Why AliExpress?
Surely Temu is way worse?
Europe slaps AliExpress with €550 million fine for selling dodgy goods
The European Commission yesterday fined Alibaba subsidiary AliExpress €550 million ($630m/ £467m) for not doing enough to stop selling dodgy products - the largest ever fine issued under the Digital Services Act. AliExpress is Alibaba’s consumer-facing e-commerce brand and complements the parent company’s B2B biz. Brussels last …
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 09:35 GMT Bebu sa Ware
AliExpress … selling dodgy goods
The agreed terms of service, I would have thought.
I always assumed that an order with any of these PRC internet souks was likely to be a mystery box, a blind bag - the contemporary equivalent of plunging your hand into bran tub for your lucky dip.
I have been lucky in that the small number of items I have purchased (all < AUD2O incl. shipping) from these sites mostly worked - even the knockoff Parker pen refills.
A few years ago I toyed with the idea of buying some cheap high powered violet lasers from these site to muck about with, but seeing some YT chap with a proper laser lab burn himself with a PRC special (the device was way over the power spec.) I decided it could literally be playing with fire.
The EU might be on the right track in terms of product safety as gross failures could be an unneeded extra impost on their health systems although I am not sure whether looking into a 10W laser would be more a funeral expense.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 09:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: AliExpress … selling dodgy goods
You don't need 10w, looking into a 100mW laser is guaranteed to mess up your sight.... Always protect your eyes when using lasers, and never look straight into the beam. This applies to any laser, regardless of colour. (Some lasers can have output on other wavelengths you can't see because a pump laser is used to stimulate emission in a different wavelength....
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 13:31 GMT FIA
Re: AliExpress … selling dodgy goods
I always assumed that an order with any of these PRC internet souk
It's a marketplace. Like Amazon. There are good sellers on there, like Amazon, and there are people out just to make a fast buck, like Amazon.
It's also not in their interest to regulate it, as that affects their bottom line, much like Amazon, so government regulation is required... again... like Amazon.
What I'm saying is, like any marketplace, take care and do your homework.
In general I've had good experiences, I've bought some right cheap tat. The bluetooth thingy I have in my car was about 3 quid, about 2.20 of that was postage. However I also have another bluetooth thingy I keep meaning to wire into one of my hi-fi's, that was a lot more expensive... (per unit, about 30x the cheap one), these were both bought in the same order.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 18:33 GMT James Wilson
Re: AliExpress … selling dodgy goods
Exactly the same here. I've bought some excellent pieces of kit and some pieces of crap. All were very cheap so not much lost on the dodgy ones (and often you can get your money back if you can demonstrate the deficiencies), though I do feel a bit guilty about adding the the e-waste pile so I'm more circumspect these days. Caveat emptor and all that.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 17:24 GMT doublelayer
Re: AliExpress … selling dodgy goods
There's a lot of variety, including a bunch of reputable businesses and a bunch of complete fraudsters. Their business model appears to be allowing anyone to sell anything, but if you report fraud, they appear to instantly believe you because about half the market's obvious fraud. There are three rules I use whenever I buy from there or recommend others to do so:
1. Read everything, and if it's obviously implausible, don't buy it.
2. Test everything when it arrives to see that it does what it was supposed to and doesn't do things it wasn't supposed to. If you don't know how to test that and it could have safety consequences, don't buy it unless you have a reason to trust the specific merchant. This means you will skip some items which are safe.
3. If you're not willing to do those things, buy from somewhere else that doesn't require that level of active suspicion.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 09:51 GMT Paddy
Buyer beware - NOT!
The EU, and the UK consumers are used to things they buy being safe, and working. I think that should be preserved so governments need to act. I don't want to buy something that needs to be earthed and be surprised by it not being - or just not knowing. as a consumer IO'm all for cheap goods from around the world, but they must be safe and conform to regulations.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 10:49 GMT IGotOut
Protecting the EU sellers.
I do quite a lot of crafting and directly import foils for some of my stuff.
Around £2 - 3 for a hundred sheets. Need to spend £8 plus for free postage.
Off a "UK" seller, around £7 for 100 sheets including postage.
The difference in the item?
ZERO, absolutely fuck all, even have the same writing on the packaging, because all the UK seller is doing is importing the item adding 2 - 3x the price and going "UK seller" which they probably aren't.
I've bought some cracking stuff on AliExpress, but equally had some tat. But when you're paying a quid or two, you take your chances.
HOWEVER, all that said I very carefully read the descriptions (you soon learn the red flags) and avoid the obvious AI generated scams. I could see how people could end up by some dodgy stuff. For an example a VERY cheap MP3 player had the warning "Do not overcharge the device, it may cause damage". That is a huge flag it has no charge protection and is likely to burn your house down.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 11:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Protecting the EU sellers.
I'm all for cheap goods for consumers, but anyone selling into any country should be abiding by product rules in that country, and paying local import duties and sales taxes (VAT). Chances are your UK seller is paying some UK tax, and the ali express seller isn't. - By October 2028, packages from ali express will be subject to the same taxes and import duties.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 13:14 GMT diadomraz
Re: Protecting the EU sellers.
