New Review!! Aliexpress.com

Well, I got everything I ordered, but the last 3 items were extremely slow in getting here.

 The big disappointment was I ordered 2 ea. 40 m QRP transmitter kits and they were out of stock.
 Why do companies advertise something, then not have it available? Lazy?

Anyway, I do give the site 5 stars all in all.

I too have ordered a tiny cube video projector, works fine, and a thumb-drive receiver all band 4Mhz to 2 Gigahertz. approx. no shipping problems.

I have only seen 1 instance of someone getting took by a Chinese merchant.

So far, I have not been charged a duty on anything. Even if there was one, for the cheap items I have bought, I doubt it would be much.

I have bought China through ebay with no issue.

I have looked through the Alibaba site, (not Ali-Express, I think) and found every item imaginable. At the time I was looking for small output parallel coil winder, the NZ-2, that is, a winder with traverse. I found many vendors. As well as U.S. and Canadian vendors for the same China product. Problem for me is to find out if the winder will have a duty if it comes into the U.S. It is a good deal even with shipping from China. but, duty?

I would also like to ask questions such as additional gear sets to alter traverse speed to do universal winding.

So, until I can clear answers the winder is just a dream...

Chas

Ok, so I have taken a gamble and ordered a BUNCH of parts from Aliexpress.com
Now it appears to be a Chinese version of Amazon to some extent. You can find almost
anything on the site.

Basically, it appears to be a brokerage type setup. You enter what you are looking for, and peruse the results.
 So far, I have received 3 of the 39 items I ordered. One arrived within 3 business days!!!
 The rest are coming by China Air post. Many are free shipping. Like 98% of what I ordered.

The 3 items I received are in good condition and shipped in moisture resistant envelopes.
 I received a really nice SMT tester for resistance, capacitance, ohms, etc., and a signal generator kit.
  The tester has instructions pretty well understandable in English language, while the signal generator only has a schematic. Thankfully, they use English characters for the parts values. Inconvienent- yes. Not insurmountable though.

So far, I rate what I received as 5 Stars for service, shipping, and quality.

(The 3rd item was for a friend. A wig for her Halloween costume. About 1/3-1/4 the price she would pay here for it.)

I have a substantial amount of SMT parts, voltage regulators, transistors and diodes yet to arrive. Shipping can take from 5 days to 60+.
If you are not in a hurry, this place is great.
 (Now on mylar capacitors for the old radios, you definately can get them for a lot less from Sal or Just Radios. I did a price comparison.) Electrolytics- well I am not seeing any of the name brands I typically use, so am holding off on orders for now. They do have 85 & 105C rated 'lytics.

Note: Pay careful attention to SHIPPING costs!!! Some of the sellers charge a massive amount for shipping. Way too much, IMHO.

Also pay very close attention to what you are buying, and quantity vs price. I have seen as many as 6 of the EXACT same item offered by different sellers, and the prices ranging from killer deal to I can buy a used car for that much, Literally!
 (Yes, my lemonade is $100.00 a glass, but all I have to do is sell one glass... :twisted: )

So its Caveat Emptor. Look at ratings and satisfaction percentages.

 Typically, I try to stay with companies with a 97+ % rating, and prefer 98-99+ %, even if its literally a few cents more.
Look at shipping times and compare also. I found some places were higher figuring in the shipping cost, over the places with free shipping, but the item cost a bit more initially.

 One nice thing is you can see how many orders were placed with that company for the item you want, and how many total orders the company got. (I felt pretty secure in ordering from companies with orders for the item in excess of 100 plus. Some had even sold over 1000 of the item!)

 They take major credit cards also. As a brokerage, you (Or at least I did,) spent 20-30+ hours just looking for goodies on the site.

 Tools, automotive stuff, test equipment, parts, hardware, etc. Clothing- well no. Sizes differ so much between mfg. and countries.Tube sockets in abundance as well as plate/grid caps., Prices are high for some, IMHO.

 I did order some medical supplies, as they were the same as I normally use, but a lot cheaper. Labware is higher for Borosilicate beakers and retorts I found though . Shipping was the killer figured in.  :(They did have a nicer selection than Amazon in some areas though, from what I looked at.

 I did find some left hand drill bits, micro drill bits, and some 1MM and up micro, micro screws for my glasses.

 One thing I could not find at a reasonable price was solder tag strips. They did have some of the audiofool targeted ones for greatly unreasonable prices.

Last comment on this post for now: Try different wording for what you are looking for, and different names for the same item. Their search engine is quite good, but does not always respond to our common U.S. English names we call items.
Hey- its the whole world, guys! We are not the center of it. Not every one speaks/ understands English, especially Ideomatic U.S. English.