Buying from Alibaba

EpsilonCM

I am looking to buy about €300 worth of products from alibaba, this is my first time buying from alibaba. How would I know if i a supplier is legitimate or not?

chopsey

hi,

i've never use Alibaba before so i cant really comment on that but there is a very similar site called DHGATE.com that uses paypal and the funds go into an escrow account until you are happy with the goods and are willing to release the funds which made buying from China a little less stressful.

beware of long delivery times and customs charges, good luck.

coroner29

I bought 2 items from different suppliers from AliExpress. One was a MID (basically a WinCE device) and the second one was a 7inch GPS. I had to pay customs for both, but otherwise no issues. MID has been delivered by DHL for free and the GPS by china post (free as well). When I received the MID I wanted to apply an anti-glare screen protector and long story short, I broke the touch panel (there is LCD panel and the touch panel is on top of it and I guess there was a gap between them). The supplier was kind enough to order just the touch panel from the factory for around $7 (just the DHL was not for free this time). And even with the time difference between ireland and china he always responded via live chat in a couple of hours. So that was a very good experience with supplier. Now the second one, I ordered the GPS from, was not even capable of telling me, what price did he declare to customs for the GPS. So not so good experience, but at least they were responding via email.
So I would suggest to at least look for a good rating and positive comments (if you can find some). Also you can try to ask question(s) about the product and get a feel for their support.

Worztron

Has anyone had a bad experience when buying from Alibaba.com?