I have been using Aliexpress to buy parts that I am not able to locate at Nehru place [New Delhi, India] especially laptop batteries for older laptops. It has been a pretty smooth experience in terms of ordering, however it is a fairly weak experience when it comes to the shipping. I had ordered 3 items from 3 different sellers and here is the experience [I have removed all the order specific information]
- The first seller was very responsive, but sends it across as a gift. Sends me a link to http://www.17track.net/Index.html, which well is clearly not going to be readable for me. Not very clear what was the courier the seller sent it by.
He has listed one tracking code, but in the comments says that the actual tracking code is something else. That does not make sense!
- The second seller manages to get the tracking code right, but does not get the tracking URL correct [http://www.singpost.com.sg/ra/ra_article_status.aspx] ! That is very difficult for people who may not know enough about the internet. The actual url is just going to the domain homepage [http://www.singpost.com.sg/].
- The best is clearly the Fedex one! Smooth easy to work out. I do not expect any issues with using the same on aliexpress the next time around. It is clearly the more expensive option, even though it says free shipping
Its clear that the majority of the shipments will not be using Fedex, they really need to support more courier types, and enable the end seller to have a better experience while giving the end consumer the shipping information. Its also clear that given people all over the world use aliexpress due to its really big catalog, they need to enable translation tools by default for all tracking sites/portals that they link to!