I live in Portugal/EU and since the new import rules applied earlier this year, buying stuff from AliExpress is no longer worth the hassle, as everything goes through customs, no matter how inexpensive.
Customs will apply a flat rate of 12 Euro per package for handling, on top of that you pay the custom tax and then over all costs (purchase price, shipping price, handling price and customs tax) you pay VAT of 23%. A cheap 5 Euro item will grow to an absurd price of over 20 Euro. And of course this increases the shipping time from 2 weeks to 2 months... Conclusion: I stopped purchasing stuff from AliExpress, much to my regrets. This is a good example how goverments rule against the will of their people: the small individuals are no longer able to buy stuff cheap, but big enterprises use and abuse the cheap labour in China, while unemployment happens here. This is just the first part of my rant and I know I may not be totally objective here, which is part of a good rant...
Anyway, I ventured into trying out Amazon, as they do offer some of the products I am interested in. First two purchases went amazingly fine with next day delivery. This is something I never experienced and it is really great to have an ordered item delivered the next day, including saturdays.
Encouraged, I orderd something else and its delivery was set to 8 days. No problem, still better than ordering from AliExpress.
But then the item never arrived. Amazon was stating that if the item doesn't arrive on day X (the dealine), I could claim a refund the next day. Well, today is the day and what do I find? I have to click on a endless automatic chat session, where I need to speak with some weird seller (though I purchased from Amazon). And he now gets 48 hours to reply.
I might as well have purchased the item on eBay and with PayPal I am sure I would get a much better customer protection. I believe that the sale was just a scam and the seller never intended so ship the product (we are talking about 8 Euros, no big deal). But it pisses me off that you get scammed (I know, I will eventually get the money back, but it will cost me time and nerves) and it shows that as soon as you buy something that is not flagged PRIME or sold directly by Amazon, you are on your own. Ah, and products sold directly by Amazon are not cheaper than any other local vendor.
Conclusion: screw Amazon! Not going to buy from them anymore.
Thanks for listening. Would be interested if I am the only one with this kind of experience.