Used to be really great – same as buying off good eBay Chinese vendors. Never used to pay hardly any import duty or taxes until recently due to sensible vendors massively under declaring the value of the goods – don’t get away with that one anymore :(. Bought genuine XT M8000 2×11 groupset (cassette, chain, crankset, bb, f&r derailleurs, sti levers and 4 pot M8020 brake calipers) for just over £400 about 4 years ago got held up at Cusoms for about half a day while I paid £4 or so import duty! Took just over 3 weeks from order to delivery – I had also ordered during Chinese New Year holidays. Not had any complaints about anything from the Far East TBH except for the fact that nowadays they’ve had to be truthful about the value of the gear and so it’s not so bargainmongous.
***Doh!!! Of course I meant AliExpress – long day – BRAINFADE
*** Loads more stuff used to ship FOC – less so now.