This post is composed as a response to a comment left by a user of our site, who argued that he couldn’t understand why the reviews we posted for Chinese shopping sites here are mostly positive or neutral. As he claimed, he had an unhappy shopping experience with Aliexpress.com and he believes the site is not genuine as we review. To help more readers understand how we rate the Chinese online wholesalers or retailers, I think it necessary to make the points clearly disclosed so that you can have a better decision.
Hi XXX (name hided to protect our user’s private information),
Glad to see that you come back again to share your comment here. With regard to the doubts you shed on us, we admit that as a review website we are not perfect and have so much to improve. Thank you for your valuable suggestion.
It is true the reviews we post here of the Chinese sites are basically positive or neutral. The major reasons are as follows:
1) Although we are trying to post reviews of as many Chinese shopping sites as possible, we can’t do the job now as we have planned because we are short of manpower – 99% of articles published here are written by one author only.
As a result, we put the sites we believe are better in terms of credibility and service at the top priority. While we understand that all these sites also have much to improve and negative reviews against them can be found easily on the Internet, we also know that they have tons of happy customers who have been trading with them for years. We emphasize the good sides of these stores or marketplaces simply because we are ourselves Chinese and it is our mission to popularize and promote better Chinese sites to the world. However, we never intend to overstate their advantages or spread any fake information.
All information we revealed here about them is based on our research and knowledge. To dig out information that can add values to our readers, we read Chinese newspapers, visit Chinese forums or social networking sites and communicate with Chinese friends who are working for the companies. We have good reason to say that Aliexpress.com is a legitimate and genuine site: they belong to Alibaba.com, the most famous and biggest e-commerce company in China, all foreign trade people here know this site. In fact, many e-commerce talents jump from other companies in order to join them for better career development, including a good number of my old colleges who like me worked for another famous wholesale trading platform before.
In addition, their site visits and customer quantity have been soaring since they were founded in 2010. You can search Alexa or Google trend to check their website ranking or interest trend (see the graphs below). As a young site they are developing very, very fast. I think this at least well proves that they are a serious business, not a scammer. They have defeated many powerful Chinese competitors in a short time. So despite that they do have flaws, can we say they are not genuine? Certainly we can’t.
Aliexpress.com’s three-month global traffic rank is 279! This shows the site has a large number of visits. Only big and legitimate sites are able to attract so many visits. See details here >>
From the web search interest comparison between Aliexpress.com, DHgate.com and Lightinthebox.com, the most famous Chinese international shopping sites, we can see that though Aliexpress.com is founded years later than either of the two sites, its search interest quickly leaps to the highest in 2012 (see details here). What does it mean?
Anyway, what you criticized us is to the point. It can be quite misleading if we just talk about how good they are. We have gradually realized this problem too. We approve reviews of any type as we believe reviews posted by others (especially real customers) can be a good complement to our own reviews. Besides, we do mention the imperfections of the sites in the reviews, don’t we?
2) People tend to vent their anger after encountering an unpleasant shopping experience by posting bad reviews online. On the contrary, those who have got wonderful shopping experience are not likely to write any reviews unless they can receive any benefits. You know why the shopping websites have so many good customer reviews? Many people think they are fake reviews created by their own. Based on my working experience, they are not. In most cases, online stores use incentives to attract their customers to leave favorable reviews or feedback for them, e.g. coupons or discounts for future purchases. Of course, only those who really had good shopping experience would give them positive or neutral reviews. At the same time, there are some 100% genuine good reviews posted by customers who want to thank the sellers for the good products or services by rating them based on the facts. However, this group of customers seldom spread the word about the good suppliers or shopping sites at third-party review websites.
For this reason, when we search for reviews for any Chinese retail or wholesale site, we will see that bad reviews against them are overwhelming at most review or rating websites. It is unfair. People who never shop from China will probably be scared away. As a result some good sites can be defamed and missed out. To separate us from other review websites, we decide to focus on discussing about the upside of the Chinese online suppliers whiling leaving commenting function open to real customers to share about their own viewpoints or shopping experiences. Of course, we do not give positive reviews for any Chinese supplier blindly. Instead, we do a lot of research and choose the better ones with an aim to help global buyers know the better Chinese suppliers they can choose from. Meanwhile, as I mentioned above, we are also considering reviewing the badly rated sites in order to warn buyers when we can spare the time and resources to do so.
Hi
Thanks is all that I want to say for complimenting me on my English and for accepting my suggestion.
I will come back to you for any suggestions that I will need for buying products from Chinese websites in future.
Randeep
Hi Randeep,
Thank you very much for your advice, which is valuable for helping us improve our site. Your English is so good that I thought you are a native. For the comment I mentioned, I thought you were saying we had not published your comment on purpose. It should be a mis-understanding between us. Now, let’s forget about this point, OK?