Actually the sales tax and the new EU customs fee are passed directly to the customer (like Amazon does) so I expect they are being paid in most cases. Looking at their statements Alibaba are even paying some corporate income tax in the UK.
The fine is more about the sale of counterfeit products - for example I would never buy a SanDisk SD card or any product from a known brand there
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 14:25 GMT tiggity
Re: Protecting the EU sellers.
@diadomraz
"for example I would never buy a SanDisk SD card or any product from a known brand there"
I think that applies to other well known places like Amazon, eBay etc. - would not trust them for SD cards.
As a camera user I tend to buy my SD cards from Argos, easy online experience, not the cheapest, but they do have a reputation to protect - cards from there have always been advertised storage size, data has persisted and data transfer has always kept up with camera (including video & RAW images at multiple FPS).. and bricks & mortar store with humans available if you do have any issues
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 17:44 GMT I could be a dog really
Re: Protecting the EU sellers.
and going "UK seller" which they probably aren't.
And that's something that really pees me off about certain online marketplaces - I usually try and buy from a UK based seller, but do they have a filter for that ? Do they f***. And you see one with "UK SELLER" emblazoned across their images - then drill down and find they are based in China. And you want to report that as fraud - but can you find any means to do that ? Can you f***.
As others have said, these marketplaces d.g.a.s. about things like safety - they are only interested in maximising their profits.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 11:41 GMT Julian Bradfield
curate's egg
I've bought a lot of things off Ali Express, ranging from a £400 CNC machine (pretty good for the price according to our lab techs) down to toys. Much of what I buy is either specifically Chinese (books, art/writing materials) or everybody gets it made in China anyway (electrical/onic things). Some of it is likely unsafe by today's standards - e.g. the electric solder pot looks like something from the 1950s - it's usually pretty obvious.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 12:46 GMT TonyJ
Re: curate's egg
"...it's usually pretty obvious..."
That's the thing though - it isn't.
Take a phone charger.
Looks fine. Feels fine. Even has a CE mark.
Pop it on a scope - noisy as all hell.
Open it up and - the weight comes from a lump of steel glued to the inside of the plastic case. There is no safety gap cut into the PCB between the mains voltage components and the low voltage components.
The components themselves can look ok or occasionally cheap as chips. Ditto the soldering.
But it feels ok and it charges your phone.
Right until it causes a fire.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 12:56 GMT HarryBl
I've been buying stuff from Aliexpress since they first started. They used to be a bit fly by night but I've never had any major problems with them.
They used to take a month to deliver but that's improved enormously. I ordered some bits and bobs on the 14th which arrived yesterday (20th).
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 09:19 GMT P_Jamez
Re: Eurpoe......
Sellers have throughout history always tried to get away with the worst that they can. Look back to laws in the middle ages about selling meat pies. And most people are trusting and believe when a product is sold with a description, the product should match that description. What is the issue with enforcing that? EU sellers could make cheaper products if they didn't have to include safety features, all of which are there to stop people getting hurt or dying.
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Tuesday 21st July 2026 14:19 GMT Tron
The Chinese will be claiming that back...
...from a select group of EU companies operating there, for 'infringements', over the next few weeks.
The only difference all this will make - particularly the 3 Euro tax on incoming stuff - is that EUians will have to pay more for stuff, and will dislike their governments a good deal more in consequence. No different to Trump's taxiffs, which the EU pointed out were daft and punished his own citizens.
Governments persistently complain about other governments doing things, and then emulate them.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 15:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well EU goods are not just more expensive...
Took 3 weeks to get from Germany to the UK, whilst I regularly get stuff from China in less than a week. Also the German screen protector seems to have gone down in quality for that brand (cut outs not quite right etc compared to their past products).
Fountain pens are one thing I love getting from AliExpress, the Asvine and Hongdian pens are just so nice and at a fraction of the price. Their nibs are so consistent and work out of the box each time, no need to flush with washing up liquid or tuning in any way. My friend has a collection of Kaweco pens with fine nibs and they are all different. The thickness can go from broad all way to extra fine. She even had a couple of them where she sent back because they were too scratchy or the feed was bad. No issues at all with my collection of 25+ pens which is good since they are all way from China. That even goes for the really cheap clone Jinhao X159 and 20 (Montblanc 149 and the Vanishing Point clones), they write so nice. Sure they might not be MB 149 quality, but they sure ain't 1000GBP worse! My favorite pen has to be the Hongdian N8 Red (aka Canadian release), its just such a beautiful pen and again at the fraction of the price and it writes so well and feels so nice in the hand.
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Thursday 23rd July 2026 10:40 GMT Pete Sdev
Re: Well EU goods are not just more expensive...
Took 3 weeks to get from Germany to the UK
That'll be one of those Brexit benefits we've heard about ;-)
Fountain pens are one thing I love getting from AliExpress
Fair enough. With the observation that a faulty fountain pen will at worst ruin a shirt; a faulty charging device will potentially burn your house down.
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