aliexpress is a huge online retail marketplace based in china and you can get some extremely
good value bike parts on there like this 200 pound carbon performance group set with discs
rotors and everything even a chain but there's a few things you should know before ordering
sensor lt london wheels elite wheels wind space zed race jointec all of these brands have a
reputation customer service and aftercare most of these are owned and registered in the far east and
have official stores on aliexpress and some are just available from existing outlets on aliexpress
generally speaking all of these brands are known to respect patent laws provide customer service
and even some of them have uci approved products like the elves frame sets there
will be some more that could be added to this list these are the ones that i've
had experience with but feel free to mention some others in the comment section down below
stuff takes ages to turn up i ordered this like six weeks ago one by gravel mech speaking of
someone based in the uk china is quite far away so everything takes a while to get here everything on
there seems to say in stock but i don't know if this is actually true and things are being made
to order or if it actually takes just ages to ship because it's on a ship in any case it can
take absolutely ages so factor that in if you're looking to build a bike quickly then uh your
stuff might take a while they do provide you with estimates on the shopping pages but generally i
found these to be completely wrong so the estimate for this was wrong i've ordered brakes before and
they've only taken three weeks to arrive and it said about eight weeks and i know my friend harry
ordered a whole frame set from aliexpress and it took even longer than that so i guess just
don't order from aliexpress if you're in a rush in terms of import tax it depends which outlets
that you buy stuff from this group set made by sensor i went through the official sensor store
and on the receipt you can see they've factored in tax into the price of the bundle now that's
not always the case sometimes there isn't any tax on there at all i don't know if there's some
fiddling going on with the numbers i've heard rumors of people receiving tax letters in the post
weeks after ordering but none of the stuff that i've ordered and the earliest one was probably
six seven months ago have had that problem i've actually had more issues ordering stuff from
europe recently than any of this so thanks brexit depending on the seller you'll probably have some
tracking as well it's pretty rudimentary it will basically tell you when it's left china
when it's arrived in the destination country and then when it's out for delivery so it's okay
and you can see that your order is in motion but it's not really that detailed so nice to
have especially in terms of peace of mind but not the most detailed so i don't rely on it too much
shop around for bundles this is good for a few reasons one everything should be
compatible they put these packages together on purpose and everything is going to work
with everything else so you're not going to accidentally end up with a bb that
doesn't fit your chainsaw everything's been packaged nicely and chosen to work seamlessly
on top of this it's only one transaction and you're going through one seller so even though
it says free postage they're factoring in postage into the price if you're only gonna buy one box
of stuff there's only one thing to keep track of there's only one set of postage and there's
only one set of tacks on top of that the more you spend with one company the more likely they are to
give you a better deal when i have gone to look at individual parts it's always ended up being
slightly cheaper buying them as a bundle even if i've ended up with stuff that i'm not going to use
so my frame doesn't take this threaded bottom bracket i've ended up with quite a few of them
but it's cheaper to buy the bundle than it would be to buy all of these parts separately
furthermore the sellers that are actually making these bundles tend to be the legit ones as well
so if you find a bundle they put effort into making it generally you should be fine
think about aliexpress like it's amazon but with a really
bad search feature that doesn't really work properly and returns different results every
time you use it but it's a marketplace with different sellers and the sellers have reviews
on their items check the reviews because generally if something has been reviewed well it means one
people have actually received it and you can see what people think of the product when you've got
thousands of people doing this you get a pretty good sample of users and you can work out if it's
something that's worth looking into the more time and research you put into these things
the better result you're going to end up with even look on youtube there are other people
testing these products it's worth checking out china cycling and trace velo they both
have excellent reviews of slightly less unknown products that aren't in the mainstream media
be prepared to fit stuff yourself maybe not your local bike shop might be willing to help
you install some of this stuff but they might not it's going to be unfamiliar they might not like
working on unknown brands they might not have time to work on stuff that you're not buying from them
directly i'm sure there are dedicated workshops out there that will but be prepared to do some of
your own mechanics most of the parts available and the stuff that i've used are all cable operated
there's no brake bleeds involved you can usually install them without too much hassle and a basic
home tool kit you don't need all of this bike shop man nick what would you do in your shop and how do
you think other bike shops would react if someone came in with a aliexpress group set or wheels or
handlebars or parts the biggest thing is liability so if you fit it people kind of assume that you
giving a stand for approval i mean we funny even with like really if something's worn out
secondhand we try and kind of advise people against it but i mean if they're willing to
pay to have it fitted most some will do it we'll just write in the job card clearly stating that
we recommend against it i'm not saying all of it's bad because you get some secondhand
shimano stuff that's way worse more dangerous conditions but it's who's liable and then
that's the problem do you think how you're approached by a customer makes a big difference
in if you're gonna actually work with them or not yes being polite and friendly and
stuff gets you a long way always respect that your bike shop has limited time and any time
spent working on parts that they're not familiar with and may take some research they're going to
be totally within their right to charge a premium for it so if you're really stuck you can approach
them but be polite but don't be surprised if they don't want to work on parts like this
customer service and aftercare is gonna completely depend on where you order the parts from like i
said it's a bit like amazon there are different stores and the amount of customer service and the
quality of that customer service is gonna change dramatically between who you buy from now when
you order something from one of these private stores your money actually goes to aliexpress
first and your payment isn't actually released to the store that you bought the stuff from until you
receive it that means if there is a problem with postage and something just doesn't get to you
you're covered to an extent now this hasn't personally happened to me so i don't know
exactly what the process is when that does happen but everything is arrived to me safe and sound or
just fairly safe and sounders the boxes have been a bit beaten up but everything's been fine inside
further to that there is a chat feature on the website i actually had a bit of a problem where
the rubber hoods on one of my group sets were mismatched so it was kind of nice rubber on one
of them and then a bit kind of hard mismatched rubber on the other i was interested to see
if they'd reply and try and resolve it and the answer is yes they got back in touch straight away
and i think if i put some pressure on them they would have happily sent some new ones to keep me
content naturally there is a bit of a language barrier so i don't think speaking to anybody
on the phone would be an option but the live chat's pretty good in my experience
the companies that i've dealt with have replied within 24 hours but it goes to show
how important it is to go with the named brands rather than fake stuff which is my next point
there is a fair bit of fake stuff on aliexpress has a bit of a reputation
for it you can buy fake cycling jerseys fake zip handlebars don't buy them though because
it's dangerous and it's not fair to the companies that they're ripping off biggest problem with
this is safety so if you were gonna buy a set of carbon handlebars a carbon stem fake carbon frame
fake brakes all of these could fail at any minute you don't know if there's any proper testing going
on you don't know if there's any quality control there's certainly not going to be any good
customer service and it's just not worth putting your life in the hands of fake cycling products
which to be honest are not that much cheaper than the legit brands on aliexpress granted they're a
lot cheaper than the western brands that they're copying but you're not getting the actual thing i
guess they exist because people want the label they want their bike to say s-works on it in
any case not worth it don't buy the fake stuff it's not fair it's not right and it's dangerous
usually if you look at the product images and the blurb you can tell if something's fake it doesn't
look quite right and the description might have spelling errors in but the biggest giveaway in
my mind is that the price is too good to be true if it looks too good to be true it is especially
if it's on aliexpress now what the normal prices are do your research read the reviews and you'll
probably be all right now i'm going to be testing more stuff on this channel so you don't have to
next up probably next up i've actually got a few boxes of stuff lying around but this one is a uh
one by carbon group set gonna go on a gravel bike subscribe for more please
leave any questions in the comment section down below thanks for watching and see you guys soon