Hacker News Reader

Comment by wheels | Hacker News Reader

This has had a significant impact on my buying habits as well. For luxury items, I tend to order them from a large department store chain, which is pricey, but more predictable quality, and for cheap knock offs, I just go to the source and get them from AliExpress for 1/3 the price they are on Amazon. Nowadays, you see almost the exact same stuff there without some rando brand I've never heard of attached to it.

View on HN

I intentionally bought a higher end, brand name, cable modem from Best Buy. It stopped working within 48h. Sadly the quality drop isn't limited to counterfeits, or big box retailers are selling them too.

Yeah, I don't mean that being name-brand ensures quality, but buying from a big-box or department store at least ensures that you're getting the thing you order. The whole point of brands from a consumer perspective is that they build a reputation on that brand, and you can choose to purchase things in the future based on past experience with the brand. Amazon breaks that because of the counterfeit and no-name-brand stuff.

Does that work consistently with AliExpress or are there many scammers? I have read pretty bad stories, am curious.

I haven't had any scams, and I've done maybe 100 orders from there. I've had some things that are crap, and not worth the effort of returning, but that's significantly true with Amazon too. I originally started using them for ordering electronic parts, and eventually also started getting household goods there. Things do often take a few weeks to arrive though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com