AliExpress is worse than I even feared

[Gaccha]

I have been a very long time user of Lazada and Shopee. Lazada in particular has demonstrated a superb responsiveness to refunds.  It has always provided a refund to a claim.

 

I always avoided AliExpress for years because I got the impression they had a dodgy refund mechanism. But it's actually worse than I thought. 

 

I received a notice yesterday (7th of August) in the App of delivery of an item on the 28th of July. Having made sure that nobody else accidentally picked up my item (which is an occurrence that has never happened in the whole time I have had home deliveries), I then claimed a non-delivery.

 

The AliExpress app states that before a complaint is made you contact the logistics company. I checked with the logistics company which then said It cannot deal directly with the receiver. The AliExpress then says to contact the seller if the logistics company does not provide information. They did not respond back to my message (It clearly is not in their interest to respond) since any refund would be against them.

 

After putting in my claim, AliExpress AI bot makes a determination against me. It requires that if I want to continue the claim I must provide evidence. And the evidence is proof of non-receipt from the logistics company or police evidence. I figured my CCTV would be good evidence but in fact my CCTV only goes back 10 days. Since the delivery notice arrived 10 days after the claimed delivery date I did not have any CCTV.

 

This is absurdly Kafkaesque. The system uses its complete incompetence against you.

 

If you are going to use AliExpress make sure your CCTV has a long storage system.

[scubascuba3]

i had something similar the other day, refund automatically declined even after i uploaded a video, customer service is sh it so I'll stick to Lazada and Shopee in future

[Farmerslife]

How on earth are you expected to prove non-delivery of an item? 

 What happened to the need for a delivery driver to obtain a signature on delivery? 

[Gaccha]

28 minutes ago, Farmerslife said:

 What happened to the need for a delivery driver to obtain a signature on delivery?

I can answer that because I wanted to check who signed for my delivery. It turns out that the delivery driver can sign for the delivery!

[JakeC]

I also had a painful experience with them. The seller wanted to refund me in full without me sending the item back, but AliExpress wouldn't let them. In fact the seller processed the refund, but AliExpress wouldn't pass it on until the item was sent back.  So the seller had to pay postage charges on top of my refund.

[topt]

I had some good (but limited number) experiences with Ali Express on tech products. However now the stuff I have looked at comes with the obligatory you will be responsible for any taxes.........which unlike Amazon there is no way to see in advance. 

Reading the above makes me doubly glad that I have not ordered anything recently from them