Anyone have 1st hand experience with alibaba website?

If you're not concerned about fit/quality/delivery time it can be a good resource.

Really.

You get what you pay for.

My deskmate ordered 4 wedding dresses. Total of about $400. She sold three as they were too small (one dress was nearly a foot too short) and not the right colours (the colour thing was a particular bugbear as there had been weeks of emails about those). Made back about $150 on those. Had the 4th one altered to be one of her wedding dresses (Chinese wedding, 3 dresses for the service, 2 more for the receptions). Not the greatest quality but they were only needed for about an hour each.

We've ordered gear for belly dance purposes. Again, sizing was weird and the one time we didn't pay for premium shipping it took 6 weeks as it literally came by ship. We got sort of what we thought we'd ordered. Turns out their pix showed what the things would like with extra pieces and assembled. So we bought the other pieces here and built the buggery things. We would have done better to order through a company in NYS. Higher up-front cost but 1 week regular delivery and no extra parts or assembly required.

Thanks ehbeth.

I'm frankly leary about dealing with China, but there are some U.S. suppliers on the site.

I have a local source for some products I sell on ebay, and I'm looking to expand my inventory.

I noticied someone was selling a product in lots similar to something I sell. It was a brand name, and I see others selling quite a bit of it on ebay. It's a product I'm fairly knowledgeable about.


I went ahead and registered with them, but with an email address I use exclusively for business. I was unclear about the number of units in the lot, so I contacted the vendor. I guess I'll wait to see what response I get.

Yeah re the quality. Oh yeah, I agree. I met a guy who uses them as a source, and does pretty well. We had a long interesting conversation about how sometimes what he gets is not what was expected, and he basically has to just write that off. Or for instance, he finds an amazing deal of a very specific item, and he'll get it, knowing it might take months or more than a year to get a buyer. In one case he knew once it sold he'd net about $4000. So, it was worth letting it sit in the corner of the dedicated inventroy room at his house. Unfortunately, this isn't someone I'll probably ever talk to again.

I feel like I've had at least 3 different lives selling on ebay. I moved from one type product to the next, even handmade silly little items that sold pretty well to a certain population. For me it's really fun. Every time I switch focus, I learn something new.

Wow re the wedding dresses. She's brave for attempting that. That sounds like a nightmare to me.

Did you order your dance stuff from alibaba or aliexpress?

We ordered through alibaba. It was best given that we needed multiples, not best given the results.

When I registered, it asked me at one point to confirm I was a "registered business", whatever that means.

I just said yes.

Were you asked something like that?
I'm finding navigating their email system a little confusing. They do offer a chat window in that, so maybe I'll use that tomorrow.

Yeah, I wouldn't order anything like a fashion item like clothes. That's where you could get anything.

I'd have to make sure that if I was ordering let's say 500 tins of Sucrets, that's the brand product I'd be getting. I feel better right now only trying to deal with U.S. suppliers, what with using a common lanuage and all.

I'm not saying I'm going to order anything yet, it's interesting learning about it, and yours and others experience.

this is actually quite funny

came up on a FB group recently - how things from Alibaba (other companies too but they're most famous) are not quite what they seem to be. people were posting the funniest photos. stuff like pens that seem to be marked Sharpie til you look at them very closely and then they said Sleckye or something like that (and were nothing like Sharpie quality) - the general view is that you shouldn't expect to get anything name brand from those sites

Wow.
You'd have to be pretty oblivious not to notice it says for instance Sleckye instead of Sharpie.

Not saying I don't believe you, but what I'm looking at is absolutely identical to a product that's selling well on ebay. It's listed as a Trade Assurance vendor, is a Gold supplier, the supply type is listed as OBM (original brand manufacturer) and offers a free sample of its product. I'd order a sample first to see if it's the real product.


Would alibaba have grown so big, and been in business so long, if all the vendors were only selling knock offs that would basically be ripping buyers off?

I am looking right now at what is supposed to pass at a Sharpie marker, but you'd have to be asleep at the wheel to not see it says Shariuce.

Sure, it's definately caveat emptor. That's why I'm focusing in on U.S. sellers. Plus I'm not even sure I want to make any purchases at all. I'll wait to see if this vendor responds to me.

