Aliexppress - China online

I brought a Luxe tent from Equip Outdoors last year and the service was excellent: I live in Christchurch and had my tent 3 days after ordering it. They are very competitive for price as well, I looked at buying the tent online from China but it was only $30 more to buy within New Zealand + I like to support these small local distributors.

Luxe Speedup currently on special at Equip for $149.90. Same thing from AliExpress...$308.25USD. Think I'll go with Equip...!

Ive bought stuff off Equip Outdoors via Trademe and found them very good. As a NZ retailer they are bound by the Fair Tradeing Act and if you have a problem they are only a phone call away or even if you email them the emails dont go via google translate. also the goods dont take a month to arrive. In the case of the Luxe tent quoted in the other post there is little difference in price so it would be a better prospect to buy there. Ive also bought many times off Alliexpress. Most trades have gone well and one trade that did go off the rails was sorted by Alliexpress before I even knew there was a problem. I have had to discuss a few things with traders and in the whole the outcomes have been good but you always get the feeling that google has converted the text on the way to and from each other. That is the joy of dealing with overseas. Also you do have to keep an eye out for deals that are too good to be true. There is a reason I didnt offer this MSR tent at $90US delivered http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Msr-dragontail-2-person-tent-double-outdoor-four-seasons-tent/1830195748.html Is it really MSR? I dont know and am not going to find out.

Ali Babas were selling what was purported to be NZ fur seal omega 3 oil. I contacted both them and DoC as it's illegal to kill NZ sea mammals. They stopped advertising their fake oil after that! Unfortunately they got the idea I wanted to buy seal oil for a long while after that and were sending me ads for Harp seal oil etc, sigh...

Think of Alibaba the same as your city market. You are not really dealing with the market you are dealing with the stall holder. Only difference is it is not face to face which can complicate things. On the other side though the feedback score helps decide if its a good trader or not. The trader with the Luxe tent I posted has no feedback which should be a red flag. On rechecking that tent has been withdrawn and the trader is no longer selling anything so maybe they are not a good trader. The other 2 links may be ok they may not. I didnt check and even in the market you have to decide whether or not to buy. You see all the tricks there so be wary. Prices to good to be so can be fakes but if they are you can report to Alibaba and the trader gets banned and you get a refund. I dont know how long a ban lasts, Probably just untill they register with a new email. You get cheap deals with horrendous freight. ie a tent might sell at 5 traders 3 will have at 150 with free shipping 1 will have for 100 plus 50 shipping and the last will have for 20 and 300 shipping. As for the emails someone has decided I want to buy slewing bearings whatever they are and led street lights. In theory Alibaba will take action against traders that are spamming but how does one tie a random email back to a trader.Chances are its not the registered email. I started this by posting a couple of links to a couple of cheap tents. I didnt expect it to turn into a big discussion like this. I have no involvement beyond being a customer of Aliexpress.

Meh ! Just a discussion. There's been others before about on-line purchasing. This just seems to be the main portal into the Chinese market.

My last comment was meant to be an apology for causing this discussion. On a side note though I recieved an item today that I might bulk buy and on sell on trademe. It wont appeal to many trampers though so no further comment here

No need to apologise. I thought it was something raised that was worth chipping-in on. Didn't want to hijack the original thread. I think it's a pretty good example of how well Matthew has set up the 'branching' function ?. There's always the delete button if you have second thoughts about something you've posted. I've used that a couple of times. Cheers !.

Delete is ok until someone responds then its better to leave as is. Better to apologise if necessary and wear the egg on face broken glass in the knees etc than delete the post and make everything that follows make not a lot of sense.