Everything from Aliexpress/AliBaba, Walmart and Amazon is complete, generic, crap. You can't have it both ways....if you want cheap/economical/quick/mass produced, you have to settle for crap. I wish the Japanese and Germans manufactured higher quality stuff as they once used to. I miss attention to detail, pride and honor in work, quality all around, well thought out design and planning,
Our family lives on Amazon and Walmart. If Amazon or Walmart operate like aliexpress, we would've died. So no, not all stores are like aliexpress. Aliexpress is just awful! It might be due to individual merchants on there who are just scums but BABA needs to manage them better with better supplier surveillance programs and better customer support. 15-day return period from the receipt of the product is a joke.
I know others order from it and don't have issues. You have to be vigilant for quality because it's literally a free market where anything legal can be sold, no guarantees on quality or origin. I regularly order from an Alibaba subsidiary and all the experiences when dealing directly with China have been positive thus far. Better prices and very fast delivery.
You need to share which sites you use to directly with China. So far my experience with aliexpress has been nothing but horrible. Their delivery speed is horrible. One month at least and you are lucky that you receive it. All those very fast delivery that I heard about buying from China, so far I have never experienced it. And like I said, when it's already delivered, either they or the shipper doesn't even update the shipping status on purpose so you don't know to pick it up and you miss the 15-day return window. Amazon is one-day delivery and I don't even have Amazon Prime. I order it one day and literally the next day, it's at my doorstep. And when it's not delivered, no matter how long ago, you get your money refunded. And the shortest return window on amazon is 30 days after delivery with many allowing you to return after 60 days. And many don't even require you to return the item and they just refund you the money. Walmart's return window is 90 days. Seriously Amazon is the best. Wasn't too happy with them shutting down the phone service during covid but so far i am really happy with it. BABA has a lot of work to do if they want to compete with Amazon or Walmart.
We think ourselves rugged capitalists, but we can't live without our government protections, the 100% guarantee, full refunds, recourse lawsuits and all. And I say this in defense of this revolution that I time beginning in the late 1970s, and which ushered a consumerist explosion that didn't reach Europe until 20 years later and is still practically unknown in China. America built a legal protection framework that transferred the responsibility of a transaction onto the seller, not the buyer. Revolutionary. Buyers no longer need to do much diligence or need any expertise before buying anything, because all can be returned for full refund. China, which only very recently discovered consumerism, hasn't yet gone through that transformation, despite occasional words on documents. Consumer protection is much more than that, starting with an efficient and trustworthy legal system. In China you take all the risks when you buy anything; Due diligence and expertise is on you and if you get caught buying crap, you're the fool. I'm sure Chinese consumers would love our system of protection and they should get there some day, but they're not yet at that stage of sophistication. In the meantime, we have 2 worlds transacting via an internet marketplace platform that is trying to bridge the huge gaps... Can't be easy!
Consumer protection is both ways. It's there to protect the consumers but the onus is also on the consumer to stake legitimate claims on really faulty products and/or substandard services and not to abuse the system for selfish personal gains that damage the interest of the suppliers and other consumers in the future, i.e. you have to be honest before people can compensate you when you have been legitimately harmed by dishonest suppliers. And then in China everything goes into one step further and becomes a political issue. https://www.reuters.com/world/china...ire-china-over-no-return-policies-2021-12-02/ At the end of the day in China, it's not about consumer protection, it's about making money. They just want to drive Canada Goose out to have the winter apparel market to themselves to make more money. This is the problem with China. Everybody wants to make money but nobody knows that to make money sustainably, you need to make money in good faith and not with fraud but nobody cares. Everybody just wants money now, to show off in front of their relatives and friends now. And when they can't achieve that, they get the government involved. It's not easy to do the right thing, that is for sure. But it's even harder when your heart is not in the right place.
That Reuters article shows how much political manipulation affects businesses in China, particularly foreign businesses. The fabrication may not come from the higher spheres of government, but there are so many layers of regional and local regulators that can effectively shut businesses that it's a nightmare for foreigners to venture in China. Also, it's so easy to create a made up controversy for the sole purpose to shut down a successful operation or to pay for protection. I know from having seen it unfold and engulf a friend of mine who went to China, started a retail business and became very successful in Shanghai over a 10 years period. But his success became a beep on the local government radar. He found himself embroiled in controversy and would have been hauled to jail had he been in China at the time. Ultimately he realized his only viable solution was to sell all of his businesses, exchange his RMB on the black market for $ and €, all at steep discount, and leave everything behind, in less than 3 months. While he still made a ton of money and is living comfortably in the south of France, he had hoped to remain in Shanghai and continue to develop his businesses there.
China is about to implode. You should get down on one knee and suck off your deity for being lucky enough not to put down a mortgage on a fake home.
Thoughts about the video. I don't like the comparison with the US real estate dev market. Some aspects of Chinese developers strats are similar to Europe or Southeast Asian countries, making the US real estate market more unique than China's. For example, mortgages in Japan are multi generational;. Selling properties on plan is common in Europe; No interest loans on primary property is also common there. Etc.. However, I can agree with his and others' macro analysis that China is in big trouble, particularly if you couple over development with falling population, expect to shrink nearly 50% by 2040. The CCP has enough resources to bail out everyone, both developers and consumers, but nothing will matter if these buildings remain empty once completed. Demolition businesses will have to remove hundreds if not thousands of empty towers over the coming years. The consequences of this incoming collapse are of concern to the rest of the world only because Xi and the CCPs decision making process is unpredictable. Will this push Xi to provoke a war with Taiwan, or not? Will the situation provoke a Tiananmen like revolt and how will the CCP respond? The decoupling with China is a mistake in my opinion because it removes economic reasons for not going to war with one another over Taiwan. But the decision has been made by the US, first with Trump and now with Biden. We're on the verge of a very uncertain future.
It reflects exactly how everything is with China. It's never based on "mutual benefits" for all parties involved; no it's "all benefits" to China or you pack your bags. As soon as they see you are making money, you either spill your secret sauce to them or you leave especially if they see you are competing with ventures that are backed by local government. You might think it's the local or regional governments that are doing the "oppression" but really everything is coming from the highest order. China can make all the money they want off all the countries in the world but if you ever want to make some money off China with something successful that you have built, you either give it up to the CCP to have it owned by the CCP or you pack your bags. The Disney resort in Shanghai, owned by Disney, a completely foreign business that originated in United States, only gets a 49% stake with the CCP having a 51% stake. That was the condition for it to be opened in China. Yeah it's making money; the revenue that it made in the first month surpassed the revenue that it made in Europe for the entire year (imo Disney opening a resort in Europe is one of its worst business decision ever considering all the fabricated castles in the resort have all their originals in Europe right there so why would people spend money to visit the fake castles when they can visit the real ones just 5 kilometers away) but it just sold its business to the CCP. It gave up its own business just to make money. Only Americans, supposedly the best businesspeople in the world would make this mistake. I am just curious how much or what has Elon Musk given up to be able to conduct business in China, if China would never let you make money without giving up something significant?