AlibabaReviews 13,221

I am having packaging done. Alibaba's website makes it clear it's been to make the payment through their website to have Tradeassurance. I paid the seller through Alibaba using my credit card and the seller tells me they have not yet received my payment.

It has been five days since I sent payment and the manufacturer still hasn't received it. Now Alibaba is claiming it takes 3-7 days for the funds to be "verified."

Verified? I paid using a credit card - not a check! And at no time prior to or during the payment process was I told there would be a delay.

I've since dealt with a second company and sent them payment directly with Paypal with no problem - and I saved money because Alibaba didn't get their share of the sale.

I thought it would be the sellers/manufacturer's who would be the dishonest ones but it's actually Alibaba.

I had lost my money by trying to purchase from a seller on alibaba. After realizing that I've been robbed, I approached Alibaba customer support and anti-fraud center. No body helped me in that. They just made the lame excuse that seller was unregistered and we blocked that seller profile. But I found the same seller with another trade name robbing buyer on alibaba.
That was my first and LAST business deal with alibaba. I would never ever deal with or even recommend ALIBABA (AND 40 THIEVES- as an notorious legend is).

In July this year I was shopping there for the first time, so I was a bit worried that I would be scammed. Also, it is not possible to pay by a credit card but bank transfer to China is required.
I posted there a want ad and a chinese company which was selling the exact product as I wanted responded to me. I purchased the goods from them via Trade assurance. I had to transfer them 1500$ dollars deposit (covered by Trade Assurance) and 6500$ I paid to their bank account before the goods were shipped.
The chinese company sent me pictures of the goods before they were shipped. They dispatched the shipment by FedEx and I received it after 9days.
The goods were in excellent condition, exactly as described and I will buy from there again.

As everyone knows there is the new segway going on everywhere, the smart balance wheel, and i thought that i would buy one from Alibaba and that was my biggest mistake. I regret it. The scooter was meant to reach me in 3 days, it said that it was UK delivery but then after the guy contacted me on email instead of Alibaba's website and told me to western union £60, so I did, thinking its fine, that was the whole amount that was in the deal, later, there was another £30 for shipping to UK, then another £30 for Some import and export license, and then another £30 BECAUSE THEY SENT 3 SCOOTERS APPARently BY MISTAKE so we made a deal, £30 now and £70 after delivery. They sent me a tracking number with some website, Carg247ltd.com, I don't know whether to think the website is fake or real. As i have no clue. And after £150, in 2 weeks i still havent recieved my scooter and after every payment i get promises its the last payment but still nothing. And now he wants another £40, for the door to door fees for the delivery company, I emailed the company and asked if they will do cash on delivery as most companies do. But then i noticed that the person i was dealing with and the person on the official carg247 email, has the same way of talking and now i don't know what to do as he refuses to send the money back and he made me western union it to Nigeria. I am stuck in all ways. In £150 i probably would've gotten it from amazon. Worst SITE EVER AND DEALERS.

AliBaba.com is nothing but a hub for copyright and trademark infringement. See this link from their site? http://guide.alibaba.com/shop/art-of-jolie-e-bonnette-creatures-gotta-be-me-cute-monster-cartoon-art-mousepad-mp-*******-1_*******.html That is a product which I officially licensed my art for with another company. See that "get quotations" button there on the right? This is AliBaba setting you up with people who will agree to illegally make that product for you extremely cheaply in their Chinese sweatshops. They have ZERO permission from me or the company which makes that product to be doing this.

Seriously people, if you value the economies of your own countries and the rights of the copyright and trademark holders who live there, don't do any business with any site in the AliBaba Group. They are ALL hives for trade in illegally produced goods and are ripping off legitimate businesses all over the world.

No matter how much AliBaba's representatives say they "respect intellectual property", it's BS until they shut down that "guide" part of their site which allows Chinese sweatshops to give bids to illegally mass produce products they have no rights to. They try to talk the talk, but they most definitely do NOT walk the walk. Frankly, I find it amusing that all of a sudden this "Echo Q." person has appeared to try and make it look like AliBaba gives a damn about all of the thievery they are profiting from now that AliBaba is as 3 stars and AliExpress is at 2 stars. What a joke! If they really cared about fraud, they would be shutting these sellers and sections of their sites down completely. But I was recently reading an article and saw a spot on 60 Minutes about how China actually ENCOURAGES its citizens to steal intellectual property and trademarked items from US companies and individuals to further weaken our economy. So, big surprise that Ali Baba Group does nothing to stop this. They're probably getting bonuses from their government for it or something.

DO NOT DEAL WITH Yiwu Changyue Import & Export Co. Ltd (http://huishuo.en.alibaba.com/)
Warning to buyers:
After negotiating with this supplier for about 12 months, we had agreed that we would submit an order for 20,000 units.
I had received samples from this factory, named Yiwu Changyue Import & Export Co. Ltd (changyue-industry.com), with a price that had been agreed upon and confirmed several times.

We were ready to place an order after receiving final confirmation from our customer on the 22nd of October 2015. However, when going to finalise the order, the factory suddenly increased their prices by over 30%. We had literally sent all the quotes to our customers, they had confirmed the order and were to pay us for this order, and then when placing the order with the factory, they suddenly increased their prices.

No buyer should deal with a factory that would employ such appalling tactics when dealing with their customers. As a matter of principle, it is necessary that I make potential buyers aware of what has happened to ensure that they do not face the same problems.

We had agreed on a price, it was confirmed several times over a period of many months by the factory and then finally once we had an order confirmed the price had increased.

WARNING: DO NOT deal with this factory! I hope that this post will help to warn any future buyers.

