Ali Express in USA

There is a dispute process just like any other e-commerce website. Basically, you are dealing directly with Chinese factories in order to get cheap products that normally have to pass through an intermediary to get to the United States. The prices can be legitimately much lower for the same low-mid tier products that you encounter every day already, but there is no floor for how bad the quality of a product can be (although you should never expect miracles from something costing $2 or less).

I recently bought some $5 "Pzsr" (sic) leather watch straps and was surprised to find out that they were totally comparable in quality to my $25 Barton Leather strap, but I knew that there would be some luck of the draw involved. This is attractive to a lot of punters like myself who are thrilled to find good bargains and don't mind occasionally spending $20 on something that sucks.

If you just follow the recommendations of other hobbyists, you will avoid most of the risk while enjoying some heavy cost savings on mod parts, straps, interesting small brands, and so on.

I have ordered a couple watches from there. I live in the West Coast of the United States and have never had any issues

I Bought two in the most recent 11/11 sale. I used pay pal to buy. One arrived 19 days later and the other took a bit longer to process and ship, arriving after 21 days. Both arrived by usps delivery. Both were well packed and arrived in good condition. I did not have any reason to return or contest theses items. Thus,when all is well, it's just a slower version of any sale. The issue which I cannot answer is, "what if all does not go well?" I admit I was concerned about a return, but fortunately I will remain uninformed on that.

Well, I've never really had too many problems with products from aliexpress, but please remember that you will be interfacing directly with a e-commerce system that is a part of a 'low-trust' society. Thus, the level of customer service beyond getting the product sent to you is pretty much non-existent. For example, watch you bought has a flaw? The vendor will want you to send it back to china, with you paying postage so they can confirm you're serious about getting the defect fixed. They won't give you free anything because the assumption is that everyone is trying to rip everyone else off.

Go into it with your eyes open, and your expectations low, and you usually be pleasantly surprised.

Go into it expecting things to be like western retailers, and you will end up having a bad time.

I have bought a few watches, natos, and a handful of other items from AliE. The watches have all areived well packed and in good condition. The straps I have bought were cheap and what you would expect. I have no idea how the dispute process or claims would work as I have never had to use them. Just use PayPal so you are doubly covered.

If you order from AliExpress you may get what you want, in about 2 weeks to a month. You may get a few surprises at times. You may receive items in different degrees of quality, from places in the world you hadn't heard of. ("Dad, you just got something from Kazakhstan!")

It pay to check and double-check the product descriptions, and message the seller if in doubt.

While the individual sellers may or may not offer service, the refund process on AliExpress is actually fairly robust.

Also, there are certain items that you will only find on AliExpress if you are not a customer on an individual seller already. Therefore there are items I would only order from AliExpress.