Well my Artisan finally has entered the USA! So in short, it seems the most of the delay was caused by the seller. They first made a tracking number but never handed the package over to fedex. Then last wednesday they made another tracking number. Saturday they finally gave the package to Fedex and today it entered the USA.
All in all this seller does deliver but they do seem to be lying so be careful with them. Not sure if I’d buy again from them. The alternative, buying from Pimax, has its own set of disadvantages. In the end, I think this Ali Express still might be the faster option.
OK this is my update. First of all summary up to now: I made an original order beginning of April using EMS postage. This did/has not arrived so opened a dispute got awarded refund by Aliexpress (but not received refund yet) and ordered again this time using DHL postage on the 5th May.
They didn’t seem to be sending the new one out so I asked them about it and they sent me a picture of a parcel with a postage label for a courier company called CNE. On doing a bit of googling this seems to be a worse option than EMS and the CNE tracking themselves say between 1 and 2 months to delivery. I questioned this with RKYYZ and they just said stuff that didn’t really make any sense and said I would be receiving a DHL tracking. They then waited until literally the last hours before they had to officially say it had been sent before I could cancel it to mark it as being sent (which was this morning). When they do this they have to send the tracking number as well which this time was a DHL tracking number but when I put it into DHL’s system it just says ‘Shipment Information received’ which on googling means they basically entered it onto the system but DHL haven’t received anything!! And to add to it, the destination is simply ‘Heathrow London’ and not my address. I think I’m being taken for a big ride here.
I know some people have had success with this Alixepress and this company but my advice would be to avoid completely. In fact, after pre-ordering an 8KX form Pimax themselves and then cancelling after 5 months waiting and then being advised by Pimax themselves to order an Artisan of Alixepress if I wanted one quickly and then going through this I would honestly now, for the first time, tell any friend to not consider Pimax because neither they nor anyone associated with them can be trusted - sorry Pimax I really wanted to love you. I’ll update if I ever receive anything.
I’ve also changed the title of the thread back to Don’t buy from Alliexpress full stop (and not just using EMS as I don’t think it’s just about EMS postage anymore)