Ask HN: Anyone else noticed Aliexpress UI seems designed to deceive?
3 points
21 days ago
| 5 comments
| HN
I don’t know if it’s a recent change or been there a long time, but the entire Aliexpress UI seems designed to trick you into buying “bargains” by displaying an image with a price but that’s not what you get if you hit buy, you get some other sub item on the page.

It all seems designed explicitly to trick you into buying something that you didn’t expect.

Anyone else noticed this?

andrewstuart
21 days ago
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Consider this image:

https://imgur.com/a/o4OAPae

What do you think you’re buying if you press the buy button? A microcontroller for $6.93?

If you’re thinking you’re buying the microcontroller board, you’re wrong. It’s the oled highlighted lower right.

The microcontroller is $91.19.

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mPReDiToR
21 days ago
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Ali and eBay have been at this for years.

I've got a X to sell for £100. I can also sell Y, which costs £50. I'll advertise with the main selling price of Y and the main picture/description of X ... Profit!

Most people are selling X for £75, and a real bargain would be £50, so it doesn't seem 'too good to be true' that a seller would have a X for £50, on a good day.

It isn't Ali that's doing it, they're just complicit in not closing the loophole that's being exploited by sellers.

Caveat emptor.

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mickelsen
20 days ago
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Yeah, but at one time it made me dismissing of real deals that could be found at that target price you saw at first, and I was missing out. At one point I thought the website was excluding me from some prices (and there might be some truth to that, as I could test when sharing item links with friends, now I usually have the lowest price, they open the same link and another price is displayed for them)

Some sellers highlight the cheapest accessory to entice you to click, but to see if the ballpark price for it actually goes around that amount, scroll down to the recommendations and go see the same product from different sellers. If so, you can still score a lower price by adding it to your cart and letting it sit there for a while. Go back to the homepage, refresh, see the same product at a different price (sometimes from the same seller, further price drops won't update YOUR cart, you will have to add it again, but same goes for a price raise; at one time I had in my cart a lower price locked, saw the same item at a slightly higher price from the same listing, added it and my item got the updated price)

Also, some big sized items for my country (I was shopping for replacement taillight housing for my car), may have a high shipping fee for the whole month except Choice days, where they also get a discount.

Use the visual search or use "find similars" by tap-holding a listing.

These guys are masters at algorithmic pricing, and they make it addictive. I'm hooked. I love that site, the games, the juicy coupons, everything. I will keep giving them my money.

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jaggs
21 days ago
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Yep common practice.
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gregjor
21 days ago
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Yeah I think everyone noticed that a dodgy site selling questionable products has some dark patterns. Everyone in Asia, for a start.
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gtirloni
21 days ago
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Besides the terrible UI, AliExpress is pretty reliable, in my experience.
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