Is Buying A Watch From Aliexpress Legit?

If you have heard about buying watches from Aliexpress you may have had some reservations, but you don’t need to. Some watches are excellent and overall the company is perfectly safe to buy from. 

What Is Aliexpress?

Aliexpress is a Chinese online market place that is often compared to Amazon due to their similarities. The company and the sellers who use the platform are all based in China, but they will delivery pretty much worldwide.

The selection of items available on the site is incredibly large. You can pretty much buy anything and everything that you could imagine. Being based in China the sellers are pretty much the manufacturers of the items, allowing for them to be very cheap and affordable.

Aliexpress actually owns Alibaba, which is a very similar service but it focuses on the wholesale of items, it is more designed for business to business purchases, where as Aliexpress is more for the everyday consumer like ourselves. Usually you can find items on both sites and as a platform, it is both safe to use and legit.  

Warehouse/Delivery System

While I am not a logistics expert, it seems from my experience that Aliexpress is very well run. I have often ordered a number of items from various sellers (cheap straps for my watches) and I have found their delivery system quite interesting.

The individual seller will dispatch the item, but they send it to the Aliexpress warehouse. If you order a number of items, these will all be collected together and the individual packages will be placed inside one larger package before being shipped out to you from the warehouse.

(Watch straps usually come in little plastic shipping bags or envelopes. These are all bundled together into one larger shipping bag)

I know this happens with Amazon orders too and I am all for it. I think having Aliexpress as the middleman and having their hand in the delivery makes it a better and safer shopping platform.

The Aliexpress tracking system is also pretty good.  You need to remember that the items are coming from china, so they can take a while to arrive, but they always do and you can follow them along their long journey.

Purchase Protection

Aliexpress also runs a really good refund and disputes policy. I haven’t had to use it, but from what I can tell it might be better than Ebay or Amazon, which both have great systems.

It is always a little worrying when you are ordering online, especially when it’s from a country that is as far away as China. However, it does look like they have tried to overcome these concerns by introducing some pretty good protection measures for its customers.

I can’t lie; there are a lot of cheap and poorly made products on this platform. You can really start going down the rabbit hole of really badly made clothes and the almost comical pictures people take of themselves wearing them.

Aliexpress say you should contact the seller in the first instant and then if you are still having trouble you can open a dispute with them. While I have never had trouble myself, I have heard plenty of cases where people have complained to watches makers on the platform about issues they have had and in general, the sellers have sorted the problem or refunded the person fairly quickly and easily. I’ve heard more positive stories than horror stories.

While there is protection system in place, I still think it is better to do your research and only buy from sellers that have been shown to provide a good service and a good product.

Luckily in the watch community there are plenty of reviews and YouTube videos so you can very quickly start to see the patterns emerge and see what sellers are going to be best to buy from.        

(You can read more about – Will A Cheap Watch Last Forever?)

Aliexpress Buying Experience

When you place an order on the site you will see a countdown timer next to the item. I can’t remember if its 7 or 10 days, but either way, the seller has this time to dispatch the item. Most do it fairly quickly, but you might get one or two who cut it a bit fine.

The good thing is, if they miss this deadline, your order is cancelled and the money is returned to you within a few days. I have had this happen and while it is annoying, as I obviously wanted the items, the system was really good.

I didn’t have to do anything. It was all automatic.

There was the option to press a button to extend the time, to give the seller more time to dispatch, or you could message them. I just moved on and bought the same item again from someone else.

Once your item is dispatched the timer changes again. This time I think its 90 days and this is the time they expect your delivery to arrive by.

Everything that has been shipped to me has arrived within this time, but I have the full confidence that if it did not, the time would run out and I would be refunded automatically.

I assume if your item arrives after this, you basically get it for free. To be honest I was kind of wishing the postman or customs team would take their time and I might get a free watch.

When the item arrives you are asked to confirm its arrival. You can’t really cheap this. You can try and lie and say it hasn’t arrived, but the tracking number will kind of show you are not being truthful. While the tracking number is there to help you, it is equally there to protect the seller.

Don’t try and cheat the system, that is not very gentlemanly.       

What Are The Watches Like On Aliexpress?

As a whole, the site is safe to buy from, but are there any watches worth buying?

The answer is like most things in life, some watches are good and some might not be so good.

You have to remember that basically any one can sell on the platform, so you may find the quality can vary quite drastically between the individual watch companies that are selling on Aliexpress.

Overall most of the offerings are very affordable and can be a decent quality. The vast majority of watches that are available are homages, although there does seem to be more original designs appearing all the time.

(You can read more information about – Are Aliexpress Watches Any Good?)

(You can read more about the watch pictured above – Berny Railway Watch Review)

It’s All About The Sellers

There are some fantastic watches on Aliexpress, arguably better than some of the big brand names you can buy on the high street.

The best advice I can give you is to do your research. The pictures and specs can look amazing and sometimes they are too good to be true.

You should check the reviews, both for the brand and the individual watch.  You can do this on Aliexpress itself but you should also look to the many Youtuibe channels reviewing watches from Aliexpress.

These will give you a great insight into the watch and more importantly the brand. Often Youtubers will not hold back and will give you a very honest picture about what the watch is like and will very clearly point out even the smallest faults.

Some brands take offence to this and refuse to work with the youtuber again, while others listen and make improvements. 

These types of watch brands are starting to grow and be recognised as decent brands, the ones that are not so eager to listen are slowly fading away. This does mean the quality across the platform is actually rising and you are starting to fine more and more good quality watches on Aliexpress.

Customs/Import Fees

I think it is important to mention that a lot of countries will have import fees for items coming from China. These fees are usually based on price of the item you are importing, and quite often watches will pass this threshold.

You will need to check your countries exact rules, but it is possible you may be hit with an import fee by customs. This doesn’t always happen, quite often small packages, such as watches can slip through, but you need to be aware that you may be asked to pay these fees by your countries customs department.

Overall

Aliexpress is legit. It is perfectly safe to shop on this site and the watches you can find on there are decent. Do your research and you will quickly see what watches are worth buying and you will find even the good ones are very affordable.

You can get some excellent quality watches on Aliexpress. If you are okay with affordable homages you should start shopping there. You will be pleasantly surprised at what you might find.

(You can read more about – Is It Okay To Wear A Homage Watch?)