Oh dear, what have I done?!

GDB2222

I bought a little PC from Ali Express. This one:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008426374525.html

Only belatedly have I realised that I have bought from a seller set up in December 2024, rather than the manufacturer of the PC. It was quite cheap for what it is - £74. That's for a machine with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, which in retrospect seems rather too good to actually be true! If it arrives, works, and is to spec, that's splendid, but I belatedly have my doubts. 

If it doesn't arrive, or it's some other spec, will Ali Express bail me out?  Paid by debit card, if that makes a difference.

soolin

GDB2222 said:

I bought a little PC from Ali Express. This one:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008426374525.html

Only belatedly have I realised that I have bought from a seller set up in December 2024, rather than the manufacturer of the PC. It was quite cheap for what it is - £74. That's for a machine with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, which in retrospect seems rather too good to actually be true! If it arrives, works, and is to spec, that's splendid, but I belatedly have my doubts. 

If it doesn't arrive, or it's some other spec, will Ali Express bail me out?  Paid by debit card, if that makes a difference.

Despite all their promises and guarantees you don’t really have a lot of protection with Aliexpress. I still buy a fair bit , nothing expensive, and if something doesn’t arrive then I have got my money back after several months of going back and forth with them. However it’s more hit and miss if something arrives damaged or wrong as quite often they expect you to send it back at your own cost, but even if you do that it is unlikely to track to delivery so you just lose more money. 

Having said that though I have recently had a couple of small broken bits in several purchases and I got a refund for 2 out of 4 of the broken purchases. 

Tucosalamanca

Looking at what's for sale on Ebay from UK distributors, I think that you have a fighting chance.

If it arrives, please come back and let us know how it performs, I'm intrigued by those little boxes.

No idea is Ali Express are helpful or not...

GDB2222

I’m intrigued by these pcs too. My present machine is an elderly i7 processor with lots of RAM that probably outperforms the n100, so this is probably a bit of a downgrade. But the old machine is not w11 compatible, and making it compatible would cost quite a bit. 

So, if the tiny new machine actually turns up, that’s an extremely cheap solution. 

QrizB

GDB2222 said:

If it doesn't arrive, or it's some other spec, will Ali Express bail me out?  Paid by debit card, if that makes a difference.

My experience with AliExpress is that they're pretty good at refunding you if your purchase isn't delivered. I had a couple of items (different purchases, different sellers) not turn up at all, and once reported through the website AliExpress refunded my payments fairly quickly.
Items not as described isn't quite as straightforward. In my case it was a battery where the capacity was 1/6th of the claimed capacity. AliExpress wanted evidence, and so I ended up recording a video showing the battery discharging through a lamp, and going flat in 2hrs rather than 12. They accepted the video and paid my refund.

rollingmoon

That PC is now 52 quid! One thing I have found with Chinese sellers on Aliexpress is that specs can be 'over-egged', so check that what you receive is indeed what you paid for; e,g, Android TV boxes with slower processors and an older version of the OS than stated, or monitors to have a lower resolution than stated. One I bought had but when I pulled the seller up on it he refunded me half the cost & it was OK for what I wanted so result. All that said there are plenty of sellers on eBay who will cheerfully lie to you in a similar fashion, so using eBay is no guarantee of success.

Never buy SSDs, memory sticks/cards from there... they're not all fakes but it's a lottery with odds that are such that you'll most likely lose!

All that said I have found Aliexpress very good when it comes to refunds and disputes. You get one 'no questions asked' return for each order, but I've only ever sent stuff back when it's been faulty or destroyed in transit. They send you a returns label nowadays, the stuff goes to a UK address so you're not waiting long for your refund.

Most sellers discourage you from returning items because the seller doesn't get them back. So when I bought an e-bike conversion kit and various parts didn't fit the bike without work, putting in for a return got me a decent partial refund.

GDB2222

I thought I would follow up on this, as it has had a fairly happy ending.

 The PC is now a week past its delivery date, but I hadn’t done anything about it, and this morning I received an email from AliExpress offering me a refund. So, I accepted that, and hopefully I will get all my money back from AE fairly soon. 

I assume this was some sort of scam, but I seem to have got lucky! 

soolin

GDB2222 said:

I thought I would follow up on this, as it has had a fairly happy ending.

 The PC is now a week past its delivery date, but I hadn’t done anything about it, and this morning I received an email from AliExpress offering me a refund. So, I accepted that, and hopefully I will get all my money back from AE fairly soon. 

I assume this was some sort of scam, but I seem to have got lucky! 

Thank you for the update, it sounds like things have worked out OK in the end. 

QrizB

I'm glad you got a reasonable outcome

To be fair, AliExpress seem to be pretty good at paying refunds for non-delivery.

forgotmyname

Anyone know what the catch is with some items being so cheap it must be a scam, comments left even state that and they have not been removed.

Why would a seller list a wooden bench for sub £10 when we know there is no way the item is going to turn up and be as described.

My first thoughts were data harvesting, collecting my email and phone numbers etc?

GDB2222

forgotmyname said:

Anyone know what the catch is with some items being so cheap it must be a scam, comments left even state that and they have not been removed.

Why would a seller list a wooden bench for sub £10 when we know there is no way the item is going to turn up and be as described.

My first thoughts were data harvesting, collecting my email and phone numbers etc?

Excellent questions. I assumed that they would hope to collect some cash, then scarper before AE can claw the money back? It seems a lot of trouble just to collect a bit of data.