Caution: Aliexpress order cancel when seller changes the deal

[sleemanj]

So I've been on the hunt for a batch of 128MB Micro SD cards (yes MB, not GB).  Anyway, long story short, seller I got the last lot from has upped the price dramatically, so I start looking around. 

Seems that the Aliexpress sellers are using the 128MB as a "loss-leader" primarily, so that their price in listings when you search for Micro SD is under a buck, a lot of them say either "limit 1 per ID" or want you to buy additional capacities otherwise they won't send it.

After some hunting I managed to find a couple that didn't have such limits stated but still a workable price, and put in my modest order (30 units FWIW).  Now the fun starts.  The seller says "oh no, we can't send, if you want to buy it, you'll have to pay extra shipping, hope you understand blah blah". 

Ok, no problem, I request cancellation, "seller has changed the price".

"No friend, we did not change the price, I hope you can understand, it is limit one per ID not change price, please resume order and choose "other reasons" for cancel". (the item details do not mention any limit)

Hmmmm.  Right.  "you'll have to pay extra shipping", and "we did not change the price".  No that's a price increase in my books, my guess is that there is a penalisation meted out by Aliexpress if a vendor changes prices, hence their insistence (multiple messages) that I should change the cancellation request to "other reasons". 

I decide to just wait for the cancellation to be automatically approved when the vendor didn't respond.

Unfortunately the sneaky sneaky vendor pulled what in hindsight I should have seen coming, at almost the last moment before auto-cancelling, they rejected the cancellation, marked the order shipped, gave it a fake tracking number, and have now asked that I should dispute the order in 5 days and they will accept dispute..... hmm.

Of course, bit of an own goal for them, since once I've got my money back now I can place negative feedback, but it does mean it's going to take longer for that refund to come through now.

[codeboy2k]

What? first extra shipping then marked shipped but not shipped?

who's the seller so we can avoid them?

[sleemanj]

who's the seller so we can avoid them?

"Super Deals Trade Co.,Ltd."

[codeboy2k]

Thanks! noted.

[Mechanical Menace]

I'm not condoning the seller at all here but why not go for the bigger, cheaper sizes? I know it may be overkill for your uses but an 8 gig card can be picked up for less than a 1 gig card, which can be got for less than a 128 meg card...

[SeanB]

Probably needs to do the simpler writing that low capacity cards support. If 128M is all you need then simply using any card of 128M, 256M or 512M will work just as well. I have some old cameras that will only work with a card 512M or under. Even have the card that came with a Nokia phone, a whopping 32M of storage. Even have a Sony MS which is 8M, and which will store 3 photos, which coincidentally is also the number of shots the very knackered battery is able to manage as well. As a new battery pack is more than the ( originally darn expensive, and with nice Karl Zeiss lens and a whole 2Mp imager) camera is worth, I rarely use it.

[mikeselectricstuff]

One reason is that older, smaller cards are less likely to be fake - there are a ton of cards out there that mis-report their size to pretend to be larger.

[sleemanj]

I'm not condoning the seller at all here but why not go for the bigger, cheaper sizes? I know it may be overkill for your uses but an 8 gig card can be picked up for less than a 1 gig card, which can be got for less than a 128 meg card...

A few reasons

  price - if you only need a few meg, 128MB is the cheapest you can get

  incredibly unlikely to be faked, but if you buy any >1GB memory cards from China there is a chance you'll get a fake, the odds only get worse the bigger you get, with the high capacities you are probably 90% certain to get a fake I'd wager

  the small capacity cards are likely slower types (regardless of what the vendor says!), which some devices are happier with - especially since we are talking about talking to them with microcontrollers, let alone through level shifters to a 5v micro

  I buy them both for my own use, and for resale in NZ, I've sold quite a lot of them so I think other people must agree that there is still a place for low capacity cards, as long as the price reflects it


 
 

[Mechanical Menace]

...

Ah right, for things like this I like to buy locally where I can get a (shitty but genuine capacity) 8 gig card for £2.20, 4 for £2.26, or 1 for £4.98. >1 gig is over a tenner...

I honestly thought China would be the same with that sort of thing, currently small capacity flash would be more expensive due to lower demand, like small or slow ram is lol.

Thanks for the reply, I'll keep this in mind for the future.

[bktemp]

  the small capacity cards are likely slower types (regardless of what the vendor says!), which some devices are happier with - especially since we are talking about talking to them with microcontrollers, let alone through level shifters to a 5v micro

It depends on how you use them:
Cards above 128-512MB (depending on age) use MLC NAND flash. MLC flash have larger page sizes. In a small embedded systems you often write only one sector instead of large blocks of many 100kBytes.
But writing a single sector (512 Bytes) means a whole page on the flash must be updated. If the page size is 512 Bytes it fits perfectly. Modern MLC or TLC flash memory have page sizes of many kBytes. If you update only 512 Bytes the SD controller must first read the data, update the 512 bytes of the sector written and then write the page back. This is not only slower, but also reduces wears the flash cells.
Small SD carda are therefore faster when reading or writing small amounts of data and have a much larger life span.

[amyk]

One reason is that older, smaller cards are less likely to be fake - there are a ton of cards out there that mis-report their size to pretend to be larger.

Another is that you're more likely to get SLC flash than MLC, which means much better endurance and retention. Samsung doesn't even make MLC flash in 128MB (1Gbit) size.

[mikeselectricstuff]

A friend of mine recently went through a long  and painful process of finding a reliable source of MicroSD cards to ship with a a product - I think he now has some reliable sources - let me know if you're interested & I'll find out some details.