People on the Amazon hate meme train have a hard time understanding that you can both be a reputable brand retailer and a bazaar marketplace, which Amazon is, while Ali is only the latter.
You’re not going to get genuine power tools or batteries or brand home/car audio from Aliexpress for instance, but this is easily done on Amazon. You can verify serial numbers and generally inspect the original packaging. Yes, I have received fucked up WTF items (eg recently a hard drive that was not even packed and was in a wrinkled ESD bag directly in an envelope), but Amazons return/replacement has been flawless. I cannot say the same for Aliexpress - good luck if even your package is clearly lost but they think it’s in the hands of the courier so it’s your problem.
Most people’s Amazon complaints are with crappy 3rd party sellers. Well that is all you get with Ali and the dispute system is stacked against you there.
For cheap Chinese items I routinely compare Aliexpress to Amazon and buy on Ali frequently. But have found that Ali is not always significantly cheaper, and sometimes even more expensive when there are deals or coupons. Isolated horror stories aside, Amazon fulfillment and refund/return policies are light years better and more consumer friendly than Ali and if you think otherwise I doubt you use the two platforms frequently.
Louis did extensive testing, it is all well documented. Wrong fuse can burn your house, and insurance will not cover that! Calling it "blow hard" is misinformation!
Aliexpress sells genuine power tools, Chinese brands like "Deko" has official store there! It even sells cars!
Doing juggling with bar codes on Amazon is not for everyone. You are one click away from counterfeit, just change color, boom! order is not from official store, but some bum!
In his first video he is comparing Amazon Chinese crap connectors to Home Depot sold Gardner Bender connectors. This is the exact same crap you would get ordering off Aliexpress. The difference with Amazon is that you can buy the Gardner Bender connectors and Ali you certainly cannot.
In the second video he’s testing crap brand products (like Nilight, Kzper, Crocsee, WTF?) with inflated reviews, he isn’t uncovering any massive counterfeiting operation.
The strongest “downfall” argument you can make with his testing is that Amazon is becoming more like Aliexpress.
The big difference is that Amazon has greatly superior customer service and customer protections.
I actually overall like Louis’ presentation. And I’m wondering where the fuck you think he is endorsing Ali Express. That seems like the complete antithesis of what he is saying, because at the end he is in favor of more regulation. He laments that Amazon doesn’t police their marketplace and reviews better, which AliExpress doesn’t do at all.
I take back saying he is a blow hard. It sounds like you must be a shill.
> Aliexpress sells genuine power tools
You can also buy “Makita” and “Milwaukee” on Aliexpress, but none of them will be legitimate and Ali does nothing to prevent this, on the other hand Amazon is not willingly allowing the sale of counterfeits. Despite some high profile cases, counterfeits are just not as rampant on Amazon as some think.
The marketplace is a free for all, but it’s no better on Ali or Walmart.
Ships and sold by Amazon for major brand products works well enough.
Main point against amazon, it "polices" reviews by it censoring and deleting negative comments. Fuses he bought are on top of search results, not some obscure brands at bottom. It is still there after 6 months!
Aliexpress does not do such stuff, and technical parts are more likely to be upto specs.
> You can also buy “Makita” and “Milwaukee” on Aliexpress
On Aliexpress a search for “milwaukee power tools” the top 100s of results are for clear counterfeits ($50 for an high torque impact wrench is not real, dude), some “compatible” battery replacements (ie cheap crap that Rossman complains about) or some used tools from consolidators of questionable repute (a 90% rating on Ali is really bad).
Gosh man, I love Ali for what it is, but if you don’t know it’s a cess pit of counterfeiters with gamed search rankings and mostly fake reviews you are extremely naive.
> technical parts are more likely to be upto specs.
Bullshit. There’s considerable overlap between the two in the marketplace. You think the shitty suppliers are just limiting themselves to Amazon and avoiding Ali? Aliexpress has less oversight than Amazon. Why would the QC on Aliexpress be better?
Rossman’s offhand remark is a bit of hyperbole. It’s also a bit silly. He laments the lack of trusted brands on Amazon and the mass of crappy ones. But the trusted brands are still there, Amazon still carries tons of brand name products. It’s true their search prioritizes crappy things as the marketplace is overrun by shear volume, but this is no where near as bad as Ali. I don’t know why you or Rossman think Ali is somehow better about product quality, but you’re both full of shit on this point.
> Milwaukee also have official store on aliexpress.
If they do (and I doubt it, since everything you’ve said is detached from reality), it is not available in North America, so not very useful to me or the majority of Amazon’s customers.
Or do you actually believe the “Milwaukee Tool Store” selling $50 impact wrenches is official?
Moreover most of their products that are clear counterfeits (the shells look legit but they completely phone it in on the control pads) in customer photos have close to 5 star ratings. Yeah, no manipulation going on there.
> Or do you actually believe the “Milwaukee Tool Store” selling $50 impact wrenches is official
I guess not, does not seems like official store. I buy tools from aliexpress sometimes. Most are good. It is hard to get specialised stuff in EU.
People do buy real Milwaukee tools in China.
> Aliexpress has less oversight than Amazon. Why would the QC on Aliexpress be better?
This is the point! Value added by Amazon (oversight) has negative value. It gives false sense of security. It gass light people! People may think "it is like wallmart" and put fuse from amazon into their car or house!
> But the trusted brands are still there, Amazon still carries tons of brand name product
That is not the point! Amazon logistics is contaminated with fake sellers, unchecked returns etc... Their usability is bad, you change color and store changes to some Chinese seller!
You can not trust stuff bought from amazon. Maybe trick with checking serial numbers works for now, but it may stop anytime!
This stuff started way back in 2013, with fake climbing carabiners!
That's definitely true for random cheap things you're looking to buy. Unless you need it quickly, there is no reason to buy on it Amazon. You can often find the exact same item on Aliexpress for much cheaper. Shipping has gotten a lot faster from Aliexpress these days, too, though it's still on the order of 1.5+ weeks for most stuff.
The types of products I'm willing to buy on Amazon is quickly shrinking because you can't really go to Amazon for assurance that the product you are buying is genuine anymore, either.
I've gotten 2 counterfeit micro SD cards (confirmed counterfeit by contacting Sandisk) that were "New, Ships and Sold by Amazon.com" in the last few months. They had barcode stickers added to the back of the packaging which, from my Googling, turned out to be stickers Amazon places on returns which made what was going on pretty clear. Someone orders genuine sd cards then returns counterfeits, and Amazon just spoils their inventory by blindly accepting the returns and throwing them back in the inventory to be sold again.
Amazon has no place in their customer support maze to report this and if you try to leave a review saying you received counterfeits (which isn't even the right place to complain about this issue because it's a fulfillment issue, not a product issue, but they leave no other choice) they block your review then pester you with a chatbot asking you for more details about why you think it was counterfeit but limits your responses to multiple choice options that don't fit then gaslights you by saying the product couldn't possibly be counterfeit because Sandisk is a trusted partner (the same company that confirmed they were counterfeit).
> Amazon has no place in their customer support maze to report this and if you try to leave a review saying you received counterfeits
I don’t agree. If you receive a counterfeit you go to return item from the order screen, choose “Wrong item was sent” or “Inaccurate website description”, specify status of packaging and there is a required comments field where you can type “item is counterfeit”, you then proceed to continue a return or replacement option (which will be sent immediately).
As far as I am concerned that is “reporting it” and getting a remedy.
Online review systems are bad for many reasons, but a fulfillment issue is clearly stated as not the intention of the reviews and I don’t see a problem with that policy.
