Has anybody bought films from an Alibaba trader?

[Iridium]

I was looking around for cheap 120 films and I found in the Alibaba.com trading platform a couple of sellers from Hong – Kong offering Lucky and Shangai GP3 in good logical prices (double price on Ebay).

I know that there are a lot of scammers in Alibaba and especially from China and I have read a lot about protecting yourself from cheaters and several cases. These suppliers are gold members, they offer Paypal as a way of payment and have provided me with all of their business details. Moreover, I have asked for references (waiting for them) and I haven’t found any negative comment around.

However, before going on I wanna assure that the suppliers are at most ok and they want only to do business.

Therefore, I would like to ask if anybody in the forum has an experience in Alibaba and of course any thoughts are welcome!

 

[polyglot]

I've spent a total of $10 on alibaba (a laser pointer). It's a cheap piece of crap as expected, but they did at least send it to me. Payment was paypal and AB did escrow, i.e. the vendor apparently only gets paid when you indicate goods received. No idea if that's the norm on AB though.

 

[Peter Simpson]

Tried Alibaba for business

It was a total waste of time. And generated lots of unnecessary email traffic only peripherally related to my original request (I'm hesitant to refer to it as "spam", but there was enough of it that I had to filter it to a separate email folder). Direct communication with representatives of companies which may have been able to meet my need were seriously hampered by the language barrier and misunderstandings related to terminology. At the end of the process, I wasn't able to find any suppliers who understood or could meet my need for a fairly common electrical item.

 

[Iridium]

I've spent a total of $10 on alibaba (a laser pointer). It's a cheap piece of crap as expected, but they did at least send it to me. Payment was paypal and AB did escrow, i.e. the vendor apparently only gets paid when you indicate goods received. No idea if that's the norm on AB though.

AB escrow, you mean Alibaba Escrow? How much was the extra cost for Escrow?

 

[polyglot]

no cost. I just got an email after a few weeks saying "please leave feedback so the vendor can be paid".

 

[Iridium]

I see that there is the service Aliexpress provided by Alibaba with Escrow buyer protection for free, as polyglot has noticed. I'm still searching more information about the process and the supplier and I will decide finally if I am gonna risk it or not.