Yeah, 99% of the work involved in selling on ebay is finding a product people will want to repeatedly buy, and finding a good supply source.

Not ready to discount alibabab just yet.

I'm curious as to how well communications went with you and the vendor. When you mentioned before multiple emails back and forth about 4 wedding dresses, frankly that would have been a red flag. I get occassional questions, and most of the time it's answered with one email exchange. Without exception, when a potential buyer took multiple emails to figure something out, it always ended badly for me. I've literally had maybe 3 or 4 returns in 4 or 5 years, and they were always for some assinine reason. I'd never agrue, or even ask a question. It was like "here, take your money back, keep the product, God bless." I'm sure the opposite is true for trying to deal with shady vendors.

You are right in that you get what you pay for. I have in mind a fair amount of what I'd be willing to pay to get this particular product. If it much less I'd think something was wrong. I'd never expect to find a cheap wedding dress, anywhere.

Heh, off topic kinda, but a mini rant. This is about the Only negative review I ever received. I always have it very clear in a listing to please contact me directly with any issues or questions, and I'll make it right. I've actually met some really nice people that way. One day I looked, and I got a bad review from someone complaining the material of the products wasn't, I don't know some particular metal, when it said clear as day what the material was in my listing. Even worse, this wasn't even the main product I was selling. I was selling piecemeal some parts I realized I didn't need, and was just selling them to recoup my initial investment. It was like a $2 item. I immediately refunded her money, just asking she delete the negative review. She never did. Ebay really doesn't or can't enforce having someone delete a review. So annoyingly, I had to look at a really annoying review for 6 month, because a person bought something for $2 and didn't like it that it wasn't made out of $20 material.

I was on another forum the other day, and someone mentioned how they bought something on ebay, and a few days later a box arrived from Amazon (I've had this happen to me also) The ebay seller apparantly dropped shipped via Amazon. Another person on the forum said "Well, I certainly hope you gave them a bad review!"

Why? The person got the product he wanted, at a fair price, and quickly. There wasn't anything unethical about the transaction. But in her mind, this woman though it was terrible that whoever the ebay seller was, wasn't telling the world they could go to xyz company and get the same price.

my deskmate thought it was a great sign. the emails were photos of sleeves/fabrics etc. this is the sleeve, is it how you wanted it? this is the colour of the fabric, is it what you asked for? etc etc. well, that dress was the right colour with the right sleeve but a foot too short. sometimes you don't realize what you need to communicate.

The Sharpie thing slayed me - so many people have been caught with it - apparently those fakes are in nearly every flea market in North America as people try to offload them.

the Sharpie font seems to make it really easy to fake as I've seen so many different words used in place of Sharpie which people don't pick up on because the flowy font looks right til the pen doesn't work right and they take a serious look at it.

All I'm sayin' is if I was buying that in bulk, especially with the intent to resell, I'd not be fooled by a different word in the same font.

Back when I first started selling, before I had much of a plan, I would buy decent used handbags. I got the idea from shewolf who had picked herself up a computer case that looked brandy new and confirmed to be one that was worth at least $600. She got it for $20. I did a lot of research and learned a lot of the signs that showed a high end bag was a knock off.

I won't say I was never fooled, but I knew the small details to look for.

I can't help it if someone buys a bunch of stuff that if examined before purchase would have shown it to be fake. I can be careful myself so I don't make the same mistake. I guess I could listen all day to stories about how someone thought something was the real thing, and had to later try to practically give them away. There's no shortage of foolish people, but I can do my best not to be one of them.

My big question was about the ease of dealing with the vendors that use alibaba. Also ease of payment, timeliness of delivery, etc.

The company I emailed with a question did respond to me, and I found out that the per unit price was more than I wanted to spend to make a fair profit. So, I'll keep my eyes open.

Well, she was pretty much wrong about that.

I have bought a number of male sexual devices from alibaba. All were as I expected. One estim device was broken. A couple of emails and I had a replacement that worked.

If you do not like waiting for the boat you can request air mail--you will have to pay, however.

so many !