I see this kind of fakes on eBay or Amazon all the time. It's even harder to report it than on AliExpress and I never had an obvious report of fakes upheld (AND eBay warns they will forward your identity to the seller. Great thing if the organised crime is involved in this)

Case in point, fake 2TB Sandisk ExtremePro microSD:

- £17 on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/336728033240 - even the images prove it's a fake (also $570 on sandisk.com)

Agreed, there's more of that on AliExpress but Amazon is not free from that either.

Few years back, Amazon had a rampant "fake USB storage" problem too. Then, one day, all the fakes were gone, just like that.

Not if the local reseller simply calls itself a marketplace and logistics company and the local regulator lets them get away with it.

Amazon, in my experience, does arbitrate disputes about returns and defects, but the important point is that from a legal perspective, I don't think they have to, so you're at their mercy.

You can't even be sure that VAT is handled correctly, which local retailers can usually not get around.

Yeah it would be hard to hide. When I order from AliExpress it arrives via Chinese carriers I have never even hard of, and about half the time the final delivery is through a Chinese gig delivery company that must pay practically nothing to the driver because they will usually drive up in front of my house and chuck the package out the window onto my front lawn.

I've ordered things from AliExpress shipped from the local warehouses (2-3 days delivery) ; I've ordered things on Amazon UK that were fulfilled and shipped from Amazon UK that were delivered in 3-5 working days.

Not a £1 tat, and not one off. Not that AliExpress is my choice, no, far from it. Sometimes it's better, closer to the manufacturer, that's all.