this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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The only thing amazon had was a brand. They've sold it for short term profit and now it's just a shittier aliexpress. The question is, why not go for the real thing?
Shipping speed for me, Aliexpress is 11 days or less, Amazon Prime 2 days or less. I think its funny they’ve copied Fedex with their main routes being in-house and their last-mile being “independent” contractors (Fedex Ground / Amazon Flex), and now Fedex will copy them with their upcoming FDX platform, which I believe is supposed to be an upgrade to shoprunner that will continue to sell from other Vendors but more like how amazon and walmart do it, where its a footnote on the item details.
Yep.
If I can wait = AliExpress.
If I can’t wait=Amazon next day, then return when the AliExpress one arrives.
Whats your take on temu
It feels more iffy than AliExpress. I got a series of items from Remy that were technically the description but at the lowest quality possible to qualify. AliExpress refund system has been solid for me.
Butting in: Temu has been aggressively pursuing a market share, once it has reached a large audience the deals will be less good. It also enables various varieties of affiliate marketing which get a little scammy (you’ve probably had a Facebook friend or random TikTok aggressively push Temu) and the app harvests a shit ton of data from you.
AliExpress has been fairly consistent for years. AliBaba is what a lot of merchants in the US use to purchase and resell goods, AliExpress just feels like taking out a middleman.
Ultimately, it’s best to comparison shop. Amazon, Temu, Ali will all often have the same item up, just find the one that’s cheapest.
Depends who you buy from. I've had shipping take 2-3 weeks on some items since the sellers are just the same Chinese companies as Ali.
Honest question here...
I was always under the impression that AliExpress is worse than Amazon. Now, Amazon is not good, I know that, but I guess the narratives I was fed is that AliExpress is like Wish, and just terrible, counterfeit/knockoff products (Amazon on that fast track), excessive data capture, and I thought CCP (probably confusing with Temu).
Anyway, can you quick explain how AliExpress is a less shitty Amazon? I'll start doing some shopping there if that's the case.
Amazon has essentially become a drop shipping front for AliExpress. You're getting the exact same terrible, knockoff products, just marked up and stored in an Amazon warehouse so you get it in two days instead of two weeks. They're both shitty, but at least with AliExpress you aren't paying extra for the middleman to make a profit.
I mean it completely depends on what you’re buying. Don’t blame Amazon that your $15 wireless earbuds with no brand name feels cheap and gets hot.
I find myself half agreeing with this and half disagreeing.
Should we not hold Amazon accountable for not vetting what's on their store?
If I went in to a physical shop and bought a knife, then when I got home the handle fell off, is it not reasonable to be angry at the brand and the shop I bought it from?
Yeah, it's not their product, but they gave the product their approval in the form of carrying the item for sale.
If Amazon marketed themselves as an open marketplace, like eBay, I'd say fair enough. But that's not what they do, Amazon markets themselves as an online store with their own warehouses. They're more akin to an online supermarket.
I don't blame Amazon for the products being shit. I blame Amazon for not doing anything about the fact the shit product has 3000 5 star reviews that are word for word on hundreds of different products.
Wish is an AliExpress copycat.
If I have to go to different sites for my Glyceryl Monostearate, Dehydroacetic Acid, Sodium Lactate, Benzyl Alcohol, a bag of Japanese Candy, a Keyboard cable repair kit, thousands of live ladybugs, some new tiny 1/32 and 1/64 paintbrushes, and 500 pairs of dust free latex gloves then I might as well just not shop online at all.
This comment was joking btw, half that shit isn't even available on Amazon rn.
It's true though I've had orders where I bought a multimeter, soap, Szechuan pepper, and a bamboo shelf for the bath. That's at least three stores and more likely four.
It's the only advantage they have left, here in Germany Amazon has become worse and worse and worse with shipping. Unless the online store is set up in the boondonks or you live there next-day delivery is the norm, and pretty much all other shops dispatch packages on the same day as long as you order early enough, Amazon often takes days to dispatch, and if I want to use my close-by Hermes pickup they take weeks because apparently they don't like how much Hermes is charging them. And no I won't be paying for fucking prime to get a service level you get everywhere else as standard.
AliExpress, meanwhile, I mean it's hit and miss but if you're ordering something from out of a EU warehouse it arrives reasonably quickly, usually the next day after. If you're ordering directly from China all bets are off right now: The northern rail links via Russia are down, so is pretty much the red sea, what's left is the Horn of Africa or the TRACECA rail link. Also doing import yourself can be a bureaucratic nightmare possibly involving first figuring out where your local customs office is (it usually won't be local at all) if they retained the package.
You COULD go to five or six stores, or just one! ☝️
Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming when your options for consumer goods are one or two mega outlets selling shoddy cheap shit with no real competition.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.