Cheap homage watches thread under £100 from Ali-Express and the like

[earlofsodbury]

Soulless is about right. I dislike that they're almost all blank copies of extremely well-known designs - so boring and unoriginal.

The reason I've 'bonded' with the "Depth Charge" cheapie I bought recently is that while its design is obviously a bit derivative (what isn't?), no part of it is actually a direct copy of anything else.

I wish the Chinese would make a lot more unique original designs.

[MrGrumpy]

A cautionary tale in which Aliexpress are involved...

I went on to Aliexpress over Xmas looking at the Pagani watches. Whilst I was there I saw a good looking Seiko Chrono Solar watch with Panda styling for around £50. I'm a complete sucker for Panda designs so on a whim clicked the Buy button. Everything seemed to go smoothly and I was given an estimated delivery date of 19th Jan.

Then I had doubts....it had a Seiko model number, and this checked out with the right watch, but in the UK the RRP was £500 - so how come I could apparently buy one from China for £50? What was I buying? I'm fine with hommages, but I draw the line at fakes. Anyway, I never looked at the tracking info until the other day as it wasn't due, but when I did, it said the watch had been despatched, but rejected by the logistics company and returned to sender, with nothing at all happening for the last 2 weeks. There is facility on the Aliexpress site to contact the seller, which I did, saying 'What is going on?' - I did get a response, but only to say that they will respond in the future.

This morning I get an e-mail from Aliexpress regarding a 'Problematic Product' and that the product had a 'potential non-compliance issue' ie its a fake. Not pleased but not surprised.

Aliexpress have a Refunds / Return button, which I pressed and selected the reason 'product returned to Seller' reason and I got an instant Success e-mail, and a notification from Paypal that a refund is on the way.

So....I guess the moral of the story is the old one of if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. On the plus side, it seems like Aliexpress' systems work rather better than you might expect!

[Ruggertech]

A cautionary tale in which Aliexpress are involved...

I went on to Aliexpress over Xmas looking at the Pagani watches. Whilst I was there I saw a good looking Seiko Chrono Solar watch with Panda styling for around £50. I'm a complete sucker for Panda designs so on a whim clicked the Buy button. Everything seemed to go smoothly and I was given an estimated delivery date of 19th Jan.

Then I had doubts....it had a Seiko model number, and this checked out with the right watch, but in the UK the RRP was £500 - so how come I could apparently buy one from China for £50? What was I buying? I'm fine with hommages, but I draw the line at fakes. Anyway, I never looked at the tracking info until the other day as it wasn't due, but when I did, it said the watch had been despatched, but rejected by the logistics company and returned to sender, with nothing at all happening for the last 2 weeks. There is facility on the Aliexpress site to contact the seller, which I did, saying 'What is going on?' - I did get a response, but only to say that they will respond in the future.

This morning I get an e-mail from Aliexpress regarding a 'Problematic Product' and that the product had a 'potential non-compliance issue' ie its a fake. Not pleased but not surprised.

Aliexpress have a Refunds / Return button, which I pressed and selected the reason 'product returned to Seller' reason and I got an instant Success e-mail, and a notification from Paypal that a refund is on the way.

So....I guess the moral of the story is the old one of if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. On the plus side, it seems like Aliexpress' systems work rather better than you might expect!

The too good to be true mantra is a good one. On Aliexpress avoid the so called genuine items (they generally are not) and go for the homages instead. I also have found their refund process very good and in my experience the sellers either don't want the item back at all, or offer a partial refund big enough to make it worth keeping.

[earlofsodbury]

... Aliexpress have a Refunds / Return button, which I pressed and selected the reason 'product returned to Seller' reason and I got an instant Success e-mail, and a notification from Paypal that a refund is on the way. ...

You were luckier than me - ordered a watch from Aliexpress four years back: the seller sent a nasty, cheap, wired 'phone headset! I complained and asked for a refund: Aliexpress themselves called me a scammer and closed my account - no refund. They really are a collection of unaccountable lying, thieving b******s. Closed account or not, I would never use them again.