 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here. Today's video, quick two tips for avoiding buying fake or counterfeit merchandise on AliExpress. I've been buying stuff from AliExpress for what feels like an eternity. It's probably more like seven years and I bought literally thousands of products on AliExpress. Now, when I tell people about AliExpress, those who haven't heard about the website before, commonly they're concerned when they hear that it's a Chinese marketplace is, oh, isn't it going to be a bunch of fake stuff? Now, am I experienced? There definitely is a lot of fake merchandise on AliExpress. It's a problem, but there's also a lot of really good stuff that especially the kind of stuff I buy, which tends to be video and photography related gear. It's often simply far cheaper to buy stuff from AliExpress imported from the Far East than it is for me to buy it locally. And that is the value of buying from AliExpress. Now, how do you buy stuff from AliExpress without ending up with fake merchandise? So here are my two tips. The first one is that AliExpress is a Chinese marketplace. It's the B2C arm of Alibaba Group, which is a huge B2B supply marketplace. So the first thing, if I was looking for a product on AliExpress, I would firstly figure out where the company is based. In my opinion, and this is just my theory, if we're talking about Chinese brands, it makes a lot more sense that they would be selling stuff on AliExpress because they're based in China or, let's say, Hong Kong, and they are selling through B2B channels through Alibaba. And then they also probably dispatch from the same logistics chain via AliExpress direct to consumer. So in terms of avoiding fakes, the I would be less concerned actually about buying goods from companies I know are based in China or Hong Kong than I would in buying goods from companies that I know are not based there. For instance, I don't know, Adidas or Nike. So the first thing I do is if I'm looking at spending a couple of hundred dollars on an AliExpress purchase, I would firstly look to see where the company is based. If it's actually a Chinese company, I would actually be more confident than if I were to discover that it were not a Chinese company and it wouldn't make sense that their merchandise is somehow wound up in China and they're dispatching out of there. So that's my first tip. The second tip, and by the way, I don't typically spend that much money on AliExpress, it's the unusual goods that are in the hundred dollar range. And a common bit of advice is don't spend more money than you can afford to lose. But if I'm looking at getting something in that territory, you know, maybe it's a microphone or maybe it's a studio light or something like that. The second thing I would do after that first, that's my first part of the research is I would actually write to the company. I have written over the past couple of years to a bunch of different manufacturers, including Chinese ones. And I've just said, hey, guys, I really want to buy your product. Can you confirm that this link is authentic merchandise? It's authorized. It's not a contraband. And in my experience, companies are happy to answer that. If they don't answer it, I probably wouldn't buy from them. If they can't go to the trouble of answering a quick email. And I've used this with success for a number of companies and they're very happy to respond. Hey, thanks for checking. We can confirm this is a legitimate seller of our goods on AliExpress. Or occasionally they'll say, hey, thanks for tipping us off that this was illegitimate merchandise. And I would specifically ask the brand. I would not ask the AliExpress supplier for, I think, obvious reasons that if it is illegitimate, they're probably not going to say, oh, nice call. Yeah, we're selling fake merchandise. So write your email to the company customer support. And again, that can also be found on their website. So using those two tips to the best of my knowledge, I haven't wind up with any fake goods from AliExpress buying a lot of video accessories and sound accessories and lighting accessories over the past couple years. In fact, if you look behind me there, these are all small purchases. But I think all those little LED lighting things came from AliExpress as well as the little scorpion grip for my old camcorder. So there's a lot of good stuff there. But of course, no one wants to end up with junk and fake stuff. Hope that video couple of tips were interesting. If you are buying things from AliExpress, it can definitely be a great way to save money, just with the caveat that AliExpress is customer support. And my experience is pretty poor. And if I had a choice between spending the same money on AliExpress or the same money on Amazon, if Amazon were an option, I would choose it every day of the week. Thank you guys for watching this video. If you do want to get more videos from me on this and other subjects, do please consider hitting the subscribe button. And thank you guys very much for watching.