If anyone is in the market for cheap (not necessarily nasty) Chinese gear, Alibaba's AliExpress global shopping site has a sale on from 8:00AM UK time until 8:00AM tomorrow.
I have just done some shopping on the company's local (Chinese language) site, and picked up a new GHB laptop bag, Swiss Army-style penknife, rain gear, LED torch and some bulk food preps for the princely sum of around 40 pounds.
I can't guarantee that what is available is the best quality, however many of the sellers are also on eBay, so know the deal with overseas buyers. While they don't allow use of Paypal (apparently due to being ebay's rival), they do support Visa, Mastercard and a bunch of other major payment options.
If you're interested, why not take a look:
http://www.aliexpress.com
thanks Jace, have had some good gear from China and HK over the years, not sure about this one though, I like paypal as I am covered if anything goes wrong.
The good thing about the Alibaba sites is that they hold your money in escrow and don't give it to the supplier until you've received the goods and signed off on them as being OK. From what I've heard, the shipping time can be quite long for some areas, although I think the UK and US are fine.
I use aliexpress all the time & have made a good little side business buying & selling on items.
Things to be aware of:-
• Import vat. If it's valued at over £15, you have to pay 20% vat on the full price including p&p.
• Make sure you select the free shipping option as some items the cost is low but shipping price is stupidly high.
• Make sure it is in fact free shipping. Despite displaying as free shipping, some items add expensive shipping costs on anyway. You always see this before committing but be aware.
• Postage times vary from 3 days via DHL to upto 60 days via china post. Average delivery time is 3-4 weeks though.
• Refunds are generally only available if you send the item back to china. I've had it a few times where it was going to cost more to post back to china than it was to buy the item, and naturally the return postage costs aren't refunded. Either way I lost out due to no fault of my own.
I would say 9 times out of 10, the transactions are perfect. It's just the 1 out of 10 can be costly depending on what you ordered. With regards to quality overall, since everything is made in china anyway these days, it's comparable (in most instances) to what you'd buy from shops in the UK.
Also with regards to the 24hr sale Jace mentioned, a lot of suppliers conveniently increased their prices over the last week in order to offer "discount". Kind of like tesco & asda do here :-)
My top tips. Never buy from a seller with less than 100 feedback. Never buy from a seller who has been established less than 6 months (check this via feedback). Never buy an item from ANY seller where nobody else has left feedback previously for the item being bought. Be careful because the low prices soon add up. Over the past year, I'd say I've spent well over £2k on there, but that is as a trader buying stock rather than for personal use.
I've given up on Chinese stuff as the last few things I've bought were either rubbish or failed very quickly and theres no afterservice...been waiting on a refund for nearly 6 months now.
when I say Chinese I mean traders as it's difficult finding stuff that isn't made there
The way I see it is, you get what you pay for. If you look to buy something for £10 on there that would normally cost £100 here then it's most likely junk. Look to pay roughly 50% of what it'd cost in the shops here. That way (most times) you get a good item & still save as you're basically cutting out the middle men. Or in my case, I'm becoming the middle man.