You are right. Our blog is probably influcing some people and we should work harder. In the future we will also talk about the downsides of the Chinese shopping websites in addition to the upsides.
Thanks, again!
Good luck!
Jessie
Danviews.com
Hi
First of all, English is also my second language not my native language. I am from India and English is not our native language. Of course, I was successful in posting the comment and even you had replied as I said in my earlier comment. I had posted my comment as I post all of my comments> But if you want to say that you cannot find that comment, it is your wish. I cannot do anything in that.
When you make comparisons between two things for a positive purpose, you also can make comparison for the same two things for the negative purposes also. That is a thumb rule whether they are from the same platform or not. If a comparison has to be made between two things, it has to be both positive and negative (not only positive or negative).
I was only saying that since you are guiding people, you should first do research yourself first. I never said that you have time or not. I also said that I did all this research in a very short span of time, so obviously you do not need much time for doing this research, only some interest (which you say that you have). Anyway, I am not saying that you are doing a bad job. I am just saying that you should do some research on both positive and negative aspects (not only the positive aspect as you are doing right now). Your blog is a very good one and I suppose there must be many visits to your blog and many people must be reading it, so it is good to review both aspects of a website, that is what I was trying to say.
Randeep
Hi,
1. I use my second language to argue with you native speaker. Is it so wrong when I can’t express it perfectly? So when I said I could not find any result, I simply meant there is no such result at all. Think abou it: I’ve published so many negative reviews against Aliexpress under the post, is it necessary to hide yours? Ask yourself first: did I successfull post the comment?
2. The comparisons are not the same thing. When I compared the search interest and visits, I simply wanted to explain that the site has a large number of visits and it is one of the most widely used Chinese shopping sites. I told you why transaction platforms are different from stores because I myself worked for a transaction platform before and I know well that because of the business nature, Chinese transaction platforms are much more likely to recieve negative reviews. This rule only fits for Chinese businesses, not for the world top platforms like eBay. Chinese shopping sites have a long way to catch up with world level.
3. I do not live on this site. It is only my personal interest to create contents to this site. I am taking care of my one-year-old baby myself. So you still say I have so much time to check out all those links?
4. You can insist that Aliexpress.com is not genuine based on your own experience, but you can’t say we are a fraud because I express my own viewpoints based on my own experience and knowledge. Respect for each other is my bottom line. Thank you.
Jessie
Danviews.com
Hi
It is not only me who has not got the reply and am complaining. You can check hundreds of complaints in the links that I had provided you earlier that the customers do not get the item and when they try to open a case against the supplier, either they are not allowed to open the case or AliExpress does not respond at all. If you cannot find those links (as you say), I can give you those links again. You yourself had replied to me at that time when I again posted a comment regarding you not publishing my earlier comment (on link http://www.danviews.com/facts-about-aliexpress-scam/) and this was your reply:
“Hi there,
To avoid spam reviews, we moderate each review before it is published. It may be delayed as we do not handle comments every day. Anyway, if you read more posts at our site, you will find good reviews, bad reviews or neutral reviews against Chinese suppliers everywhere. As a review website we are trying our best to stay unbiased.
Thank you for visiting our site and sharing your review.”
And I did not see my comment after that as it was never published. So that means you had got my earlier comment but now your reply is that you cannot find it. What should I think of you people now??
Regarding my comparison of AliExpress with other sites like Lightinthebox, in this post itself, you have compared AliExprses business with Lightinthebox and when I am comparing complaints of AliExpress with Lightinthebox, you are saying that they both cannot be compared. Hypocrites???? Why?? If a company is in business, it has to control quality and service standards and as you say, Aliexpress cannot control both, then it should not do business at all in which it cannot control the main aspects of a business. A company which cannot control these two main aspects of business is destined to be doomed.
If Aliexpress cannot rule the case in a dispute, then it should not offer Escrow service at all. If it is offering Escrow service, they should act responsibly and they should study the case with proofs both from the customer and the seller and then take the decision (which it is not doing in a lot of cases and increasing number of cases recently). Instead they are siding up with the sellers (just for a little amount of commission) and not responding to customers. Do I have to tell you all these things??
Let me tell you I am not a blogger or a professional reviewer or anything of that sort. I am just a normal man having an office job. If I can search and get so many reviews about so many sites and products, you are supposed to be doing a better job than me instead of me telling you about all those links.
As you have said in your article above “We emphasize the good sides of these stores or marketplaces simply because we are ourselves Chinese and it is our mission to popularize and promote better Chinese sites to the world.” You are guiding people, so you people should be more responsible and not only give positive reviews but also the negative points of a company if there are some negative opinions about it.
In your article “Facts about AliExpress Scam” (link: http://www.danviews.com/facts-about-aliexpress-scam/), there is a comment by one of the visitors on your website named “Liliane” and one by “Franz Sigel Shroy”. Just see those comments and you will know to what level AliExpress has fallen. If AliExpress sides up with the sellers on those cases, it is very much evident that AliExpress.com itself is a SCAM AND FRAUD.
