I hope this isn’t perceived as advertising… I’m quite apprehensive about making this purchase and will absolutely update with my progress if/when the console arrives.
In the meantime, if anyone out there has any experience buying through AliExpress I would love to hear from you. This is my first purchase and I feel like it’s a total gamble.
If this is somehow perceived as advertising, mods please delete immediately. I do not want to violate any rules. This community is too awesome to lose!
I order from there quite a lot. I’m not really a fan of buying Chinese stuff but all the electronics are made there whatever you do and this way I’m cutting out the man-in-the-middle dickhead types who closed all the local factories and moved production to China just to push up the share prices.
I’ve always found it to be pretty good, remember that you don’t really deal with Ali that much, rather individual shops selling their stuff on there. I’ve had problems with stuff arriving broken before but I’ve usually found their customer service to be pretty amazing, they’ll often replace stuff without much fuss. I once ordered a Bitcoin miner before realising later that it was a scam, and Ali refunded me all the money.
The two main problems are that nothing on there is good quality, it’s all just cheap Chinese stuff. The second problem is that it takes ages for everything to arrive.
AliExpress is either a scam or a great deal. There is no inbetween. I have been successful with clothing from them, and even an Xbox One wired controller that had both joysticks at the top like a WiiU Pro controller. I haven’t been scammed yet, but I do know that it can happen.
I’ve ordered various things from AliExpress before, I’ve never had any major issues. One item was DOA, and another never arrived, but In both cases I got refunded quickly and easily.
It seems no worse than any other online marketplace now.
I assume these 3DS units are some sort of refurb. Are they Chinese region units?
My question is… Why from there? 🤔
Also bought mine off AliExpress. It was one of the fake pokemon shell models, so that feels a little cheap but looks nice. Otherwise the unit functions perfectly, no scratches on the screen and buttons are responsive.