If you buy things on #AliExpress, you are going to get scammed every so often.

[cazabon@mindly.social]

If you buy things on #AliExpress, you are going to get scammed every so often. Their buyer protection program is pretty decent, although it can be a bit of a pain to go through the process.

You can increase your chances of getting scammed by buying things where the #deals are too good to be true. When the deals are ludicrously, impossibly good, your chances increase to 100%.

This can be fun. I have bought a few things over the years that were obviously #scams. Once, I spent a few hundred dollars for two tablets that, if they had been real, were selling for about one tenth of what they should have. Seeing how they faked them being new products, when they were actually recycled ancient low-end tablets, was fascinating.

But I generally won't do that. Instead, I buy cheap stuff, trading a few dollars for the fun of seeing what the seller/manufacturer have done. I don't even try to get my money back on these.

So I recently bought a #USB #charger that I've been seeing for months. It's described as a 240W total output, gallium-nitride, USB-PD and QC-3.0 compatible, five-port charger. The genuine article from a reputable manufacturer, if it exists, must cost over CDN $100. This one was ... five bucks.

So I knew it was going to be interesting. It arrived today. It weighed more than expected, but all at one end. The case appears to be ultrasonically welded, so getting it open is destructive.

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#scam #USBPD #QC3 #Chinesium #fake #TooGoodToBeTrue #deal #deals #GaN