An AliBaba (plus Carisen) experience
Recently I ventured out beyond my usual stomping ground of AliExpress to their parent company's website, AliBaba.
I occasionally look there to find company information, plus they do have some watches AliExpress does not list. One thing I found was a watch by the brand Carisen [yes, it's not Cadisen] whose dial I could configure to my own spec. So I did, send off the order, and then there was a problem...
You see, AliBaba mostly works as a wholesaler, giving you specific option when buying in bulk which are somewhat misleading if you just buy one watch.
The problem was: I had selected the standard option for shipping, which is "electronics shipping", and apparently Carisen is not allowed to use that option on AliBaba, I had to use another option (which, incidentally is more expensive). This meant I had to re-order the item, and then cancel the old order (technically you cannot cancel, you ask for a refund, and wrong-shipping-option is one of the pre-set reasons).
So I did that, but re-ordering an item does not set the options you used for the original order and you need to reselect your choices which I had not done. Carisen contacted me to do that.
The contact was done via AliBaba-messaging, but since I was not instantly responding to those messages on my AliBaba account... they phoned me. This was an £80 watch, and I had three actual in person phone calls from Carisen to sort out these (and one other) issues.
What do we learn from this?
- the user interface on AliBaba is not for the faint-hearted, and in particular AliBaba shipping is not as straightforward as on AliExpress
- there is such a thing as customer service on cheap Chinese brands, well, the Carisen brand anyway
UK-based German expat. Likes cheap watches. Not bothered about brands.
I’ve never ordered from either, I just assumed it was akin to buying an AK-47 on the dark web.
I’ve never ordered from either, I just assumed it was akin to buying an AK-47 on the dark web.
That's a bit simplistic. I would not buy "big brand" watches from there, because they are probably just fakes. It's not quite as wild as wish.com, because on AliExpress you'd be hard pushed to find a faked Rolex, but Breitling, or Bucherer, or Nomos, or Seiko...
So, what I do is either: just browse, or, search for watch types, or, search for Chinese brands I like.