Alibaba.com
Ranked 7 of 8 online marketplaces by recommenders
Recommended for cheap wholesale and parts sourcing and easy yuan payments; critics say refunds and fees are hard to get back.
Recommended for cheap wholesale and parts sourcing and easy yuan payments; critics say refunds and fees are hard to get back.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Refunds refused or delayed
“AliBaba refuses to refund all of the fees charged. And there's no way to leave negative feedback of a cancelled transaction.”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Thermal Grizzly was scammed twice on raw materials worth €40k” “they say they need info from DHL before proceeding with a refund”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Tell HN: Alibaba Sucks” “the payment processing fee of this order is not refundable”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Tell HN: Alibaba Sucks” Fees charged and not refundable
“AliBaba refuses to refund all of the fees charged. And there's no way to leave negative feedback of a cancelled transaction.”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Thermal Grizzly was scammed twice on raw materials worth €40k” “the payment processing fee of this order is not refundable”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Tell HN: Alibaba Sucks” Seen as low-quality spam marketplace
“Temu, Amazon, and Alibaba entered the market claiming to be "marketplaces" connecting "importers to suppliers"”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products” “it just looks like china-slop sites like shein and Alibaba”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet”
Other online marketplaces people recommend
The four most recommended other online marketplaces, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | 238 | 605 | 28% | 13 | 10 yrs14 owners | — |
| eBay | 101 | 146 | 41% | 12 | 20 yrs13 owners | — |
| AliExpress | 62 | 76 | 45% | 12 | 3 yrs3 owners | — |
| Temu | 15 | 64 | 19% | 6 | — | — |
| Alibaba.comThis page | 8 | 7 | 53% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
14 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Amazon is awful compared to what Alibaba and JD provide to their customers in China”
“it just looks like china-slop sites like shein and Alibaba”
“based on my last check of alibaba and Deepseek TOS”
“heavily censored and doesn't like being used as RP model in Skyrim”
“Claude, OpenAI, Alibaba, and perplexity can go to hell.”
“There are solid, cheap options like xAI, z.AI, MiniMax, Kimi, DeepSeek, and Alibaba.”
“my Bluetooth devices would only ever send audio in "headset" mode”
“Being able to send funds in yuan over Ali network solves almost all problems with that.”
“Temu, Amazon, and Alibaba entered the market claiming to be "marketplaces" connecting "importers to suppliers"”
“AliBaba refuses to refund all of the fees charged. And there's no way to leave negative feedback of a cancelled transaction.”
“They think that their customers owe them.”
“they say they need info from DHL before proceeding with a refund”
“the payment processing fee of this order is not refundable”
“All of those parts can also be acquired through alibaba for a stiff discount off the thorlabs pieces though.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.