Buying from AliExpress - New channel for my needs?

I do watch movies connecting external hard drive to laptop and in turn connecting to LCD television. Occasional setting up this is fine but if I watch regularly, kind of boring to make sure connections are proper etc.  With limited technical knowledge in networking I hopped over the net to see how others see movies and came to know about NAS aka Network Attached Storage.  This also helps to store files on common place.  Familiarity with work place LAN is fine, but at home this is something new to me.  Wanted to venture in to it, but do not want to invest on jazzy high ticket items.  After some research, narrowed down to LAN Storage NAS device (Model WLX 652)  which meets my immediate requirement.

Ebay India has some listings of this product, and what I have observed is sellers clearly mentioned that shipping time is  about 30-40 days (surprisingly !!).   The reason being, they take the order and get it shipped from China/Hongkong and drop ship to your home.  The prices are about 4,000/- INR.    Earlier I got some small articles from Hong Kong, Thailand, so felt why can't I order directly from China?  Further research showed that lot of sites sell them to various countries, including Amazon US etc.  However my interest was to get it shipped to India in reliable means considering customs channel etc.  I have found Dealextreme and Aliexpress are the sites from which some of the Indian folks bought which have some positive feedback.  As I wanted minimal investment on this NAS expedition,  zero or minimal  international shipping also makes sense.  Dealextreme vendors do not have zero shipping options and Aliexpress has some zero shipping vendors.

Little exploring on Aliexpress gave me a flavor that it is similar to ebay (no bidding but direct buying option).  Sellers ratings, buyer, sellers feedback, multiple shipping options, retail and whole sale rates etc.  I wanted to make sure that if anybody from India bought from this site and verify their feedback on aliexpress as well as vendor feedback.  Found one person gave positive feedback on specific vendor where he bought the same equipment which I was interested.  One successful proven case is found.  Unfortunately I can't contact that individual via aliexpress to get more doubts clarified.  The price is relatively less even including 50% customs charges (assuming max customs that I can think of) as compared to ebay India prices.  Decided to take some risk and plunge !!

While creating a user account on Aliexpress, realized that it is related to Alibaba (which most of you might be seeing on any google search results while you try querying a product on google).  Alibaba is whole sale seller (B2B) where as Aliexpress is  consumer oriented site.  In order to safe guard myself from fraud and other means,  did enough scanning and opted for a specific vendor as well as chose mode of payment via virtual credit card.  Now a days, banks do provide this facility where you can set a limit on this virtual card and it will be linked to your regular credit card.  First time the transaction did not go through validation part and I was suspicious about the so called international transaction.  Before abandoning the plan, I called up the bank to find out that  starting October 2013, all international credit card transactions are stopped and you have to request the bank to allow.  The window which this can be allowed depends on you.  Either one or two days or 10 days if you are travelling abroad.   After talking to bank and trying one more time,  the transaction went through.   First sigh of relief. 

By the way, just like ebay, unless you confirm the product receipt on Aliexpres,  the vendor is not paid.  This escrow kind of mechanism is good for both parties.  Vendor's promise on their site about delivery is about 30-40 days.  I was mentally prepared for this long duration as I am getting better deal and also not in a hurry for the product.  Aliexpress provides tracking site details after order is placed but they suggest you to visit it after 3 or 4 days.  From the internet found other sites where I can track them from China post angle as well as India customs/Posts angle. I have listed them below.  I was curious as well as anxious about this episode so I almost daily tracked whereabouts of this package.  Below listing gives break up of the packet's itinerary. 

Action	Days
Order Placed	0
Payment Confirmed by Aliexpress	1
Order shipped – Tracking number issued	3
Tracking appeared on China post	3
Sent to Airline message	13
India foreign post office tracking site	10
Sent to domestic post office within India	5
Received	3

It took totally 38 days from the order placement to receipt.  Though I requested the seller to leave an invoice copy in the packet, they did not.  Indian customs opened it and assessed the value and customs charges are levied.  Indian customs generally do not go with invoice value but their own assessment from the predefined price list.  This gentleman has a good article about various customs charges.   I paid  2192/- INR for the product and customs charges paid to post man were 342/-, Total 2534/-;  which is still 37% less than ebay India lowest price of 3999/-.  Waiting for about 37 days and getting 37% discount is not bad at all.  Would I still buy from Aliexpress later?  Yes, but not expensive items.     Over all experience is positive.

• China Post Tracking can be done  here
• Indian Foreign post office tracking can be done here

I will write another post about NAS device installation and experiments

Update 30Aug16.   
Bought a small item value of $7 on 8Aug16, shipped on 15Aug16 and received in tact on 30Aug16.  22 days and no customs charged.   It was shipped from Malaysia not sure what are the business logistics between vendors in mainland China and Malaysia.  Happy with the transaction.