Comment on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

• Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s more that AliExpress is all over the place, which is probably because manufacturing in China is itself all over the place (small and pretty much amateur-hour cottage factories doing plastic molded stuff or pretty simple electronics right next to much bigger professional companies designing their own smartphones and computers) plus there is very little in the way of established brands and without a brand to defend, manufacturers don’t really care if customers get a bad impression of whatever product name they’re using today for their, at best, badly made stuff.

  It also doesn’t help that in a lot of domains competition in China is mainly on price: the manufacturers might even know how to do a good product, but they have to use inferior parts and cut corners on their designs to stay competitive on price.

  Also the fraud prevention in AliExpress is pretty much non-existent and anti-fraud there is entirelly reactive, so in product listings fradulent claims that are hard for customers to validate just stay there forever (for example, almost all powerbank storage claims or solar power bank supply claims are complete total bollocks, insanelly so at times - I’ve seen listings for small powerbanks claiming more power storage than actual EV cars have).

  So for some things you can get really decent stuff at a good price - best place to buy switches or push-buttons for Electronics and as the above poster mentioned mini-PCs, to which I will also add Single Board Computers - whilst in other areas it’s a bit of a crap shoot if you’ll get something decently made or not - for example clothing - and in yet others the scams are more than the honest listings - such as external digital storage, solar power or power storage.

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  • FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’ve had the same experience you did but didn’t feel like writing it all out. Thanks !

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    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I get the impression that Amazon has become the same ever since it openned the store to the same kind of salesmen, at that’s for likelly the same reason.

      Then again I’ve been boycotting Amazon for a decade so I wouldn’t know for sure.

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• GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You’d be surprised, actually. You have to be careful, yes - the default option is that you get crap - but all of the high-quality cycling gear/running gear/variety consumer electronics I’ve scored is a testament to the possibility of getting great stuff.

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  • FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m familiar with it, I’ve ordered more than 100 items off aliexpress.

    And I feel like the modern amazon experience got worse and is closer to the intense searching required to find the good stuff at the right price from aliexpress.

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    • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I suppose I never actually had a good experience with Amazon to be able to compare against.

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      • FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        It was pretty good 10+ years ago I’d say, then it slowly got worse and worse

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