Been looking at parts for a couple of builds I’m contemplating. AliExpress and eBay seem to have some good prices, aliExpress have some that are definitely too good to be true (NX 12 speed crankset for just under 50 US.).
I would never buy a carbon frame or handlebars or anything because the proliferation of fakes but anyone had any experience with stems, bars, BB, cranks, derailleurs, etc that claim to be sram/Shimano?

Ask yourself if it’s too good to be true and it probably will be. The real cheap stuff may well be seconds that have been diverted from the crusher. Also be prepared to wait weeks for them.

AliExpress I’d be very cautious about. Chinese state sponsored retail site for knock offs.

eBay, maybe, if the listing is a company, better if UK based and has a web site you can check on, check the company is genuine etc, good reputation also but that can be faked. Even UK listings can be selling fakes. Import cheap from China, small mark up for profit. Sometimes supposedly UK based listings are set up by Chinese companies anyway.

Depends on the part. If it’s just something generic, unbranded and can’t really go wrong or not a disaster if it did and it’s cheap then I may go for it. Sram/Shimano brand stuff I stick stick with UK stores or maybe France/Germany (bike-discount.de, bike-components.de etc).

Put a link up to the parts you are looking at for us to look at.

As above, too good to be true……….

I bought some “Shimano” v-brake levers for my daughters bike from Amazon, when I bought them I wasn’t sure if they were end of line stuff discounted or fakes but I gave them a go. They were very fake and on looking into it a bit more, you could near enough have any word you wanted printed where mine said Shimano.

They were £10, arrived in 2 or 3 days and worked perfectly. You could tell they weren’t genuine as the edges were a bit square and the finish wasn’t as good but they worked perfectly well for 2 odd years until we sold the bike.

For a kids bike used to pootle around I was happy to risk it, for something that gets used a bit more or has a tougher life then I’d give it a swerve.

Use Aliexpress – with no probs. Slow delivery as expected though. Good for batteries, light, torches & associated brackets. Often get latest spec lights before they appear on Ebay uk.

Bars and stems id never risk, you can get them cheap from a uk company like on one, raleigh, or chain reaction who will at least have checked the factory out and checked the testing has been done.

Seatpost, yea, whats the worst that could happen, ive broken a genuine easton seatpost, youre not going to sit down on the stump afterwards.

Frame and forks, ive just ordered a set of fatbike forks from one of the ebay outlets. Simply because any off the shelf options are £££. Id happily order a frame if it fit my needs but id always put geometry and other features ahead of price and weight so it wouldn’t just be a carbon bike for the sake of it.

Other stuff, ive had some ti qr’s from ebay that were junk.

Sram grpupsets….. seeing as sram have enough trouble making a durable groupset im not sure id want to trust a fake. And if i wanted A £50 set of cranks id buy a £50 set of cranks. Thats what deore is for. Why buy a set that say XT on thr arms and look nothing like the real ones?

Good for batteries, light, torches & associated brackets. Often get latest spec lights before they appear on Ebay uk

There’s an occasional genuine bargain, but on the whole, why do you end up needing to buy the latest lights/batteries before they go on ebay, is it because last years are dead?

I have bought off Aliexpress before but I am very picky about the type of components.
The ones I remeber are a full set of BB7 calipers levers and discs and a Trailstar Tarp.
Delivery time has been acceptable and never delayed by customs or arrives with a duty payment outstanding unlike kit from the US.
The items on ebay from Taiwan all seem to indicate they might incur extra duty but never knowingly bought form there.

Right now I am buying from Germany as they have the real thing at a good price. The habit of just changing a $ sign for a £ or € means I bought 2020 spec Reba shocks at a very good price delivered.

Delivery time has been acceptable and never delayed by customs or arrives with a duty payment outstanding unlike kit from the US.
The items on ebay from Taiwan all seem to indicate they might incur extra duty but never knowingly bought form there.

That’s mostly because they misrepresent whats in the packages, you should pay VAT and duty, but 99p “manufacturing sample – stainless bolt” passes straight through the system.

Ebay have had a bit of a crackdown on it, at least partially because in the US sales tax is imposed by the state the buyer is in, so for a long time online retailers like amazon were getting away with being cheaper as bricks and mortar shops were the only ones charging the equivalent of VAT. Consumers were supposed to declare it on their tax return (but obviously never did). Now the major online retailers have to collect the appropriate taxes.

I have loads of stuff from Ali.

Shimano hydraulic brakes
narrow wide chainrings
Bars
Seatposts
Microshift gears
sunrace cassettes
lights

The knock offs are pretty obvious. Watch delivery times, some stuff I’ve had inside a week other stuff comes by boat and can take over a month.

I’ve bought tons of stuff on aliexpress but never anything more complicated for bikes than a chainring (which they’re great for, £8 for a perfectly good narrow-wide in a BCD and size that nobody else seems to want to do, stuff like that where normally production volumes would be too low without such a vast reach)

Weirdly, the payment protection and buyer protection is better than amazon’s, in my experience.

