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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

For everyday items I agree but for niche (including high-end) items Amazon is often hard to beat - the competition is either local specialty stores that are not really searchable online, may be set up to cater to professionals/businesses rather than the general public, and/or might not even exist at all anymore; or other online retailers that don't necessarily have the cheap and fast logistics that Amazon does.

That’s funny, my trust profile is exactly the opposite — I’ll use Amazon in a heartbeat for kitty litter, but if I’m ordering a camera lens/PC part/nicer clothing, I’m ordering from the manufacturer/a specialty site.

I think for me, the more everyday a purchase is, the less I care about if the purchase goes wrong in some small way?

I do see where you’re coming from, though - I’ve many times gone through the process of:

“I wonder if amazon has any <niche item>?”

...

“Oh, Amazon has literally dozens of different <niche item>s, cool”

Same here. These days Amazon has been demoted as my store for everyday items I don't really care about. I enjoy the free next day delivery and the fact that I don't need to register at another shop, but for items I care about (in my case it's often bike gear, audio equipment, clothing, hardware) I will always prefer the countless shops specialized in that particular product category.

In Germany they're mostly just as quick to deliver and sane return policies are required by federal/european law. And most importantly their inventory is way better - organized, curated, categorized and genuine.

That's interesting. Do you generally not check if the item is sold by Amazon.com itself?

For me, I still prefer Amazon if it is a high value item, I check the seller though. I prefer to have my contact information/payment information stored by a company I can trust to keep it safe and in as few places as possible.

I got my Nikon 200-500mm tele lens off Amazon, and it was sold by Amazon. It was also, by its serial number, a gray-market item manufactured for the Chinese market, and not covered by warranty when sold in the US. But you can't find that out until you have it in your hands.

It worked perfectly as I got it, and the model had been on the market past the early peak of the bathtub curve, so I kept it. Still works perfectly today, too. But it taught me a valuable lesson about how far Amazon can be trusted on high-ticket items.

These days the only camera gear I get from Amazon is trivial niche stuff like eyepiece diopters that aren't worth anyone's trouble to gray-market or counterfeit. For everything else, there's my local camera store, or B&H or Adorama.

I've stopped using Amazon because almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself. I've been forced to use Amazon gift cards but I immediately told my friend afterwards that I spent 15% more than if I had bought it from an online retailer with a better reputation than Amazon.

> almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself

What do you base that statement on? I order lots of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it is sold by Amazon and not a third-party. Sometimes I do have to pick Amazon from the list of alternate sellers.

There's certainly a profile of relatively high end, readily faked, mass-market products that I would never buy on Amazon. Apple iPhone chargers are the classic example, but most name-brand fashion qualifies too.

Best Buy has a warehouse near me that will allow you to do order pickup directly from them. Vast warehouse outside Spanaway in Washington. "No retail services are available here" but they will bring appliances etc to the loading dock for you (no idea whether you could use it for smaller items but most likely).

Yeah Although those stores also suffer from the problem of wading through products to find the one you need, They’re better than newegg and much better than Walmart or amazon.

I bought two pairs of sunglasses from Amazon recently. Different brands, different pictures, different price. Ended up with two pairs of the exact same glasses...

true. becoming more and more leery of knock off items on amazon.