Randeep
Hey, Aliexpress guys, would you show up to respond to your customer Randeep?
Jessie
Danviews.com
Hi,
1. I completely understand how you feel about what you have encountered at Aliexpress.com, but now I seriously doubt why they did not even give you a response to your refund request email: you mentioned again and again that we do not publish the comment you posted here, I told you in the previous reply that I did not see the mentioned comment and had searched the back-end and found no related-results. Web servers can go wrong sometimes, you know. Still, I personally don’t believe that the company would not even respond to such a request from their customers.
2. I don’t think it make sense to compare the numbers of complaints among Aliexpress.com and Lightinthebox.com, Dealextreme.com, Dinodirect.com or the like. These sites run on a business model completely different from Aliexpress.com. They verify quality of the products and handle all pre-sales and after-sales issues by their own staff but Aliexpress.com is just a transaction platform. It is hard for them to control the quality and service standards. You should compare them with DHgate.com (founded in 2006), who has the same business model with Aliexpress.com.
3. For the imperfections of Aliexpress.com, what we have pointed out (not in a single post though) can be mainly summarized as follows:
1) Standards of sellers and products vary from each other and you may encounter scams or poorly-made quality products there.
2) Dispute handling and refund process can take really long.
3) You may be cheated to buy fake products by dishonest sellers. Although the site verifies the supplier qualifications when they apply to join them, some frauds or scammers may skip over the verification — many foreign traders in China complain that it is hard to pass their verification! )
4) We cannot expect too much from the service provided by Aliexpress.com as they have to mediate between sellers and buyers in order to solve a problem. When you claim you are cheated, the seller may claim that he/she does not cheat you at all. Then how should Aliexpress rule the case?
4. I really encourage you to report your case to Aliexpress.com with details through their internal system again. Even if the deadline for taking a refund has been due, they should at least give you a reasonable explanation.
Jessie
Danviews.com
P.S. We’ve edited the links in order to avoid being harmed by dangerous links as I mentioned earlier. Hope you understand. For those who want to check the links, just copy them into the address box and add “www.” to the beginning.
Hi
It was good to see your explanation on my comments on AliExpress site. I very well know that Aliexpress.com is a site owned by Alibaba which of course is a very reputed site. Actually I myself had been a fan of AliExpress because of the number of products (very good products, at least by description on the site). But I still stick to my view that AliExpress is not a genuine site, although it is owned by Alibaba (based on my findings on the web) just because of the number and type of complaints.
I have already said in one of my earlier comments (which you did not publish) that I certainly believe that no company or website can satisfy 100% of its customers. There will always be customers who are not satisfied with the quality or the product or the service rendered by the website. So there will always be some negative reviews for any website, I do agree to that. But on seeing the number of complaints against AliExpress and the nature of complaints (AliExpress does not even bother to reply to a customer if he/she raises a complaint against their suppliers on their website and proceeds to make payment to the seller), it is pretty much obvious that AliExpress.com is not genuine site. Their ESCROW service is proving to be a FRAUD.
Here again, I would like to say that I had sent you 8 links in which a large number of complaints against AliExpress had been made in a previous comment I made (again which you did not publish) and that again proves that AliExpress is not a genuine site. Why did Paypal part its way from AliExpress?? Can you answer me that question??
There are many other Chinese sites which also have some negative reviews (Lightinthebox.com, DX.com, Chinabuye.com, Chinavasion.com), which are less in compared to AliExpress, but I did not mention their names because I believe that some people will always be dissatisfied with their products or service but such a big platform like Alibaba or AliExpress have to be careful and sensitive to people’s complaints (they cannot afford to be careless or insensitive) because people’s money is involved in all those transactions.
I do agree that AliExpress has risen very fast (because of the number of products and because of Alibaba) but it will come down at double the speed if it does not mend its ways and proves that it is not a scammer site. For your knowledge, a serious business site does not overlook any of the complaints by the customer and always tries to mend its ways (which AliExpress is not trying).
Can you show me a review by you in which you have mentioned the imperfections of AliExpress.com before today’s date (as you claim)?? (despite having so many complaints against AliExpress on your website).
Contrary to your claim, I can also send you a list of positive reviews on a number of other Chinese websites (third party review websites). Some of these links are as follows (only from third party review website):
1. resellerratings.com/store/Light_In_The_Box
2. resellerratings.com/store/DealExtreme
3. resellerratings.com/store/DinoDirect
4. resellerratings.com/store/lightake
5. resellerratings.com/store/EverBuying_Dalee_Technology_Limited
These links are only from one site. There are many other third party review websites with both positive and negative reviews about these sites (but the positive reviews outnumber the negative reviews). So your claim that there are mostly negative reviews even about a good website on a third party review website is not true.
Randeep