I would never buy furniture from Alibaba or Amazon. I’ve bought a couple pieces of basic furniture from Amazon, including a bed frame from a third party seller that was missing essential pieces for which I was given a 50% discount as compensation. But at least if you buy from Amazon directly, the product is more likely to meet regulations. I have no faith that any furniture ordered from Alibaba meets any of the standards (CSPC, California fire code) it might claim.
I have two anxieties about Ali that are keeping me from making a decision though:
- You're essentially trusting foreign eBay sellers to get customs right. If they screw up, it's a ding against your Global Entry account. You're making yourself liable for the competence of strangers, and I don't know the system well enough to know if you can trust their ratings.
- I've yet to hear anything about how the tariffs are working out in practice. I don't wanna hit buy and find out everything is way more complicated/expensive than it was last month.
I should probably just buy from Amazon, but it's hard to commit to paying full price when you know everyone else is selling it for way less (but more risk of something shady happening).