Buying ebike via Alibaba

[Pat321]

I had a very bad experience via Alibaba:
I ordered a sample ebike via Alibaba (with the intention to order a bigger amount of those bikes to set up a rental company).
· Juin/2019: Payment of cost e-bike : 1517 USD
· Sept 2019: Payment of custom clearance and transport : 449 USD.
· dec 2019: Request for refund of 2020 USD since the ebike never arrived
Till today, 400 days after ordering, no bike nor refund received.
Diamand Industrial asked me to arrange the deal outside Alibaba, since the payments via Alibaba would be to slow or complicated.
The Company: Diamond Industrial, 198 Siping Rd, Hongkou, District Shangai. Contact: John Chang. This is a so called Gold Supplier and should be more reliable.
Any body else bad experiences with them ?

 

[john61ct]

No but any vendor requesting bypassing of the hosting platform is a **big** red flag.

Requesting refund and filing a claim with the hosting platform and payment processor must happen in a very short time, 60-90 days after the payment date might be too late to get satisfaction.

Ignore the seller's please to delay the process.

Best IMO only to deal with vendors willing to accept PayPal or credit card with strong customer protection policies.

Even if that means paying a higher price.

 

[MadRhino]

Never bypass the Alibaba platform with any seller.
Never let the buyer protection delay expire.
Always pay with a credit card that has online purchase protection.

Those are the rules everybody must stick to, when buying on Alibaba or Aliexpress.

If you want to do business in China, out of Alibaba platform, you need to hire an agent and a broker. Then, I strongly suggest that you buy enough goods to fill a shipping container, and have it fully insured.

 

[markz]

$2k usd gone, you should have known better. How much research did you do into the alibaba seller, I bet there was no info on them at all from customers of theirs in any forum anywhere. I wouldnt trust their reviews on their alibaba homepage. Lets see what you could have done with say $2400usd, lets slap on a security safety premium for payment. I'd surely pay that for purchase and be 95% guaranteed not to be ripped off. You could almost just walk into your local bicycle store and buy a Townie electric for that kind of money, and surely they'd give you a discount on bulk purchase to start ebike rental company.

 

[Pat321]

Then, I strongly suggest that you buy enough goods to fill a shipping container, and have it fully insured.

That was the intention... the first was a sample...

 

[Pat321]

Ignore the seller's please to delay the process.

That's something they did very well. Up to today, they are still replying to my mails. Don't understand why... they have my money...

 

[biphaeboh]

Your problem was not doing business via Alibaba.
Your problem was trying to circumvent Alibaba.

Use caution when dealing directly with Chinese vendors.

It is only going to get worse.

 

[MadRhino]

Ignore the seller's please to delay the process.

That's something they did very well. Up to today, they are still replying to my mails. Don't understand why... they have my money...

As long as they maintain contact, they can hope to have more of your money. Eventually you will receive the sample bike, if they believe that they have a chance to pull more cash out of you.

Alibaba is regulating them. They have a contract with a Chinese company that is able to force them to respect the terms that they had signed. When you do business directly with a Chinese manufacturer/supplier, you need an agent in China who knows how to secure transactions and contract terms in the country.