Unfortunately… that has not been my experience. This experience is more typical of my experience with AliExpress albeit this is the first time a shipper has actually misdirected a product.
AliExpress to the US still relies on very sketchy last-mile delivery. Occasionally, I have won the last-mile lottery and received USPS as my last-mile carrier, but it’s rare. Combined with the high degree of counterfeit products, AliExpress is not a credible portal. Sure, you may get lucky and actually receive the product pictured, but my success rate is under 70%, perhaps because I only buy electronics, which is rife with criminal activity. At the end of the day, AliExpress is an unregulated source, and if you’re OK with doing business with a blind entity, that’s fine. This is why I never risk more than a $20 purchase on AliExpress. But I always point out the extreme risk to my friends when asked. One would be better off buying from eBay; at least there you have US consumer protection laws backing you up. If I find it on AliExpress, I’ll often find it on eBay and will usually buy it there instead.
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I almost forgot to mention: as a cybersecurity practice, I have been using a third-party email service combined with virtual credit card numbers for the last several years that allows me to generate a unique email address on-the-fly. I have caught several well-constructed phishing attacks originating from information I supplied to an AliExpress vendor. How can I be sure it’s them? Because it’s a one-use address, and I embed the source in the email. For example, if I’m ordering batteries from SumYungGuy Inc, I will set up an address like SumYungGuy.Ally@MyJunkDomain.Org. These attacks are well-crafted and could easily fool someone, except the very email they send it to is forwarded from the service and has the ‘target’ email embedded in the message.
So my point is, the risk of using AliExpress is well beyond the normal risk of online merchants, it also is a gateway into cyber theft if one doesn’t take countermeasures. Relying on spam filters is not enough. The ones that came from Ally were as I said, well-constructed and completely believable. If one were to be accessing their information on a mobile browser as an example, it would be all too easy to just click and be exposed.