Buying from aliexpress as an individual?

[XOIIO]

Well, I made an alibaba account, and put none as the company name, but apparently that's a big no no, and I got my account suspended, and it said to contact support, but when I clicked on that link, it said it was unavailable because my account was suspended.

Anyways, some time later I am looking at something on alibaba, try to register, and my email is taken, turns out they are the same, and to appeal for account reactivation I need a website, a bunch of certificates, a whole bunch of crap.

How do individuals go about buying from these websites, I mean geeze, plenty of the listings have a minimum quantity of one, it's not like they are all orders of $1,000+, so how do I do this right when I try again with a different email?

[mtdoc]

Well I don't believe I needed a company name when I signed up since I don't have one on my profile with them. I just used my Junk mail yahoo email address as well.

In other similar cases when I've needed to list a company name - I just used a fictitious name that I made up for use in those cases.

[XOIIO]

Hmm, maybe it's a newer requirement.

With them asking for certificates and documents it makes me wonder if they background check everything, even when you register.

[onlooker]

I recently registered an aliexpress account and had similar trouble. It turns out I mistakenly opened a seller's account in which one can do both buy and sale and it requires several docs to activate.

The support suggested me to just open a buyer account which did not ask for any docs other than an email address as the login and a credit card to pay any purchases.  Though, any email address can only be used for one account and can't be reused even if the account is cancelled.

[macboy]

I am no authority on this but I think Alibaba != Aliexpress.
AFAIK, the former is for business-to-business sales (wholesale to dealers, etc.), while the latter is for end consumers. Maybe that explains why you had trouble creating an Alibaba account

[Galenbo]

I am no authority on this but I think Alibaba != Aliexpress.

Indeed. Go to Aliexpress, clickclick, emailpasswordname, enter. Buy.

[TerraHertz]

Aliexpress in title, Alibaba in post? Are you really confusing them?
FWIW, I've been buying via aliexpress.com for a while, had no problems at all so far.

[Chalcogenide]

I have placed literaly hundreds of orders on Aliexpress, no problem whatsoever and I have never been asked to provide any company detail (I am a student). The last thing they want is to make placing orders cumbersome - the easier it is for you to order, the more likely they get your money.

[XOIIO]

Aliexpress in title, Alibaba in post? Are you really confusing them?
FWIW, I've been buying via aliexpress.com for a while, had no problems at all so far.

No, I did say alibaba twice in the post by mistake, but just replace the later with aliexpress and it becomes clear. I made an account with alibaba, it got suspended, and then going onto aliexpress, and got a notification that my account was suspended, asking for forms, like i mentioned in the original post, so apparently their systems are linked.

I was trying to find out if you need a registered buisness to buy from aliexpress, since they share registration databases.