Marketplace
I've bought a bunch of items lately on Aliexpress and had lots of issues with sellers saying they do not have the item in stock, or trying to get me to pay additional post.
One seller requested me to cancel my order as it was not in stock but by the time I saw the message they added a tracking number and I was unable to cancel. The tracking was updating as arrived in Australia around a week later, then showed onboard for delivery and delivered by atl. I also got an email from Aliexpress to pick up the parcel at the post office but no record of it at the post office, or from Australia Post.
I confirmed with Australia Post that the item was never received by them so it would appear it is some kind of fake tracking system as it did also arrive and update unusually fast.
I am now worried I will not get a refund because its marked as sent, and this is some kind of scam set up. Although ive had lots of dishonest and annoying sellers in the past, saying they dont have an item in stock and a long time waste in getting money back.
Never actually had an item say it has arrived when it hasn't. I paid with Paypal, but would that even help if marked as received?
It's a common scam these days. You buy something that's often much cheaper than other sellers, they ask you to pay more or to cancel the order. If you don't pay more or cancel they'll marked it as shipped with someone elses tracking number. Once you mark the order as confirmed, that's when the funds are released to them.
Definitely raise a dispute on the transaction with AliExpress if it lets you. Obviously providing screenshots of them asking for money and anything in writing you may have got from Auspost. Sometimes you can even use the bot in the AliExpress help centre on the app to raise a dispute if it won't let you yet.
I always try to avoid the sellers with <95% feedback and any with "3C" in their name are almost guaranteed to be scammers.
Common scams on AliExpress