Price tracking on Aliexpress. How not to buy into a scam while shopping on Aliexpress

There're thousands of sellers on Aliexpress and they're all competing for customers because they want them to buy their products. Aliexpress sellers mostly take seriously their duties, they deliver orders on time and respond to their customers when something goes wrong. But anything can happen because there're also some scammers deceiving customers. As a result of their actions, people get neither their packages, nor their money back.

What should you pay attention to if you don't want to meet dishonest sellers?

Price changes

Sometimes before reducing the price, a seller can increase it for an item on purpose. To avoid these kind of things you can use a price tracking feature that is available in special browser extensions. For example, in the AliHelper extension. A convenient price chart will help you to find out if it's a real discount or if it's just a cunning seller. Aliexpress price history is an important function.

Product reviews written by other customers

The first thing that comes to mind while shopping online is to read product reviews. It's not uncommon that people, who've been already deceived by a seller, share their stories in reviews because they want to caution the others. But it doesn't always work like that. If it's a scam, there could be fake enthusiastic reviews or no reviews at all.

Tracking number

When you order something from reliable sellers, they give you a tracking number that you can use to check where your package is. Scammers also give you this kind of number, but it's impossible to track your package because it's fake. In this case you can't track your package and a seller answers you something like "please just wait a few days, the package will arrive soon". Obviously that a customer won't receive any package in the end. And when a customer doesn't have time to open dispute, it'll be really complicated to get their money back.

Pictures and description of the product

Sometimes sellers embellish their product descriptions, so they don't match the reality. For example, they can make up what fabric is used for the clothes and that the vase is made of glass, but actually it's plastic. It's also important to pay attention to the pictures of the product because they can be edited and don't meet reality at all.

Don't give your card details to anyone

Imagine that you've ordered something and after a while you get a message from the seller that your package was damaged during assembly or that it turned out that the product had been defective. They offer you a refund as compensation, but they don't want to do it officially through the trading platform, they want to transfer money to your personal account directly. They say that they need your card details, including the card number, its expiration date, the cardholder’s name and the CVV code, just to give your money back. When scammers get your card details, they will probably spend all your money, you won't get any compensation, not to mention your package.

Shipping

It's true that there's a paid shipping for a few products, but some stores intentionally increase the price for the shipping when it comes to cheap products. For instance, you buy trousers for $20, but the shipping costs you a whole $100. You should pay attention to these things if you don't want to spend a lot more money on the shipping than on the product itself.

Let's look at another example of the scam. Your order's already created and paid, but you get a message from the seller that your package can be shipped faster if you pay extra. And if you accept this offer, it's possible that your seller will say you that there're some customs issues and that your package has been sent by standard mail.

Pay attention to the seller rating

You can check real sellers' rating using special browser extensions developed for Aliexpress. AliHelper is one of these extensions. It gives you an opportunity to see a detailed rating of the seller's activity on the website. Besides, you can see what factors have influenced the seller rating. For example, a shipping speed, a refund, etc.

There're other features in the AliHelper extension. For instance, you can track prices or use the price chart to get to know the price history (increases / decreases of the price) that is available for any product.

You can install AliHelper right now. Just download the extension, it'll be automatically added to your browser and it'll be your personal adviser while shopping on Aliexpress.