Miscellaneous Category > Personal Information and Personal Events

AliExpres, AliBaba Cheap DSLR Deals - Are they worth buying?

(1/1)

johnmanoahs:
Hi - I am a newbie in terms of DSLR photogrpahy. I was so keen to learn professional photography and the first thing I needed was a basic DSLR camera. With a little research, I found what I thought would suit me best, a Nikon D5100. I was in the process of saving some money (around 40K) for the camera when suddenly in one of the forums I read about the Pentax K-5 and was thoroughly impressed. But given its price and lack of after sales service in Bangalore, I pushed it to the back of my mind and thought to pursue the Pentax dream whenever it is obvious.

In the meantime I bumped into the aliexpress website and was startled to find DSLR cameras at such throw away prices like Nikon D3X for $500, D700 for $400 which appeared too good to be true. I tried my luck with Pentax K-5 and found a whole lot of deals right from $300 to $1300. Why would I go for a $1300 if I could find one for $300. I did not want to risk my money here but was encouraged when I read about the ESCROW feature in aliexpress. ESCROW means that the payment made by the buyer stays at a trusted middle level account and would be dispersed to the supplier only after the buyer confirms he has received the products in a satisfactory condition. If not, the money is refunded to the buyer. I somehow felt this is a great opportunity to try out for a Pentax K-5 using ESCROW. If I receive an authentic one, bingo...if not its worth an experience. May be I could be a guiding light to others in our society .

I found a great deal for Pentax K-5, for $420. The buyer appeared to be very authentic. He had a 100% feedback, 14.5% more than the default order complete rate (dont know what that means!) and surprisingly good English in the description. Another thing to note is that there has already been 12 buys and I was the 13th buyer which gave me more confidence that this buyer would be authentic. I paid the money through my VISA credit card which amounted to Rs.19,500. Within two days my order was updated with a shipping number (EE103604850CN) from EMS. The tracking details said that there is no information and would be available in 2-3 days. I was so impatient that I used to try for 5-6 times a day to see where my dream K-5 is currently at. Well, after 3 days it looked like there was no change in the tracking details and so was it after 5 days. I again hit google and found that the EMS China is know for being lazy and would take their own sweet time to update the tracking details. I somehow got the EMS call center no and called to verify my tracking no. Well, the gentleman on the phone line tried his best and confirmed that there has been no shipment done in this no.

I started feeling the heat and with no responses from the supplier to all my mails, I quickly resorted to file a complaint with AliExpress. When I opened a dispute, AliExpress by default gives you a period of 10 days for the buyer and supplier to negotiate and come to a consensus. In my case that wasn't possible since the supplier would not respond to me at all. 10 days passed by and with no negotiations whatsoever, I filed a case to refund my money. AliExpress again provides a period of 5 days for them to contact the supplier for a valid justification. If the supplier fails to provide a case to them, the money is refunded to the buyer. So after 15 days of filing a dispute my money was refunded and to my surprise, due to foreign exchange rates I was refunded Rs.20,500.

While there was nothing monetary to lose in this entire ordeal, I learnt some valuable lessons which I believe can be useful to all the readers of this post.

1. Most of the suppliers in AliExpress.com are fake. They allure buyers with cheap prices. Their victims are not "smart" people like me who use ESCROW or other safe means but those in a spark of insanity transfer money over wire. Among the 16 odd people who paid for the K-5 like I did, even if one had not used ESCROW, he won $420.

2. Fake DSLRs - The Chinese are know to fake anything under the sun. Do you know there is already an iPhone 5 available in China? It would've been very difficult to receive my money if the supplier had shipped a fake one. I feel lucky he did not ship anything.

3. Smuggled goods - A lot of these cameras are sometimes smuggled or what is commonly called "fallen off a truck". They are illegal goods and not worth owning one. If your shipment is caught in customs, it would be very difficult to get through.

4. Illegitimate assembly - Most of the famous brands have their manufacturing units in China. The masterminds swindle those parts and assemble items like the original without the brand name. You would see a lot of D700, D90s etc without the Nikon brand here. Though these may have genuine parts, they do not pass through the regular standard inspections and are not worth depending upon. The are not genuine as a product.

5. Misuse of employee discounts - Sometimes the companies provide good discounts for employees. These employees buy DSLR cameras at highly discounted rates and sell if off. These are genuine products but rarely sold in AliExpress. Thank your stars if you could find a supplier like that.

6. Leveraging Defect Percentage - Every company sets aside a particular percentage of products for defects either during manufacturing, during shipment etc. Lets say out of 10,000 pieces the company sets a defect percentage of 1, which means 100 pieces have the probability of having some defects. It is not necessary that 100 pieces should be defective at all. Whether or not, these 100 pieces are declared defective and sold to the gray market. Beware, actual defective pieces are also among the lot and if you are not lucky you may end up with one. Either ways, this too is illegal.

Well, all of the possibilities above seem to prove that it is a morality test to risk doing business in AliExpress because of huge amount of scams going on there. I'm not going to conclude by saying all of them are scamsters...there seems to be good suppliers with a Gold Badge, Audit Verified members for more than 3 years who are reliable. But is it worth purchasing a Pentax K-5 for $1200 from a Gold Supplier in China through AliExpress while Pentax Shopping provides K-5 at $1300? That is up to you to decide   8)

Attached is a snapshot of the order and the description. DO NOT BE DECEIVED.

Navigation

[0] Message Index