The model of the watch I ordered was out of stock. They asked if I wanted to wait 5 days for the model to be in stock and I replied "yes." Then they sent me the WRONG model. I opened a dispute and finally they agreed to refund me after I sent the watch back.

According to the tracking, the postal service in China has been holding the watch in the post office for OVER 2 weeks, AFTER delivery was unsuccessful (due to nobody being present). I've written to them TWICE about going to the post office, checking that the watch has been SENT BACK, and to REFUND my credit card. HOWEVER, both of my messages fell on deaf ears; I got NO RESPONSE at all and my credit card STILL has not been refunded! What is this service?!

Their slogan is just the opposite. BUYER BEWARE!
Their dispute process protects the seller very well.
The buyer has to verify in detail what the seller is selling.
I had ordered XXL t-shirts and received XXS though they were labelled XXL.
Then to dispute I had to show I had verified with seller what the dimensions of size were.
WHAT THE xxxx!

10-9-15
Seller has since responded saying they will refund my money. I'm waiting to see if this comes off my credit card or not.
The dispute directions are not buyer friendly.

11-17-15
Seller refunded for 2 out of 3 shirts I purchased.
Alibaba was NO help.

I'm a web platform developer, owning several running companies online. I came across this site today, and after reading so many unsatisfactory comments, I've decided to write an honest review.

First of all, Alibaba is the world's largest b2b sourcing for china based products.

With regards to all the complaints against the company, 1 really essential thing is missing here. But the solution was all along there with Alibaba.

Fyi, Alibaba owns taobao.com, and so far the quality of goods being supplied by the vendors have been satisfactory. I know this first hand because my wife have been sourcing for goods day-in-day-out there.

I discovered after thoroughly going through the site components, and found out that there are there no components to enter reviews on a specific vendor. What is the factor that prevented them to do so? With that filter alone, you can entirely absolve the product specs filtration and vendor status filtration.

I compare this site with the taobao chinese platform, where in taobao.com, there have been diamond ratings, crown ratings, etc such to avoid such problem, all along their solution is there. You need like x amount of likes to get 1 icon, build 10 icon, you get to exchange 10 icon to 1 new icon on the next level.

Taobao had effectively employed a multi-level unique rating system that enable vendor rate based on end users opinion and ratings and experience, not because of their money paid to alibaba to get a one off payment to trade statuses.

While there may be cases of forgery where such ratings can be obtained by paying more, like what companies offering to sell facebook likes, this multi-layered rating is far more expensive to get full rating. It is much viable to force vendor to invest a lot so they would not tarnish their reputation goals. So it's a win-win situation for all, end user, alibaba, and vendor.

An extreme example is tmall.com, you need to hundreds of thousands in deposit to be able to start to vend in that site. Do you think the supplier would act otherwise to get bad ratings?

Since, custom tickets for complaints is both ineffective, tedious for end users AND it's an expensive solution. I hope they would employ such ratings in Alibaba that's fundamentally missing and would almost reduce most of the complaints from end users from all around the world.

I ordered for my goods which took forever to come and i was charged double the price she displays in Alibaba claiming that nobody posts the correct price. I let that slide because i liked what i saw. Little did i know that this woman was going to mess me up. She sent me PLASTIC BEDS which i didn't order for and claims that PLASTIC IS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN WOOD AND PLASTIC TOGETHER and charged me for the plastic and wooden bed. And now she has refused to communicate back to us claiming that she sent us something that is more expensive than what we ordered for. I know for a fact that plastic is cheaper than wood anywhere in the world. BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK!

As a kid I liked to watch Westerns. There was something about the adventure of going to unexplored lands where you never knew what would happen next. Alibaba is like that. I've found some of the most incredible deals on quantities of electronics that I could never have gotten in the US any other way. There are lots of dud suppliers but there are legit ones too. Just do as much homework as you can and understand there is always risk. Trade Assurance can also be helpful if you can find a supplier that qualifies.

I love on line shopping. I use Ebay on a regular basis and have been reasonably satisfied with them,. If a seller scams you they come to the rescue.

By contrast if I was asked to describe Alibaba I'd personally call it the wild West of e commerce. Theres no meaningful communication from either the seller or the so called customer reps on the site when there is a problem. I have a dispute under way and doubt very much I'll ever see my hard earned money again. My advice, stay away.

An update on my experience with Albaba. I was offered the option of a 20% refund or returning the goods for a full refund. Sounds good right? WRONG. Upon selecting the respond link in the email sent to me I was directed to a page with a picture of a lock telling me I could take no ACTION! So much for Alibaba's assurances! So I'm back at square one paying in full for an item that has a 50/50% chance of being counterfeit!

An update on my update. Managed to find a way of reaching the customer services rep. Took the 20% refund as I was not sure even if returned the goods the assurance would be honoured. Now the product has stopped working properly. Hardly a good outcome.

I have made a few orders on Alibaba now. My first order for a scooter did not work out at all (from Merlot Commerce and Dogebos Ltd). The item came in a crushed box and would not function. The seller would not replace any of the broken parts and offered the only recourse of shipping the unit back at my cost. Ridiculous.
Fortunately for me, I placed a small order first. I chose a different supplier for my next order, (Shenzen E-Fire Technology has been excellent so far) and I have placed several orders with them since.
I will continue purchasing through Alibaba. If you are going to use these folks, I recommend taking your time and ordering small first. Develop trust. China is going through a recession and some of their sellers are likely going out of business.

If you're really really careful Alibaba can be a tremendous resource for an American business who is looking for new suppliers and vendors in China. My company used to pay consultants and other middle men a lot of money to find us reliable folks in Asia. I still work with some of them but now Alibaba can help me do part of the work.