Alibaba Face Off With Chinese Regulator Over Fake Products

hackingbear writes China's State Administration of Industry and Commerce on Wednesday issued a scathing report against one of the country's biggest stars, accusing e-commerce giant Alibaba of failing to do enough to prevent fake goods from being sold on its websites. SAIC said Alibaba allowed "illegal advertising" that misled consumers with false claims about low prices and other details. It claims some Alibaba employees took bribes and the company failed to deal effectively with fraud. Alibaba fired back with charges of bias and misconduct by accusing the SAIC official in charge of Internet monitoring, Liu Hongliang, of unspecified "procedural misconduct" and warned it will file a formal complaint. Such public defiance is almost unheard of in China. Apparently, Alibaba has long attained the too big to fail status.

Comments

why does anybody feel safe purchasing from them

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at a complete loss to understand why anybody would purchase anything from a site name Alibaba.

Lets just call ourselves outright thieves, its right there in the title and yet people are surprised when they are sold a bill of goods.

Re:why does anybody feel safe purchasing from them

[ranton]

Yet, you need to learn the story of Alibaba and the 40 thieves.

Alibaba was a woodcutter and not a thief.

Before you get too high and mighty, you might want to remember that Ali Baba stole from those 40 thieves which is what eventually got his brother killed (because of his own greed) and almost got Ali Baba killed as well. So the OP calling Ali Baba a thief is 100% accurate.

Re:why does anybody feel safe purchasing from them

[Gavagai80]

As opposed to the $5 you'd pay if you walked into Fry's to buy the same thing (according to a quick google). Not much savings for dealing with strangers of questionable reputation.

Re:Great!

[Nikker]

This is merely a waltz for the public. China knows what they are getting into with Alibaba, the ability to take what they have lying around and sidestep having to find someone else sell it for them. Right now China basically manufactures for the world but they sell at small margins so that resellers / contractors sell the goods at a markup to the rest of the world. Alibaba gives a chance to sell directly to the consumer. The Chinese government wants Alibaba to seem strong willed so "The West" builds confidence in buying their stuff. In reality most of what Alibaba sells is leftovers and over runs.

I personally don't think China would leave something this public to chance, most of Alibaba's backers are the who's who of Chinese nationals and Chinese mainland (which the govt controls) makes everything Alibaba sells. It's hard to picture Alibaba being as rogue as they put on.

not ready for prime time

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a 32GB USB 3.0 stick from Aliexpress. It said "Toshiba" on it, even though linux would show the vendor as generic. The drive showed 32GB free space. However, it only had 6GB of actual space on it (there are utilities out there that will actually test this). I gave the item 1 star, the lowest possible rating. For the next few days, the vendor was calling my house (yes, I was stupid to put my real phone number on my order - silly me, thinking that I was dealing with professionals, not thugs) at 3am, threatening to continue calling at that time until I changed my review to 5 stars. Only 5 stars would be "a fair review", as they were so keen to say.

So I just unplugged my phone at night for the next month and deleted my Aliexpress account. I had provided Aliexpress' abuse department with emailed threats that I received and voice calls, but they never even replied. Screw them. I'll stick with Ebay, which has a functioning feedback system, or something else that is legit.

Re:Need a fake gold coin?

[ArcadeMan]

I bought Bitcoins from Alibaba, but they turned out to be fake. They're Dogecoins with Bitcoin stickers on them.