Unacceptable response to non-delivery
If you buy items from UK retailers that are made in China, then you may be able to save money by cutting out the middleman and buying more or less exactly the same items directly from China, as long as you’re not in a hurry to receive them. However, you need to exercise caution in what you buy and I would suggest concentrating on items that you can see from their photos and descriptions are also sold by the big retailers in Europe, perhaps under their own brand names. I would also suggest, based on my most recent experience, that you only buy items using the Banggood Express shipping service - things sent with standard shipping are unreliable. Be careful also with what type of goods you buy. So, for example, uncomplicated alloy aluminium tools are preferable to electronics, particularly sophisticated electronics of unknown provenance. If the latter go wrong, you’ll have a struggle on your hands getting it sorted out. Banggood’s procedures for reimbursing for non-delivery of items are deliberately obscure and unhelpful compared to (for example) eBay or Amazon. Make sure that you have a second line of recourse by only paying with a credit card or PayPal, so that you can still get your money back if they mess you about, which they have done very badly with my most recent shipment. Their "service centre" appear to be under orders to stonewall refund requests for non-delivery, which is absolutely not acceptable and very different to my experience with Amazon and eBay. I have already been waiting six weeks for a delivery and they suggested, inter alia, that I wait another three weeks! I can see clearly from the tracking information that shipping has gone wrong at the China end of the transaction, something that they choose to ignore. PS The cut and paste reply from Banggood below changes nothing. The goods are still lost and I still want a refund without having to jump through multiple hoops. I’ve asked PayPal to reverse the transaction