I'm just having a touch time in general with this, because I generally buy all my items from amazon. Lately I've also just been finding amazon absolutely riddled with fake reviews: companies that have literally thousands of "reviews" but barely anybody talks about it on reddit / and if you sort by "recent reviews" it's often negative. Random example I'm thinking of is I was looking for bedding, and Utopia / Bedsure had insane sales despite apparently being poor quality
In the past year I've ordered some gifts from Etsy, and found the quality to be really good. But I was very thorough with finding the most reputable seller and doing background research outside Etsy. From my experience, etsy leans towards the more expensive-side, but everything I've purchased so far has honestly exceeded my expectations.
I'm just worried for the day I get a bad deal.
With aliexpress, I'm finding CERTAIN items intriguing. Like etsy, I try to do background research on sellers: but often even the top sellers don't have much information on the net.
I didn't include a "topic" because I'm curious what criteria makes you look on what site. For example I'm looking at items for my house (decor, bedding, throw, etc) but also looking at random things like skincare.
Generally I would say:
- don't buy clothes off aliexpress, because the size or fit will often be incorrect
- look for both a mixture of high sales and high ratings on Aliexpress and Etsy.
- don't buy supplements off aliexpress (iherb or amazon for this)
- don't buy "cheap" computers or laptops off aliexpress, but smaller home appliances may be good depending.
- don't trust high reviews on amazon
- fakespot can be inaccurate, for both high and low ratings. I personally like to do a google search like "site:reddit.com utopia" to find what people on reddit think of it
- if I find people advocating it to the extreme, I'll look at their profile and often find them just spamming various subreddits about it with 666 karma
- mixed reviews are the most trustworthy on ANY site: I often look at the cons more than the pros, and see if those would conflict with my interests.
May 21, 2021 at 05:33AM
