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Alibaba is Back on U.S. Blacklist of “Notorious Marketplaces”

truthatallcost

truthatallcost

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The USTR dropped its annual blacklist calling out marketplaces that are rife with counterfeit and pirated goods this week.

Many of the shopping centers and sites listed in this “Special 301” report were absolutely predictable, like Beijing’s Silk Market, St. Petersburg-based social network VK.com, or The Pirate Bay, which was formed by an anti-copyright group in the first place.

One entrant proved controversial, however, Taobao Marketplace, the e-commerce behemoth owned by Alibaba Group.
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Has anyone here ever ordered from Alibaba, or one of their many websites like AliExpress or TaoBao? I became interested in the fake guitars that Alibaba sells, so I had a look at their site. Knock off Gibson Les Paul Customs sell for around $400 delivered. The real LP Custom models sell for about $6,000.

Although the fake guitars are made well enough to convincingly copy the looks of a Gibson guitar, people on YouTube who've ordered them say all the hardware/pickups/tuners are junk and need replacing.

I don't think I'll ever order from a site like Alibaba, but what's your opinion/experience?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/22/alibaba-is-back-on-u-s-blacklist-of-notorious-marketplaces/
 
truthatallcost said:
Has anyone here ever ordered from Alibaba, or one of their many websites like AliExpress or TaoBao? I became interested in the fake guitars that Alibaba sells, so I had a look at their site. Knock off Gibson Les Paul Customs sell for around $400 delivered. The real LP Custom models sell for about $6,000.

Although the fake guitars are made well enough to convincingly copy the looks of a Gibson guitar, people on YouTube who've ordered them say all the hardware/pickups/tuners are junk and need replacing.

I don't think I'll ever order from a site like Alibaba, but what's your opinion/experience?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/22/alibaba-is-back-on-u-s-blacklist-of-notorious-marketplaces/
Click to expand...

TaoBao in particular is like ebay and you'll also find cheap knock-offs on Ebay but I have never considered selling or buying via Alibaba / TaoBao.

Certainly wouldn't do it without having an isolated credit card that had no link to my personal finances whatsoever - not that I think most internet use is safe.
 
truthatallcost said:
Has anyone here ever ordered from Alibaba, or one of their many websites like AliExpress or TaoBao? I became interested in the fake guitars that Alibaba sells, so I had a look at their site. Knock off Gibson Les Paul Customs sell for around $400 delivered. The real LP Custom models sell for about $6,000.

Although the fake guitars are made well enough to convincingly copy the looks of a Gibson guitar, people on YouTube who've ordered them say all the hardware/pickups/tuners are junk and need replacing.

I don't think I'll ever order from a site like Alibaba, but what's your opinion/experience?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/22/alibaba-is-back-on-u-s-blacklist-of-notorious-marketplaces/
Click to expand...

You can even buy Uranium on Ali Baba.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
TaoBao in particular is like ebay and you'll also find cheap knock-offs on Ebay but I have never considered selling or buying via Alibaba / TaoBao.

Certainly wouldn't do it without having an isolated credit card that had no link to my personal finances whatsoever - not that I think most internet use is safe.
Click to expand...

I've thought about possible identity theft or credit card fraud. Definitely possible. Though Alibaba does such high volume, I'd think that they wouldn't have to resort to those schemes.

EBay and Amazon both profit from fake merchandise, true. But Alibabas whole existence seems to depend on it.
 
truthatallcost said:
I've thought about possible identity theft or credit card fraud. Definitely possible. Though Alibaba does such high volume, I'd think that they wouldn't have to resort to those schemes.

EBay and Amazon both profit from fake merchandise, true. But Alibabas whole existence seems to depend on it.
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Most countries in the world profit off fake merchandise though, unidustrialized and newly industrialized countries tend to copy alot of products. Shopping at any of those sites was like me walking into a bazaar in afghanistan. Over there they were selling exact copies of iphone 4s, before they were even released in the us. They were made in china and everything was the same except ios, since they could not copy it, and given its accuracy of the copy, likely chinese workers reverse enginered it. So they would sell them and put something random to differentiate it from iphone, like myphone, and install a android os rewrote for apple hardware, since they could not get ahold of ios software.


They would also sell exact copies of nike sneakers, tv sets, refrigerators etc. Heck soldiers loved going to south korea because there they could get a gucci suit that was indistinguishable in every way other than missing the gucci tag, for pennies on the dollar, local tailors would make them.

All these countries are just selling the world what they already sell at home, nothing new here other than the websites that streamline it.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
I think that's a bit much, Alibaba is to China what Amazon and Ebay are to the rest of the world.
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They've built their whole business around counterfeiting. Everything else they sell is generic, non-name brand trinkets. There are no real brands on Alibaba.
 
truthatallcost said:
Has anyone here ever ordered from Alibaba, or one of their many websites like AliExpress or TaoBao? I became interested in the fake guitars that Alibaba sells, so I had a look at their site. Knock off Gibson Les Paul Customs sell for around $400 delivered. The real LP Custom models sell for about $6,000.

Although the fake guitars are made well enough to convincingly copy the looks of a Gibson guitar, people on YouTube who've ordered them say all the hardware/pickups/tuners are junk and need replacing.

I don't think I'll ever order from a site like Alibaba, but what's your opinion/experience?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/22/alibaba-is-back-on-u-s-blacklist-of-notorious-marketplaces/
Click to expand...

This is long overdue. Going soft on China and its industries in order to encourage them to join the free markets and rule of law has not worked. It is time to deliver to them a dose of reality about the cost of stealing through trademark and copyright infringement tens of billions of dollars from others, from Michael Jordan to Adidas to Rolex and more.
 
truthatallcost said:
Has anyone here ever ordered from Alibaba, or one of their many websites like AliExpress or TaoBao? I became interested in the fake guitars that Alibaba sells, so I had a look at their site. Knock off Gibson Les Paul Customs sell for around $400 delivered. The real LP Custom models sell for about $6,000.

Although the fake guitars are made well enough to convincingly copy the looks of a Gibson guitar, people on YouTube who've ordered them say all the hardware/pickups/tuners are junk and need replacing.

I don't think I'll ever order from a site like Alibaba, but what's your opinion/experience?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/22/alibaba-is-back-on-u-s-blacklist-of-notorious-marketplaces/
Click to expand...

I think you can get fake garbage from reputable sites as well. Recently, I bought a skillet on Amazon. It was advertised as being branded Gotham Steel which you may have seen advertised on TV. The product arrived in short order, looked nice but was a different brand that I had never heard of. The first time I used it the bottom warped and I threw it away. It turns out that, while the inventory was in the U.S., the seller was in China. I do some selling on Amazon. I may reduce my buying there, however, unless they straighten out the issue of telling people where the seller is located. Ali Baba is not for me.
 
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