Emily Velasco

I haven't purchased anything from aliexpress from about a year, and boy howdy, have they made the interface much more deliberately confusing.

The listed prices are often sale prices that I'm not qualified for, and are drastically different than the actual price. Items get lumped into these bundle deals and dollar express categories instead of just going into my shopping cart.

What an annoying mess.

Feb 23 at 4:53pmWeb
Show threadJer 🚲Feb 23
@MLE_online I've never ordered from them, and it seems each time I think that I'll finally buy something it's even more confusing. "Didn't I just click buy on a product? What is all of this shit??"
Show threadPhil NelsonFeb 23
@MLE_online “gamification” must be destroyed. The normalization of these dark patterns is a fuck
Show threadkabutorFeb 23

@MLE_online yeah, you have to always be logged on, if not, the price is never right.

Also they push a lot to the bundles, sometime you click to add one item to your basket and it redirects to the bundles, and that is a annoying, have to identify what are the bundles to avoid clicking...

But, they are so cheap, and they have so many things that is unavoidable at this time

Show threadEmily VelascoFeb 23
@kabutor I am logged on. It still does that
Show threadjasegFeb 23
@MLE_online yeah they used to be better a few years ago when it looked like they just didn’t have the resources yet to make their website shitty yet.
Show threadjasegFeb 23
@MLE_online I find their search function has become particularly bad with an update a while ago. When it used to work as an actual search, now it will just always display irrelevant items when it runs out of actual results. I guess maybe that works for their clothing or home decoration categories, but it definitely doesn’t work for electronic or mechanical parts.
Show threadjasegFeb 23
@MLE_online I’ve noticed LCSC has been building out their electronics module and mechanical hardware product catalogs by a lot recently, and have started being price competitive with aliexpress sellers. Maybe they’ll eventually be a good alternative.
Show threadFauxFeb 23
@MLE_online that's all insane and feels intentionally bad; but the thing that will never make sense to my western brain is that they tell you how much the thing will be when it goes on sale in two days. Why?! What possible benefit could that have to them?
Show threadEric BrombaughFeb 23
@MLE_online And just wait until you actually order something and they ship it. The last-mile delivery now avoids USPS and goes via a sketchy gig-worker outfit called Uniuni. Sometimes they're great, and sometimes... not. I've heard stories of multiple missed deliveries, packages ending up in the wrong place, etc.
Show threadEmily VelascoFeb 23

@emeb I ordered something last year, and one of those gig drivers showed up to drop it off. He somehow lost one of his other packages, and was panicking about it in my driveway. He and I were having to use his translator app because he thought I had somehow taken the wrong package. He was in my driveway for probably 15 minutes looking under other cars and in the bushes, and never did find the package.

Aliexpress isn't alone in this though. Walmart is doing it now, too. My neighbors constantly order stuff from walmart and it shows up delivered by a gig worker doing deliveries in some random passenger car

Show threaddanFeb 23
@MLE_online It's very irritating eg, they will show the price for the spare screw rather than the actual product. The bundle deals aren't really cheaper either but you can scroll down to the bottom of the page of a bundled item and you will find a link to the same item outside a bundle.
Show threadRue MohrFeb 23
@MLE_online I always go with the "choice" items cause the prices seem clearer. every so often non-"choice" items+shipping are cheaper.
Show threadEmily VelascoFeb 23
@RueNahcMohr how? none of the choice items have prices that match what they advertise in the search results?
Show threadRue MohrFeb 23
@MLE_online
- first log in (then it doesn't try to give you the welcome-new-customer prices)
- after doing a search, click "choice" on the side filter, what you want *might* completely disappear tho.
Show threadEmily VelascoFeb 23
@RueNahcMohr That doesn't change anything. I've already been logged in, and then I click choice and it limits it to those, and it shows me prices, then the prices are much higher when I add them to my cart
Show threadRue MohrFeb 23
@MLE_online huh, I wonder if its a USA thing with china. I don't know if china likes the USA much right now.
Show threadRue MohrFeb 24

@MLE_online

what price do they show you for:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010552556921.html

50PCS 5mm Vollfarb-LED RGB rot/grĂĽn/blau Gemeinsame Kathode/Anode Vier FuĂź transparent Highlight Farbe Licht 5mm Diode bunt - AliExpress 502

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

aliexpress.
Show threadEmily VelascoFeb 24
@RueNahcMohr $1.99
Show threadRue MohrFeb 24
@MLE_online huh and thats the show price or the 'I'm about to check out with it' price, I have ~$5CAD.
Show threadBitslingers-R-UsFeb 24

@MLE_online What did it for me is that they have a money-back guarantee. I bought some Dallas DS12887A real time clock / battery backed RAM chips, so I could replace an original DS1287A from 1992 in my 1U VAX, as people are wont to do.

What I received didn’t work at all. It wasn’t as though the battery was dead - it was as if the chip didn’t exist. More than one did the same thing.

I tried to return them. The sellers told me they couldn’t make a mailing label because they couldn’t “process” my address - the one they shipped to! I updated the address half a dozen times, and each time got the same error. Because of this, I had to pay for return shipping. Then they said they never received the return.

Of course it’s a scam. Grrr…