Shop at AliExpress
Online shopping from South Africa in China has actually been a thing for a while. It is only in recent months that it has become more popular. Woogie admits that we are chronic shoppers from many cheap Chinese online shops such as Wish, Joom and AliExpress and have really come to know the ins and outs of using them.
Our AliExpress Shopping Experience
AliExpress.com is a less used platform but just as good as the others. One of the disadvantages that we pick up is that AliExpress only works in US Dollars. You can select other currencies but South Africa is not one of them. So it becomes a bit of a pain when you always have to convert back to Rands.
The only other disadvantage that we can advise on is the time that it takes for your order to reach your post box… It takes LONG! It is not only AliExpress that takes long, it is all of the cheap online Chinese stores. We must remember that it is NOT the online shops that take long to dispatch or deliver. Infact, they generally dispatch in a day or two from when you place your order. It is the international postal system as well as our local postal service that we have to rely on. When placing the order, ignore the expected delivery date completely. It generally takes between 1 month and 3 months for your order to arrive.
We have had orders arrive quickly and orders that have arrived 2 or 3 months after we expected them. But eventually, they seem to arrive.
Be careful when buying clothing from these stores. Remember that the Chinese population is a lot smaller than us South Africas so their Extra Large is generally a Medium in South Africa…
Other than the payment currency and delivery times, AliExpress is a brilliant online store to shop at. They have a large variety of goods and cater for all ages.
International Delivery Process
How do you receive your parcel? Well, certainly not through a door to door courier. Most of the time, you will get a notification slip in the post from your local Post Office where you will have to collect your parcel from. Sometimes, if your order is small enough, you might receive it in your post box.
Just be warned that sometimes you will be charged import duties, which is a percentage of the value of your order. In our experience, a R500 order has never accoutred import duties more than about R30.
We hope that we have answered any questions that you may have had about shopping at AliExpress. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below and we will answer questions to the best of our abilities and knowledge.
Please note that Woogie is NOT AliExpress nor are we affiliated to them in ANY way.
