AliExpress is a great marketplace, where you can get things for a fraction of the price.
One of the downsides, however, is the messy confirmation process. They changed it in efforts to simplify it, and since some point in 2020 (?) the orders are now automatically confirmed once the 60 days from the purchase date runs out.
In my experience, 95% of all orders are delivered within the 60 days, but sometimes the order gets stuck in customs or gets lost on the way. If you are not keeping track of your delivery times, you only have 14 days after the order protection runs out to get your money back.
Out of the 20 orders that I’ve had in the last 3 months, 17 have been delivered, 2 are still in transit, and 1 has been lost.
Here is the process I am following to get the refund on the order that hasn’t arrived within 60 days.
Note: I am doing this on my PC. The process is very similar on the app.
HOW DO I GET A REFUND ON ALIEXPRESS?
Don’t worry, it’s actually pretty easy
Step 1. Find the order in the list. Open the order by clicking on the View detail
Step 2. In the order click Open dispute
Step 3. Select Refund only
Step 4. Fill in the dispute details.
For “Reason for refund request” I selected:
- Logistics tracking problem
- No Tracking information
The text that I am using:
“Hi there. The order was never delivered to me, and there are no tracking updates on the tracking number. There is no record of this package entering Canada.
Please provide a full refund, as the order has not been delivered within the promised timeline.”
Step 5. Attach evidence: for the items that have not arrived within the promised timeline, a screenshot from the AliExpress tracking page and a screenshot of the tracking page from the seller’s tracking service.
AliExpress tracking page can be found in the order (click View delivery detail):
Take a screenshot of the next page, where it shows delivery details.
Then go to the “Seller’s Shipping Method” on the right, and take a screenshot of that as well. It’s not required, but I like to add it as well to show that I’ve done my homework.
Here are the screenshots that I am attaching:
Step 6. Wait for the seller to reply. From there you have 2 possible scenarios:
- Scenario 1: Seller accepts the refund request. You get your money back (do not accept PayPal refunds, if they offer one, proceed to scenario 2)
- Scenario 2: You ask AliExpress to step in and review the case.
Unfortunately, in my experience, sellers often try to offer a PayPal refund, and often times they will send it as a payment rather than a transfer, as if they were paying you for something that they buy from you, and request a refund from PayPal after.
In this case, since you didn’t send anything to them, you can’t provide a tracking number proving the delivery, so they will get the money they sent you back from PayPal.
In scenario 2, once AliExpress steps in, I like to add an additional screenshot from the item page where it says “75 Money-back guarantee” (i.e. 60 days with no product + 15 days to process the refund). This is what it looks like for this order:
Step 7: Wait for the refund to get processed.
Note! Once the refund is processed, this confuses a lot of people. Sometimes, refunds appear on the credit card statement on the date of the purchase, regardless of the date when the refund happened.
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UPDATE: I have already received the refund for this order.
Timeline:
Created dispute: Sept. 9 2021
Refund approved: Sept. 9 2021
Refund received: Sept. 10 2021
A piece of cake! Just follow my instructions above, and it will help 99/100 times.
