Aliexpress blocks access to vendor licenses

[xtinctionRebeller]

Aliexpress hides the business details that are needed for customers to see who they're actually dealing with. The only possible mechanism for identifying a merchant is the "business license" link:


Clicking it gives this:


Then sliding it to the right gives this broken mess:


I refreshed and slid that slider several times. Same error every time.

A business license is public information. So Aliexpress is standing in the way of information that the public is entitled to. Stores use aliases, so we can't rely on simply going straight to the licensing authority.

There is also a problem with Aliexpress not requiring a mobile ph# at the time of registration (rightly so), but then spontaneously out of the blue Aliexpress is locking accounts and demanding a mobile ph# to unlock it. I don't have a mobile phone, so supplying a pinger number from freephonenum.com is the only option. Apparently it's a widespread problem, because so many Aliexpress customers are doing this that Aliexpress is tracking the number of times a number is used, and blocking it:


Customers who experience this access denial *after* they buy something are hosed. At a minimum, I don't suggest using Aliexpress unless you have a mobile ph# and are willing to trust Aliexpress with it.

 

[levleon13]

are you buying medical equipment there or why the heck do you need their licenses .
been on Ali for ages, no issues.

 

[xtinctionRebeller]

The business license would likely give the official company name and a physical address. That information is useful for a variety of reasons. In the case at hand, the Aliexpress ad makes no warranty statement -- but that doesn't mean there is no warranty. If I could track down their web presence outside of Aliexpress there may be more product and warranty info published. The "Overview" tab in Aliexress is often completely blank.

The warranty statement is important if buying with a US credit card because many US credit cards double the manufacturers warranty. But that benefit is contingent on having a written warranty statement. If I still can't find a warranty statement online, having the vendor's physical address at least creates a fighting chance of requesting the warranty statement by mail in the event that something breaks in the window of time between the OEM warranty expiry and the CC extended warranty expiry.

Note as well that some manucturers (e.g. Tongsheng) don't even have a website of their own, which is a bit scary and makes getting ahold of the dealer a bit more important.

 

[levleon13]

no seriously, what on earth do you buy there?
you're wasting your energy on a pointless subject.
nobody buys anything that the warranty is that much important from aliexpress, thats all.

 

[MJSfoto1956]

You likely wouldn't learn anything anyway. A huge number of so-called "vendors" are nothing more than popup webpages that list products (with no inventory behind them) that they hope they can ship to you. Because there is no inventory, and because these "vendors" won't even try to see if the product you want is actually available -- until you make a purchase that is -- you are always taking a chance with them. Even "vendors" that have been "in business" for 2, 3, or even 4 years or more are playing this game. Worse, they will often post a fake shipping notice with a fake tracking number, even though they haven't done a thing other than take your money. Basically, if you get a legitimate tracking number then you will be fine. But if it says "tracking information not available" for more than just a few days I advise you to send a message to the vendor as to the real status of your order. Usually that wakes 'em up and more often than not a new tracking number suddenly appears with real tracking information (but even that can be faked). All in all, I've learned to play the game and I don't mind waiting for a good deal. Over the past 4 years I've purchased thousands of dollars from various AliExpress vendors and only had to open a dispute once. YMMV.

 

[xtinctionRebeller]

It's bizarre that you guys think a company's real name and registered address are not useful from a consumer protection standpoint.

You're also both missing the point about the warranty. It doesn't matter whether or not the merchant actually honors the warranty. Nor does it matter whether Aliexpress does anything to act on warranty non-compliance. It only matters that I have a warranty statement to show the bank. It's the bank who must honor the extended warranty. I don't know where levlion13 is from, but MJSfoto1956: you're in the US, so you might want to become familiar with the extended warranty that's likely included in some of your credit cards.

@MJSfoto1956 I'm not worried about non-delivery because I only use a payment method that ultimately secures against non-delivery and DoA delivery. I've never had a merchant use a fake tracking number to win a dispute, but such a move would only possibly work on a dispute with Aliexpress -- it would not work once the dispute escellates to the credit card company. And even if the cc company would go against me I could easily sue the bank and win a judgement in that situation (even if the merchant is in China, my bank is not).

Consumers in places like Europe don't get that kind of protection, so your point is well taken for consumers who lack a payment instrument with good protection.. but that's not my case. But in those other cases, e.g. consumer paying with a European credit card, it's actually even more important to be able to get ahold of info that can be used to vet the merchant.

 

[john61ct]

I don't know Chinese vendors that accept credit cards.

Very few take PayPal, most are either wire transfer only or maybe also AliPay.

Again, dude you're dreaming, the only vendors that might meet your wonderful expectations are likely ones that sell nothing worth buying.

