Hacker News Reader

Comment by teej | Hacker News Reader

> if you are foolish enough to pay markup on items that you could order yourself directly from AliExpress that's your own problem

How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress?

View on HN

>How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress?

I think that's probably a good question most of the time. On this site (vincerewears.com), though, it's pretty obvious.

First, the t-shirt is priced at $99, with no notion of brand or why you might pay $100 for a t-shirt. Next, it has this warning on the product page: "CLOTHING ARE ASIAN SIZE. KINDLY CHOOSE 1-2 SIZE BIGGER FROM YOUR US MEASUREMENT."

And this on shipping policy: "In regards to shipping, we are still offering free worldwide shipping to nearly all countries, however there will be delays. Our usual delivery time is 15-40 business days, however please allow up to 60 business days for delivery."

So, 60 business days is, ugh 12 weeks? 3 months? Heh.

My record is 6+ months last year. Thermal labels don't hold up well to weathering and offgassing plastic contents. Good on my local postal service for making out the address anyway and getting it to me.

For me, it took almost as long to get a 980 when they were still new. It got shipped through Australia. I live in Austria.

Which is one of the MANY reasons I mostly use "Austria, Europe" in conversations nowadays.

I had the opposite experience last year - a book shipped from Dallas to Australia through Los Angeles and Austria (19 November to 25 February). Maybe I could have specified my address as "Australia, Southern Hemisphere".

https://twitter.com/elahieh/status/1364818600486338560

At least it isn't as bad as slovenia and slovakia

http://www.slovak-republic.org/slovenia/#politicians

Weirdly enough the longest shipping times I have in central Europe are everything related to the US. We ship everywhere basically within at max 2 weeks. Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, South Africa, no problem. We receive cheaply shipped packages from China, India or Singapore within on average 3 weeks.

But we had letter sized priority shipments to the US that took 3 months, on average about 3-5 weeks at times!! Shipments from the US that took about as long too.

No idea what happened in the beginning with Corona. But from my POV it seems the postal system is broken over there.

EU<->North America airspace was basically closed. Took a while to make-up the cargo space of cancelled passenger flights going back-and-forth.

Didn't help that people bought more and more online and would order inter-continentally if they had to (I know I did!).

I understand that. However everywhere else it took maybe a week more and only for the first few months.

Does that really explain why the US is still having these problems? My guess is that the system is overwhelmed either way. Flights from and to China also were massively less, yet the worst delay we had with china was like 1 week. And today it is on average a week less than before Corona, because most postal systems were actually able to grow and better themselfs in that time.

It took me 18 months to receive a camera for an embedded device I'm building. I had ordered multiple last January and just wrote off one that never arrived. That one finally arrived about a week ago - I was shocked and delighted.

Sometimes the exact same thing is sold on AliExpress under a different brand. The IG brand is just a label on a mass-produced product but they to offer it as "artisanal" or "hand-made" to get a markup.

Reminds me of back in the day when everything was mail order, “please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery”. Now if it takes longer than 2 days, we riot xD

>How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress?

Google Lens/image Search on an image or screenshot is often pretty good for this. Whether that's reasonable for the average consumer I don't know.

No serious seller has a 3-6 weeks delivery time to Europe. Except they sit in the US In which case they should have shorter shipping to the US at least.

That seems like a business opportunity! Find identical products on AliExpress/Alibaba/TaoBao etc.

They can spend time discovering the product and then price-shopping to find that AliExpress has the best deal, or they can pay the premium of the dropshipper to skip all that and just get the thing they want right now.

>just get the thing they want right now.

This particular site (vincerewears.com) has guidance that usual shipping times are 15 to 40 business days, but to expect 60 business days (3 months).

Dropshipping implies not keeping stock and just ordering somewhere else on your behalf. Re-sellers that keep stock are just called importers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com