Ever bought anything off of Alibaba?

The Alibaba IPO today was the biggest by far in history.  It is only fitting that it should mark the very peak of of the 2009 hyper-optimism, credit fueled bull market.  This is exactly the kind of thing that I will end up reading in a future version of Bob Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist newsletter - peak credit, peak optimism, peak risk taking, tallest buildings being built and largest IPO of a largely unheard of Chinese e-tail web site that is touted to be a combination of Amazon, Ebay, and Google all wrapped into one ridiculously expensive over hyped package.

Let me tell you something folks. In fact, let me tell you two things:
1) Never buy anything with Chinese software or firmware in it if you can get something else.  The Chinese are brilliant by many metrics and their hardware is superb.  But not everyone does everything well I have noted and Asian software and firmware is the shits.  I mean they just don't "get it".  Sometimes they put an incredible amount of work into it but it is never finished, never polished, never completely well thought out or right headed.  Sometimes it only misses the mark by 5% but it is always in an area of huge annoyance, almost as if left in there on purpose to piss people off.

2) I have bought several items from Alibaba and trust me when I tell you, it's no Amazon.  It is essentially a direct connection to manufacturers and none of them have any kind of real marketing.  So they expect people to buy based on a crappy picture and a Chinenglish description.  The upside is that you do away with the middle man and so you can get some really nice factory direct pricing (or at least you used to be able to).  I have noticed lately that the prices have gone up in recognition of the additional attention the Alibaba IPO (ticker: BABA) has brought them.  But the real problem is that of faith buying.  With Amazon, if they fuck your order up, they fix it and right quick like a bunny too.  With Alibaba, not so much.  I ordered 5 large area lights based on LEDs.  They are 14" by 30" or so.  They arrived all banged up even though I asked them about their shipping process and worried about the damage.  When I complained, the manufacturer's sales person strung me along for a couple months until it became adversarial.  I only got satisfaction by going through Alibaba's arbitration process which required me to submit tons of emails.  With Alibaba, the customer is assumed to be the scammer, not the manufacturing guy.  Even the company name says it.  Ali Baba was the good guy in the old story and guess who he had to deal with??  That's right, 40 thieves!!
 
This is right in line with Chinese society.  I guarantee you that this cultural difference is not going to serve them well in the western markets.  Worse still, they won't even understand why westerners don't like them.  In any case, with great pressure coming from the arbiter onto the manufacturer I finally got them to ship two more brand new lights and I was able to hammer the dents out of the other ones.  I am under the belief that I would have been told to shove it except that Alibaba wanted to keep customers happy pre IPO and probably sold that story to the manufacturer to fall in line and "pay up".  So I  eventually ended up with a seriously good deal but most people would not go after them like I did.  They would just write off the loss and never use Alibaba again.  After all, who wants to deal with someone who thinks you and the rest of its customers are 40 thieves?