In these markets, you play the odds cross your fingers. Shared intelligence and experience helps increase the odds, but there is no real security in this life, that is just an illusion.

or in your case a delusion.

 

[Sunder]

Aliexpress used to be trustworthy. I think when they were trying to break into western markets, they held their vendors to high standards. Now, they just don't care, and there are so many shifty businesses there that use multiple fronts and ditch the ones that get bad ratings. It's hard to show you something that has happened over time, but look for sellers of GTK Lithium Titanate cells as an example. All of the ads and photos of their factory are the same. If you keep watching them, you notice a trend:

1. The badly rated sellers vanish.
2. The "new" sellers have all been around 1-2 years, but have sold nothing in that time.

I believe they just create them in advance of time to give them "credibility", and when one store gets too negatively rated, they kill it off, and bring up an "old" store as the new front.

I've stopped buying anything from Aliexpress that I can get elsewhere for a higher price. For example, OSN Power sell the "same" 30-40Ah LTO cells for about 20% more than some of these shifty ones, but I met them in the early days of Aliexpress, they accepted Paypal, all their cells were quality controlled, and above rating, etc. You can even see they "bin" cells, to borrow a IC term. The same cell can be sold as a 30, 35, or 40Ah model, as well as occasional $5 "seconds" (that usually have problems like high internal resistance, etc) where as these dodgy sellers are selling all of theirs as 40Ah, probably without any testing.

I had not noticed Aliexpress had blocked access to public information listing, but in the early days, I used to google the address, to make sure they were a factory and not an office block of some lawyer doing a shelf company. Thanks for the heads up - doesn't change my approach, as I have recently been very cautious buying from Aliexpress, but it confirms my view that I'm not being overly cautious. Nothing more than a couple hundred bucks I can afford to lose, and not going for deals even when they seem cheap, if they are available from any other supplier. Indeed, sometimes I find things on Aliexpress, get the model number, and buy it from elsewhere that accepts paypal.

 

[john61ct]

GTK - any idea of their relation to Foxelion?

Came across them for LFP

 

[xtinctionRebeller]

Paypal themselves are crooks. So when people are saying "the good and trustworthy Aliexpress vendors accept Paypal" (a common sentiment), it does well to display the very poor standard of trust for Aliexpress. When the bar is so low that Paypal is seen as a feature not an anti-feature, it's obviously a dodgy place to do business.

 

[john61ct]

Once again your statements are very much disconnected from practical reality.

True I do not leave a **balance** stored in their system for long, but they are a payment / escrow system, with what is in effect a no-questions-asked, 100% money back guarantee system that is super-biased towards the customer and against the vendor.

I have run over $200k in recent years through PayPal, many thousands of transactions, and have yet to have **any** unsatisfactory experience with their infrastructure, policies or customer service interactions.

Well over a hundred refunds or other compensation, the few times it failed was my fault.

Works buying from anywhere in the world, including the 99% where credit cards have no buyer protection.

Only eBay has a better record afaic, and both of them are head and shoulders above Amazon's or Walmart's marketplace.

 

[john61ct]

very poor standard of trust for Aliexpress. When the bar is so low that Paypal is seen as a feature not an anti-feature, it's obviously a dodgy place to do business.

Welcome to the real world, 99% of better-value transactions are going to be with dodgy merchants.

Modern commerce does not require "trust" anymore.

Unless you limit yourself to local merchants with B&M facilities, fulltime employees with benefits, very high costs for regulatory compliance, and other artifacts of the rapidly disappearing and obsolete business practices.

In which case, there goes your value proposition, pay 5x the price and only maybe get more in return.

 

[xtinctionRebeller]

very poor standard of trust for Aliexpress. When the bar is so low that Paypal is seen as a feature not an anti-feature, it's obviously a dodgy place to do business.

Welcome to the real world, 99% of [strike]better-value[/strike] rock-bottom-cheapest transactions are going to be with dodgy merchants.

I corrected that for you. Value implies balance and you're nowhere near it with dodgy merchants.

Modern commerce does not require "trust" anymore.

This statement is absurdly contradictory with your other comments. When credit card is not accepted and the merchant has no domestic assets to go after, then of course trust is required. You've acknowledged this yourself in your 1st post: "In these markets, you play the odds cross your fingers."

I personally shop in a way that does not require trust, which means I don't shop at Aliexpress or rely on Paypal. If I want to gamble I prefer the casino.

Once again your statements are very much disconnected from practical reality.

True I do not leave a **balance** stored in their system for long, but they are a payment / escrow system, with what is in effect a no-questions-asked, 100% money back guarantee system that is super-biased towards the customer and against the vendor.

I have run over $200k in recent years through PayPal, many thousands of transactions, and have yet to have **any** unsatisfactory experience with their infrastructure, policies or customer service interactions.

