I have placed two orders with Aliexpress recently and both times, the retailer has messaged me saying shipping costs have gone up and they need me to pay extra before they ship the items. I realise they have a problem with lockdowns in China but I would have thought they would revise their shipping costs when the total cost is calculated.
One company wanted an extra $38 NZD, which then changed to USD, before they ship and want me to pay using Paypal, also are reluctant to give me an invoice before extra payment. I am getting a little worried about the transaction.
Is anyone else experiencing this recently?
AliExpress extra shipping
Happydays on 15/05/2022 - 11:36
Comments
I am purchasing Quartz clock mechanisms x 100 pcs, for a school project.
I have always told them "cancel the order or send the product, you choose"
They always send because what they are doing is against aliexpress tos (or whatever it's called)
Never pay the amount is my recommendation
^this +100
Agree.
This is just being greedy. I've never had them ask for more but if they did giving them the option to send or cancel would be the easiest.
Shipping has most definitely gone up for everything but should be easy enough to amend the website prior to your purchase, not after.
The big issue I think is that AliExpress doesn't calculate shipping correctly especially if you're buying in bulk, as the size of the parcel gets unusually big. Most people buy only 1-10 items of the same product. Ask the seller about the shipping first if you're buying more than 20 items.
For example if I buy two identical items in a listing I get one shipping fee, occasionally scaled up to make up for the increased parcel volume. If I buy two different items (e.g. same item in 2 different colours) in the same listing I get charged double the shipping fee, which is often more.
I've experienced that twice, but the variance to pay is minor. First time I paid what they asked for, second time I've completely forgot to respond to them, and they still sent out the product even though I didn't pay for the extra shipping.
If it was anything but a hoax they would simply amend their shipping on their store front and not troll people asking them to pay more. If someone came out to you while you were filling up your car at the petrol station and asked you to pay an extra few dollars outside the transaction itself I am sure everyone would be wtf and walk away.
Probably a new tactic to make more money, no harm asking, if people pay up, they make more money, if they don't, they will just send the items like mentioned above.
Any transaction outside the platform is dangerous, don't do it.
Because wages are so low in China it’s hard to make bread and butter for the locals maybe they wanted a Christmas bonus…..
Also someone told me that standard post is free for the sellers but I think things are starting to change been a communist country….and the rules change every five minutes…. The owner of AliExpress made smart comment about the government and all his extra concussions were removed and was ordered to pay 10 million donation to the government…. And his other company’s were audited by the government for his wrongdoing….As above, if this happens to me, I just reply and say they can honour the deal we struck.
My perspective is that, if I found it cheaper or better elsewhere, I would not cancel the contract we had already agreed, so why should they.
This has happened to me about half of the times I ordered from aliexpress in the last 2 years. I think I paid the extra cost once or twice, about $1 USD each time. But then I saw they continued to advertise the item for the same original shipping cost, so it didn't look like shipping cost had just increased unexpectedly since the day before.
After that, I refused to pay, they asked me to cancel the order because "buyer wanted to cancel". I refused, asking them to cancel. Then a few days later I received "shipment dispatched" notification, then a few days later tracking showed "delivered", but I didn't receive anything, and I expected that shipping would have taken a few weeks, not a few days. I disputed, and they refunded. This has happened several times with different sellers. So far I've never received anything when I refused to pay the extra shipping.
I believe this is their way of getting around penalties imposed by the platform for non fulfillment of customer orders
Makes sense - it would be an economically rational, if ethical dubious, response to the system as it is setup.
That happened to me before, I refuse to pay extra and make a complaint to AliExpress. After a few days the status become dispatched and I end up didn't get the item while status showed delivered. I lodge a disputed to AliExpress and the dispute result was item have been delivered so no refund, wasting heaps of my time and money. Since then I never buy from AliExpress again.
Read this post at reddit:
Scam #010 Extra fee (We need more money)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Aliexpress/comments/hlk157/common_s…Thanks Wildeny - Perhaps best to just cancel and move on in the future!
What's their review/rating like? I haven't come across this before and I buy stuff from Aliexpress almost every other week. Granted, the only sellers I buy from have at least 94% positive feedback or above.
I always sort by the number of orders and choose sellers among the top. I don't really check ratings because somehow they all have a lot of stars, and I can't be bothered to check if the reviews sound genuine. I've given up on ali. Now I'd only use it to buy tapes for label maker.
Refund. I had this situation before but $38 is pretty insane, what are you buying?
Use Aliexpress Standard Shipping if possible as AFAIK they don't charge extra.