Banggood questions?

Another one; do you get charged import duty fees when you buy from Banggood?

It's been several years, but I have purchased from them.  Just be sure to use PayPal and not your credit card, as you'll be double-protected.

Bangood has two or three distribution centers, each product will show you where it is being sent from. The ones distributed directly from China are always the cheapest.

As for import duties, I didn't have to pay them, but that seems to be the luck of the draw. I also have made a few dozen orders from Pimoroni, in the UK, all of them except one came in duty-free. So it's really up to Canada Customs.

For the record, I have never been charged duty on anything I've ordered from China. And I have ALWAYS been charged duty on anything I've ordered from the US!

😎

Bill

Posted by: @yurkshirelad

How many people here have bought from Banggood? Every Youtube video I watch has something that came from Banggood and it seems like a lot of people buy from them.

Are they reliable and if do you ship from the US or China?

I'm tempted to buy from them, especially as they seem to have a $25 coupon for new customers. I'm just not sure if it's worth the hassle of dealing with any returns to a company in China.

It is certainly not worth the hassle of handling returns for banggood. On the other hand I've only had one absolutely defective product from them. (although I did receive several lessons in reading descriptions carefully)

The other downside with banggood is that it will take somewhere between 2 weeks and 3 months for your order to actually arrive, if shipped from the Chinese warehouses.  It would be a bit easier to deal with if you knew it would reliably take (for example) 5 weeks.

Posted by: @jker

The other downside with banggood is that it will take somewhere between 2 weeks and 3 months for your order to actually arrive, if shipped from the Chinese warehouses

Agreed - this is also the issue with eBay, and most sellers from China. Gearbest is the exception, their stuff usually gets to me in Canada in about a week, but that's because they usually ship from Europe and not China.

I only order stuff from eBay when I don't need it right away. So say that I find a cool module that I want to do an episode about. I buy one on Amazon or some other place that will deliver it the next day. And I then buy 5 or 10 more, at a much-reduced price, on eBay. In about 6 or 8 weeks they will arrive, so I can just put them into stock.

Posted by: @jker

It is certainly not worth the hassle of handling returns for banggood.

I've never even thought of that! Since most of what I buy from those vendors are electronic components the concept of a "return" hadn't crossed my mind.

But you are correct, and for that reason, I would limit my overseas purchases to items that I will never return. 

I'm in the market for a bench DMM, and Banggood has one that is several hundred dollars cheaper than the unit I'm looking at on Amazon right now.  But you do make a good point about returns, so it probably isn't worth buying it from them.

😎

Bill

Old topic, but most if not all videos I've been watching, talk about Aliexpress, and not Bangood. I can't keep up with these content creators! 😆 

@yurkshirelad LOL, once you subscribe to several You Tube channels it gets even more complicated.

I have used Bangood for a few "non essential" items to convince myself it was OK to do so. Like everything, you need to weigh in the total cost versus what is available locally, or not. I sometimes think I overanalyze to save a buck 🙂

@yurkshirelad There is a hierarchy to prices (least expensive to most), AliExpress, Bangood, eBay, and Amazon. Delivery time is the reverse. Returns are probably not going to happen for any but Amazon but very seldom needed for this type of stuff.

Good to know, thanks! I may be brave one day and buy some cheap bits and pieces from China. We'll see. It's very tempting with the rising prices here. Do you all have any preferred sellers on the Chinese sites?

@yurkshirelad AliExpress is the only seller I use. These are not cheap knock offs, they come from the same factory as the expensive items elsewhere. If you haven't seen the inside of one of these Chinese factories it is mind boggling. The bosses use bicycles to get from one end to the other, the workers live on site, the one I saw had 8 chefs preparing all kinds of food for the workers to keep them happy. They are cheaper because you are cutting out 2 or 3 middle men who each increase the price they pay from 50% to 100%. A $1 chip at the factory door can quickly rise to $16 after the exporter, distributor, wholesaler, and finally retailer marks it up.