived! (I suspect that the claims are processed by bots, and they are just checking for the presence of a photo/video, rather than actually viewing the content).

forgotmyname

They just try and drag the process out hoping you give up.  Not just Ali-Express though it also happens with sellers on Amazon etc. A fairly expensive item
failed to turn up from ebay and thinking it was a different seller bought it from Amazon, only when the tracking listed the collection location I thought oh no
it's them again.

They sent an empty box first and then an item worth £100+ rather than the £400+ item I ordered. I actually took pictures of the empty box and bubble wrap.
And again with the 2nd box with a CD or something for scale, so they could clearly see the large machine was not inside.

More common now they ask for video and not photo's, just hoping you struggle to send the video especially when the platform has file size limits. We sent a
32GB file to a company that requested video a couple of months back. Thought if they want to play silly games so can we.

I wonder if they downloaded all of it and watched it in full 4k 60fps quality?