Dishonest seller, poorly packaged goods, does not honour warranty
I bought two products worth £2000 on Alibaba. A light panel and a stand. The seller could hardly speak any English. The seller sent me hundreds of messages as part of a hard sell, and phoned me up, it was quite wearing, yet did not answer half my questions. The specification of the item was unclear and I asked for certain features and they did not deliver them. The products were packaged poorly and with items loose or unprotected inside the box and both boxes arrived damaged as they were heavy. The most expensive item arrived with a dent down one side and the seller refused to reimburse me despite the shipping being insured (I was told). They did begrudgingly send me a few small replace parts for the stand.
The seller lied on several occasions, including claiming that their shipping forwarder had raised a claim through UPS which they never did, and claiming that they were going to provide a partial refund via paypal of $120 which they never did. I believe this was a delaying tactic to stop me raising a new dispute through Alibaba. Over months they kept up the pretence of the payment about to be sent and in the end I challenged them suggesting they made the whole story up and they did not deny it nor deliver any funds.
When I first reported items in the stand box being damaged (many items were loose inside with no padding), I was told they would not send replacement parts until I complained to UPS. I did raise a complaint with UPS and the seller told me to keep hold of the packaging for them to inspect. I kept it for 2 months and no one from UPS contacted me and when i enquired with UPS multiple times they told me no case had been raised for this complaint by the sender.
I raised 3 separate cases with the Alibaba dispute team, and on the 1st two occasions the seller fobbed me off and made no offer of a partial refund for the damage to the panel or the stand not being fit for purpose when the stand is mounted in the vertical orientation. They told me they could not claim the damage to the panel through UPS. The 3rd dispute (for the same problems as Alibaba kept closing the cases early without letting me accept their offer), the seller did not respond and totally ignored me.
The stand is not height adjustable vertically as it is designed for the panel to rest of the bottom of the stand and is only hanging onto the upper bracket. Thus if you just the height of the stand the panel is no longer resting on the bottom of the stand and leans forwards and also as it is just hanging on the bracket, it could be knocked off. The bracket has bent under the weight of the panel.
The 2nd and 3rd cases I raised with Alibaba were warranty claims for the same issues and they basically refused to honour the warranty.
The panel works ok but I bought a customised panel with pulsing and it only works as pulsing, it is not possible to disable the pulsing. I asked the seller to copy the spec of an American unit but with custom wavelengths and a larger size and they did not adhere to that in terms of functionality. So apart from all these issues, the panel works well enough, aside from the fact that I have to put blocks of wood in the stand to keep the panel vertical and the light from the panel has hot spots unless you are 12" away (I drew a diagram to calculate the expected light distribution using 30 degree LEDs and at 6" away and the light from the LED concentrates in the middle of the 30 deg beam which is rather disappointing) but the customer service is appalling, they are dishonest and they do not honour the warranty so I would highly discourage anyone from buying from this company.