In the days of old, China was referred to as the Yellow Peril. The reasons had a lot to do with Chairman Mao and the Communist take over of China but we'll gloss over that.
A few months ago I discovered a new website where I could get the goodies I need for my bus and other projects. I'd heard of it a few times but never really paid it much heed. A couple of months ago I made two test purchases. One was battery holders and the other was batteries. Those were for a project that was shelved for the moment. They arrived though and they looked good though I did buy the wrong kind of battery holder.
Confidence having risen in Aliexpress I decided to get a few little extras and made 6 more purchases. As before, alarm bells must have rung at the bank. I had to assure them it really was me making the transaction. That should, it turned out, have been a great big warning klaxon for me too. Before when the bank blocked a transaction and then queried it, I'd find there was something amiss and would not proceed with the transaction.
On the order were two items of clothing, a 20W solar panel, some old-fashioned can openers, a bluetooth module for my charge controller and a battery charger (that also charges the batteries I'd ordered before).
Out of that lot, one item of clothing didn't arrive and nor did the can openers. The other item of clothing might as well have been made for a doll - it was that small. Definitely not adult sized even though I'd ordered super duper extra large just in case. The charge controller bluetooth module came with a weird connector that I can't fit into my charge controller. It might or might not work and I might or might not be able to find an adapter for that. The solar panel arrived though and I've already written about that.
This is where it all gets very interesting. I contacted the seller who denied point blank that it was a 10W panel and claimed it was 20W. Thus I went to aliexpress to file for a refund - just like one does with eBay. They wanted a video so I did a video of my testing the controller under load using a watt meter and showing clearly that it produced 11 watts whereas a rigid panel placed in the same location got 20.7 watts. The seller then insisted on my showing the results using a multimeter while in full knowledge of the fact that a multimeter cannot measure watts but rather just amps used and volts produced.
A few hours after the latest bunch of communications this email arrived...
Now doesn't that look like I won and should click "accept" on the webpage? Not one bit of it. That is Aliexpress being deceptive.
The seller had most definitely not accepted my proposal but the Aliexpress proposal. Add to that it's very hard to make their system work in any meaningful way and you can see which way this is going to proceed. I'm not allowed to add extra messages. I'm only allowed to add extra videos or photos.
So the next step is to wait for this thing to fizzle so I get the rejection and then just go to the bank and issue a chargeback. This whole thing could have been handled so much better by Aliexpress. The only thing that this does is to tell me that Aliexpress is dangerous, dishonest, deceitful and untrustworthy.
If there's one thing my readers take home from this, it should be never to use Alieexpress. Even the meth head on the street corner relieving passers by of their wallets at gunpoint is more honest than Aliexpress!
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