Actually as someone putting 6 figures through Paypal, you are very much disconnected from the reality -- clueless of the UX of unimportant consumers doing an occasional 2 or 3 figure transaction. We have a very different experience with locked accounts, broken verifications, and lost money (which is not covered by national deposit insurance). Paypal has this reputation because it's not a bank and so it escapes banking regulations. Myself and countless others have been ripped off by Paypal.

One of Paypal's tricks is to exploit the KYC/AML regs. to go overboard in the checks. Paypal is very trigger-happy when the slightest perception of irregularity emerges. They've tuned the machine to trigger copious false positives and intrusively demand either excessive documentation or information that does not exist from legitimate customers who did nothing wrong. They make this demand with reckless disregard, because when someone is forced on hold for 30 min. and then forced to talk to someone in India who's reading from a script, they're pushed to the edge of their patience and many give up -- they just abandon their money because it's not worth it. Paypal is sitting on a lot of abanded but funded accounts as a consequence. They're profitting directly from that, and indirectly for the data they collect which is then sold to data brokers.

Banks very rarely pull the account locking scams that Paypal does. But when they do, consumers have a simple recourse: they file a deposit insurance claim. When the government is then being pushed to compensate a consumer, obviously they put pressure on the bank and the locked account problem miraculously goes away. The same recourse is a non-starter for Paypal customers b/c PP funds are not covered.

 

[john61ct]

I have no idea how you perceive any contradiction between

"In these markets, you play the odds cross your fingers" and

"Modern commerce does not require "trust" anymore."

Neither are value judgment s, even if I thought such trends were "bad" that is irrelevant here.

Both are simply statements of reality, to which I am suggesting you should try to adapt, sooner rather than later.

Your "trust" in government institutions to be capable of providing consumers with protection is amusingly naive - they only do that for the rich and powerful anymore, in fact aiding and abetting the most heinous monopolistic and predatory practices of the top 0.X%.

I understand you **want** a world where trust can work, but that will not bring it into being, it's just wishful thinking and tilting at windmills.

Again there are remnant of that world, so some countries you can still (mostly) believe infant formula is free of poisons, but the very fast-moving trends are in the opposite direction, and of course subversive technologies like electronics, alternative energy and efficient personal transportation are at the bleeding edge.

Bottom line reality is, to save money you need to risk it, if you want security you need to pay a lot more or the safest path, do without completely, take up gardening or embroidery as a hobby instead.

_______
WRT PayPal, it was obvious since the beginning you got their protection and avoided their downsides by playing the game, feeding their AI what it wants to see, and never leaving a balance.

These days CashApp is the new game, the "battle (learning curves)" between their AI vs crowdsourced collective human intelligence still in the early stages.

Those idiots using it to play the market or with bitcoin, or thinking you can stay anonymous, or use it as a free business platform without properly setting that up with Square, get shut down right quick, while I've been using it as a Venmo alternative with friends and family for years.

Good luck screaming to the nanny state for stuff at that level, total waste of time - unless you actually enjoy such drama as it appears you do.

And yes nothing gets you shut down faster than using Tor, even a legit VPN service counts against you, again welcome to the real world, fight it and your horizon narrows, a lot.

______
Here is the future of modern trade, not just globally but coming soon to your town, and a lot sooner than you think.

Hydra's Dealers Have Turned Buying Drugs into a Treasure Hunt
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/g5x3zj/hydra-russia-drug-cartel-dark-web

 

[xtinctionRebeller]

I have no idea how you perceive any contradiction between

"In these markets, you play the odds cross your fingers" and

"Modern commerce does not require "trust" anymore."

Neither are value judgment s

This is a red herring. They don't need to be value judgements to be contradictory.

Both are simply statements of reality, to which I am suggesting you should try to adapt, sooner rather than later.

The first statement is realistic, while the 2nd statement is delusional. In the absence of consumer protection trust is obviously required.

Your "trust" in government institutions to be capable of providing consumers with protection is amusingly naive - they only do that for the rich and powerful anymore, in fact aiding and abetting the most heinous monopolistic and predatory practices of the top 0.X%.

I'm afraid my first-hand experience shows your amusement to be blissful ignorance. The government has protected me in every consumer lawsuit I've filed. The evidence is as plain and clear as the money I recovered.

I've never had to file a deposit insurance claim against a bank. When the gov. probes a bank in response to a deposit insurance claim, the gov is protecting its own interest (as it doesn't want to pay the claim). Regardless of whether the bank grants the consumer acct access or whether the gov. pays on the claim, the consumer wins either way.

I understand you **want** a world where trust can work,

Then you've completely misunderstood my thesis. You're the only one advocating a trust-dependency here. The thread exists precisely because I'm only interested in markets that do not require trust.

