Ali Express Shipping scam

@torriem Had brought this scam up before, I have finally run into it. Ali express is a good place to buy electronic components and overall over many years the experience has been very positive. But lately it seems extremely buyer beware.

So I ordered a PIPO X4 tablet from SC Store, DHL shipping says it has already left mainland china, then I get this message.

31/03 19:29

Dear, your city is remote please solve soon . Parcel in the DHL OFFICE .

Dear here is 3 suggestions:
1 You can change another address , the city code and city name will be not remote again ( you can check with your local DHL/FEDEX for checking )

2 Remote fee USD33 ,you can buy directly to aileen_zhw@163.com our paypal account, then you no need to change address.

3 We can send your parcel by airline, then you no need to change your address , airline will be a little slow ,but safe enough .

Please solve .

Yesterday 19:37

Dear,any news ?

Ali express does have a way to report these types of scams, and this was reported.

On one of my shipments I’m not sure if it was a scam or not. The extra shipping cost they charged through aliexpress itself, not asking for a direct paypal payment that bypassed aliexpress. On the second one when they asked for money after I already had got the package I just said, sorry it’s delivered and the transaction is done.

Interestingly, sometimes the remote shipping charges DHL comes up with are from a bug in their lookup page. I’m not sure the chinese shippers realize that DHL’s web page often drops the last digit from the postal code lookup, and that sometimes flags a remote delivery charge even when that shouldn’t be happening. See DHL Remote Area Charge - RedFlagDeals.com Forums. I suspect this is what happened to me.