[greeniron]

man, i often hear people complain about aliexpress, i just don't understand it. i've been buying and using headscratchingly cheap products from china through aliexpress, and seriously as long as you're not a complete newbie to online shopping, it's not that difficult to find a legitimate store selling perfectly usable generic or unbranded products at a fraction of the cost of the branded version and they all work just fine. i've easily saved thousands of dollars over the years this way. i don't understand why people are so against this - a lot of what they buy from amazon or supermarkets in fact come from china as well.

[lotsofpulp]

I think Aliexpress is great. Amazon is a marked up aliexpress, and that’s not great.

When I pay a markup, I expect something extra like curating of products so I know what the low-mid-high tier options are without sifting through tons of search results and reviews. Or at least not commingling of stock, so I know what I’m getting.

[FireBeyond]

Pretty much. If I search Amazon for something and there's a bunch of brands I don't know selling the exact same product with their brand name screen printed in the exact same location? Just go to AliExpress and buy it there.

[perl4ever]

Is that stuff tested by Underwriters Laboratories?

It makes sense that if Amazon is just dumping the same stuff under fake brands, why not go to the source. But anything that uses electricity could burn your house down, couldn't it?

[greeniron]

i mean... that's a legit theoretical concern, but so far i've bought many dirt cheap electronic products from ali for years and so far they've all worked as advertised.