The dark side of AliExpress: how do Russian buyers cheat Chinese sellers?
The online store denied reports of massive blocking of Russian accounts, allegedly for trying to deceive Chinese sellers. The company clarified that such cases are rare. However, they are.
"How to cheat a seller on AliExpress?" - it is enough to drive this query into the search bar, and you can find out dozens of ways. Most of them, of course, violate the Criminal Code. According to Elena from Moscow, her friend tried it just out of interest - and it turned out:
I have an acquaintance, I will not mention his name. He somehow just decided to check whether a store like AliExpress could be deceived, and he ordered some product, in my opinion, a garland, and everything is fine, the product came in proper quality, he received it in the mail, but wrote to the seller that the goods didn’t come and he didn’t know what to do, demanded money back, and the seller apologized and returned them. The only thing that the seller checked by the track code was whether the goods had arrived, but the acquaintance made a scandal that he did not know anything, showed that the parcel had arrived, but the goods were not in it.
Got the full amount?
Yes.
Cheap goods are often sent by the Chinese without a tracking number to save money. And some cunning buyers use it, comments the Internet start-up Andrey Marchukov:
Andrey Marchukov
internet startup
“The problem is based on the imperfection of Russian Post: parcels are divided into parcels that can be tracked and that cannot be tracked - these are parcels with specific track numbers. The user makes a purchase. As a rule, these are goods with a low value, up to $ 5, in one order there can be several pieces of a certain product. The buyer receives the parcel, then the game of trust goes on, when the user opens a dispute on the store's website, claiming that he allegedly did not receive the parcel. "
AliExpress often takes the side of the buyer, but keeps track of whether he has too many such disputes. There are no mass blocking of users, only a few, says the PR director of Tmall and AliExpress Anton Panteleev.
Anton Panteleev
PR director of Tmall and AliExpress
“AliExpress and Tmall have an automatic fraud detection system. In order to get under it, you need to try very hard. For example, to make a couple of dozen orders and most of them to be canceled or to demand a refund for some reason, without really explaining what actually happened. "
Although there are a lot more stories on the Internet about how sellers from AliExpress do not cheat. There are several groups on VKontakte where users share stories of how they were blocked when there was no talk of fraud. The creator of one of these groups, Alexei, tells the most memorable story for him:
Alexei
the creator of the VKontakte group about AliExpress
“The man bought a phone. He noted that he needed a Euro adapter for our sockets. It comes to him under an English socket - an adapter with three powerful legs. He begins to write to the seller. The seller agrees that yes, they sent the wrong thing, and offers to send an adapter. This rather massive construction is obtained in contrast to the European adapter. The buyer does not agree and asks him to send him a normal adapter. The seller understands that he will not get off with a dollar adapter, he will have to send the original adapter, which costs not a dollar, but 10-12 dollars, dramatically changes tactics and complains to AliExpress that they are allegedly extorting something from him, and the buyer immediately block. After that, he can no longer do anything. "
Russia is the largest market for AliExpress, and AliExpress is the largest online store in Russia, and the issue of trust is important. At least, the advice on Russian sites on how to deceive Chinese sellers is accompanied by a remark: "It's not good to deceive, the Chinese are hardworking people, they get money just as hard as it is for us, so have a conscience."