Bottom line reality is, to save money you need to risk it,

Only if you don't know what you're doing, and only to the extent that you need to save money (which is not my goal). I'm happy to save money within markets that do not require trust. I'm not interested in using markets that need trust in order to maximise penny pinching. Knock yourself out if that's your thing.

if you want security you need to pay a lot more or the safest path, do without completely, take up gardening or embroidery as a hobby instead.

Or just learn how to procure without requiring trust. Perhaps that's harder where you are, but it's trivial where I am.

WRT PayPal, it was obvious since the beginning you got their protection and avoided their downsides by playing the game, feeding their AI what it wants to see, and never leaving a balance.

You missed the part where I said Paypal ripped me off directly.

And yes nothing gets you shut down faster than using Tor, even a legit VPN service counts against you, again welcome to the real world, fight it and your horizon narrows, a lot.

It depends on the merchant. Merchants block for different reasons:

• Tor IP
• disposable email address
• having a non-residential IP address
• having a billing address that differs from shipping address
• having an IP address that appears geographically distant from residence or billing address
• they serve a CAPTCHA for acct reg (I refuse to solve them when pushed by a supplier, and often they're broken anyway)

The technique for avoiding some of those issues triggers others, and you don't necessarily place an order from the billing or delivery address. I've circumvented the /IP looks far from home/ problem by using a Tor exit node close to the shipping address, so Tor can actually help avoid denial of service in some cases while causing DoS in other cases.

Of course, the merchants who get most of my business are the ones who don't block me at all, as I've become less willing to dance for them.

 

[Stealth_Chopper]

Likely ?

"The business license would likely give the official company name and a physical address."

Try to look for such documentation in the US, and check the owner credentials for something to do next.
Business 'entities ' maybe in each State where that business Exists.

"Likely" this:
a business person who is a re-seller ' entity ' name ( shielding personal liability )
and a post office box number ?

A Warranty? ( Which is just an extra scrap or rework cost for high $$ items like jet engines )
Covering what?
Production line defects from a low cost manufacturer?

 

[MJSfoto1956]

...I believe they just create them in advance of time to give them "credibility", and when one store gets too negatively rated, they kill it off, and bring up an "old" store as the new front...

I've been purchasing things from AliExpress for ten years. There are several subtle scams that can bite anyone. One that I believe the FBI should look into: ad-hoc AliExpress seller ships things via an intermediary. Always with the cheapest shipping with no tracking stateside. The intermediary provides a "tracking code" to the ad-hoc seller who then posts (legitimately?) that the item has shipped. The tracking magically ends when it arrives in either NYC or LA. From then on everything goes blank. The item never arrives. Weeks and months go by and your queries go unanswered. You open a dispute with AliExpress and fortunately AliExpress compensates you. All is well -- or is it?

Here's what I think is going on: the intermediary has an entire shipping container and fills it to the brim with cheap goods bound stateside. The container arrives in either LA or NYC. It is picked up by an associate of the intermediary and a random number of items that have no stateside tracking get side-tracked to local US Chinese vendors who then sell the item on eBay or Amazon listing the item as USA shipper. Even if they get stiffed by AliExpress they get all their money. And if AliExpress doesn't challenge them then they double dip. Adding randomness to the process makes it difficult to point any fingers.

The only lesson I can give is this: only use shipping with tracking, preferably to your door. And if the item stops showing shipping progress when it arrives at the destination country, open a dispute ASAP. You "might" get the intermediary to pull your package out of the line and get it after all. However, if you wait too long, then you will be screwed.

 

[john61ct]

Yes even if you get refunded, wasting months on an important project is a real cost

 

[xtinctionRebeller]

"The business license would likely give the official company name and a physical address."

Try to look for such documentation in the US, and check the owner credentials for something to do next.
Business 'entities ' maybe in each State where that business Exists.

Every US state has an attorney general who keeps records of consumer complaints. The merchant need not be in the state, or even in the US. This is one of the reasons it's useful to know the registered realname of a company. If a company named "Precision Bicycle Components Inc." goes by "Bob's Bike Parts" on Aliexpress along with half a dozen other aliases on other markets, that division hinders the record keeping of the attorney general. At best you would have to search the AG's records for every alias. This ultimately masks complaints from prospective customers trying to decide whether they should trust a supplier.

"Likely" this:
a business person who is a re-seller ' entity ' name ( shielding personal liability )
and a post office box number ?

A Warranty? ( Which is just an extra scrap or rework cost for high $$ items like jet engines )
Covering what?
Production line defects from a low cost manufacturer?

I'm having trouble parsing these sentences. You might want to rephrase your questions to have predicates.

 

[Stealth_Chopper]

I have no question,
you must telephone Ali Express