AliExpress

A couple of questions if anyone could help

• I've spotted a couple of shops on Aliexpress that claim to ship from an EU warehouse (via DHL france, therefore no vat etc) is that legit? Delivery dates are about right 7/8 days.....as opposed to very long times on other items.
• I'm having trouble buying a fairly high value item with a Mastercard. Keep getting a CSC_7200064 error. Bank sys they aren't even receiving an instruction to pay...best the shop merchanct can come up with is change payment method...but its putting me off a bit, I like the protection of a credit card....the other option would be transfer money to revolut and try use a revolut virtual visa debit.....or transfer directly which I absofuckinglutely wont do......................just seems odd that such a big site cant link up relatively seamlessly with Mastercard (it appeared to go as far as 3DS once but I wasn't asked to verify by my bank)
• How trustworthy are ratings on something like Aliexpress, shop has been in existence since Feb of this year and apparently nearly five sar ratings with 100s of positive ratings, are these as worthless as used toilet paper? Is there a way to get an idea how trustworthy they are or am I naïve in thinking Aliexpress might verify them in some way?

I found that even paypal doesnt protect against the shenanigans in ali express!

Had bought a number of items from them with no hassle, but my latest experience has ended any potentual of buyubg off of them agaun, even with paypal!

Bought an item, value at just over 100 euro, and reasonably heavy and large (one person could carry it though).

Shipped from france, arrived and when i opened it, it was smashed!

Took photos and raised a complaint where the seller offerred me something like a 5 dollar refund!

No doubt i refused it and escalated the complaint! After several weeks i got an offer of about 30 euro refund, which was paid to me without my sign off!

I raised the issue again as i had paid over 100 euro and i then got an offer of a full refund if i returned the item to the factory in china!

I said i would return it to france and not china as it was shipped from france (shipping was probably too expensive either way but i knew what they were up to, the cheek of them expecting me to ship it back to china!

Anyway, ali express ended the dispute there and then as i had veen offerred a full refund if i shipped the package back to china!

I raised it with paypal then, and they did the exact same thing, refused refund as a full refund had been offerred!

Some sellers on Aliexpress include vat and deliver the item from Europe.

Others send the item from China and then customs collect vat and any duty payable.

The customs request is usually from the courier/ an post.

More details might help with the answer

Ordered stuff from AliExpress the first week of July and 2 items arrived yesterday,but there was a item I ordered before the 2 I received yesterday and it hasn't come yet.

But of course it was only ordered one day before the 2 items that arrived yesterday.

MOD: You had already posted this on the Duty/VAT thread. Please do not post across different threads.

Are you logged in on both devices?

been a while since I bought from aliexpress - have their delivery times inproved at all? Or is it still months?

Is Fastway everyone's last mile courier for Aliexpress parcels these days? It used to be mostly Anpost for me but now it's always this nightmare.

There were periods when they delivered to my address mostly without issues, but there is always that thought that whenever they don't absolutely nothing can be done about it. Money and time lost. It's enough that their tracking falsely indicates a successful delivery and it's the end of the story. That's a major pita, because aliexpress sell lots of things that can't be ordered anywhere else and their alternative shipping methods are cost-prohibitive in most cases. I guess Ali went with those bottom dwellers because they are substantially cheaper than An Post.