Put a link up to the parts you are looking at for us to look at

I’ve looked at a lot. TRP Spyre and HY/RD, which have e.g. the ‘C’ suffix indicating OEM.
ZTTO stems, seatposts, seatclamps etc. Alloy, can’t be any worse than Planetx own brand stuff, I’d have thought

Some examples I’ve found

Crank arms and BB may be real and is cheap because older and chainring is a non-brand brand.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32914569422.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000060.3.194e70eaR8uvo7&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.146401.0&scm_id=1007.13339.146401.0&scm-url=1007.13339.146401.0&pvid=e3ace6e1-15ff-47e1-9c2b-728a70e64dc6

Everything looks legit, but maybe just a diligent fake seller

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33029528802.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000014.3.2c3a5cd93F6QQz&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.13338.146400.0&scm_id=1007.13338.146400.0&scm-url=1007.13338.146400.0&pvid=6608613b-9fe9-4d7a-91ea-797801aa6a31

Fake Sram, fake Truvativ or real and just a crapshoot what you actually get?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1000007851323.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.41126ab0NCsOwg&s=p&algo_pvid=2960160e-26fe-43c4-adb8-e2bf07212d7c&algo_expid=2960160e-26fe-43c4-adb8-e2bf07212d7c-6&btsid=19a79521-757e-4b37-a1af-c4745c602554&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3,searchweb201603_55

That’s mostly because they misrepresent whats in the packages, you should pay VAT and duty, but 99p “manufacturing sample – stainless bolt” passes straight through the system.

Ebay uses a 3rd party for its VAT etc on international shipments that is also notorious for inflating the fees etc. Had a mate order some stuff to where he lives, bike parts incur not duty, just VAT equivalent and yet ebay’s global shipper program shows he is going to pay 20% duty to them. He’s never bothered ordering under those conditions to see it it is an error, or they are just trying it on. Or if he could get it refunded.

The knock offs are pretty obvious. Watch delivery times, some stuff I’ve had inside a week other stuff comes by boat and can take over a month.

I can spot the really obvious fakes (Shemano Doere) but other than that most of them look good to me. One seller even scratches off the serial number because selling China OEM stuff outside China is illegal. They are either smart scammers or the only honest seller on AE because no-one else does it.

Yes there’s some seriously dodgy stuff on aliexpress but also some cheap gold if you search and read enough reviews (the ones where people comment about using not just “it arrived”) you can find some cracking deals.

My list of stuff bought from there includes…
-Bars x2 (all good at the moment)
-Seatpost (ditto)
-Seat x2 (one great, other failed when I crashed HARD)
-Tubeless valves (1/2 price compared to everywhere)
-pedals (£5 – lived for about 8 months then died on my commuter)
-Zoom CX brakes (great, other not a lot of use)
-Jersey/shorts ~3x (great – sizing hit and miss)
-Meths camp stove (great)
-soldering Iron (great – silly hot when needed)
-Dash cam (great)
-Wire, lots of wire (cheapness)
-Tap/die set (not great but use to clean up FDM parts)
-3d printer (great – been upgraded but still going)
-3d printing filament (90% success rate – 1 roll went in the bin, bought 10+)
-Various electronics and components (currently got parts for a new 3d printer on order)

Just looks at my order history – 146 orders in the last 6 years!

This thread got me looking. I generally think if something is too good to be true then it probably is. But the Shimano SLX and xt bits have me intrigued. If I had the spare cash I’d certainly buy something to check it out.

@cromolyolly which seller is removing the serial numbers? This has me really intrigued.

@LAT – this is one, I think I found a couple of different ones – of course they might all be the same guy with different ‘store’ names

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33029552765.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000013.13.75bd4c86VUppqF&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.146401.0&scm_id=1007.13339.146401.0&scm-url=1007.13339.146401.0&pvid=b8191a1c-ec1a-499f-a661-ba63a3c3276e

The storefront, if you want to see all the different things they scratch the serial numbers off

https://gizabike.aliexpress.com/store/1654140?spm=a2g0o.detail.100005.1.75bd4c86VUppqF

Thanks

I got my daughters Wellgo KC008 pedals from Aliexpress, they were genuine and turned up within the 2 weeks the promised, well packaged.

That’s not to negate what I said above but keep a sensible head and you shouldn’t go wrong.

Ali Express is a marketplace, there are tens of thousands of sellers on there, so it’s not as simple as “it’s dodgy”.

I’ve never had a problem with anything I’ve bought. I got 2 frames and a set of rims, but I did my homework and bought from reputable companies (Deng Fu and FarSports). I bought a set of wheels off a random seller, just chose one with good feedback. They’ve been fine.

I’d never buy anything obviously branded – there used to be loads of “Ritchey” components on there, which I’d not go near. Trust your judgement.

Thisisnotaspoon

Seatpost, yea, whats the worst that could happen, ive broken a genuine easton seatpost, youre not going to sit down on the stump afterwards.

I beg to differ after an incident with a USE seat post in 1994. I escaped with a rip to my jeans.

I’ve bought forks from AliExpress – at the time the best option for 1 1/8″ straight for a 26″ wheel in the brand I was after. As long as you’re careful and read the reviews (Inc any pictures – in my case someone had dismantled the fork to replace the oil and posted pics) you should be ok. In my case, it was a genuine fork and most likely oem.

Ah forks, I bought a set of the cheapest carbon “gravel” forks, 1 1/8 straight and post mount.

There were bubbles in the top layer of carbon (!) and the dropouts full of resin.

Refunded by AMEX chargeback in the end after seller insisted they were OK.

Didn’t put me off though. I have 10 pages of orders since 2013.

Novatech hubs, LED lights, cheainrings, bar, genuine shimano brakes and very cheap genuine shimano disc pads, forks, frames, polarised sunglasses, pedals, phone screens etc etc