With AliExpress, my orders never feel like a negotiation. I put stuff in the cart, eventually push the "buy this stuff" button, give them money, and stuff eventually shows up -- just as with other e-commerce sites for decades.

Sometimes it's slower (months), and sometimes it's stupid-fast (a few days), but outside of things like Chinese New Year the sellers generally seem to be very prompt at handling the orders and getting things into the delivery stream.

I've come to expect most things to show up in a couple of weeks (at least here in the States).

I'm not doing anything particularly weird, I don't think. My order history consists of almost entirely of small electronics (sometimes components, sometimes populated PCBs) and 3D printer parts, from dozens of different sellers.

Just be aware, returns are essentially not possible. It's prohibitively expensive to send the item back to China.

While it is certainly true that shipping from the US to China is expensive, it is my understanding that returns for many kinds of items are free these days, using a shipping label generated by AliExpress.

(How they handle that on their end is really not something that I think I need to worry about.)

they will generally refund you if you are unhappy

That sounds more like Alibaba, where it operates like a B2B type transaction. In my experience, just talk to them, sure it might take more time but you can usually get a good price if you’re buying higher quantities.

Pick the ones that give a delivery deadline (5/7 days). No problems at all (at least from UK), always arrives ahead of schedule.

Never experienced that on AliExpress over the last decade.

Nowadays it just feels like Amazon without the middlemen and slightly slower shipping. I usually receive my stuff within a week (central europe).