Returned a defective item to AliExpress and lost €80 for nothing

I ordered a product on AliExpress and when it arrived, it had a serious issue that was never mentioned in the product description by the seller.

After contacting the seller, I was told to return the item. The return shipping cost me around €80, which is a huge amount. The seller claimed that AliExpress would reimburse the return shipping costs.

I returned the product, and AliExpress refunded only the product itself, but completely refused to reimburse the €80 shipping cost. Their explanation was that I supposedly did not provide evidence that the product was defective.

The problem is that AliExpress never even asked me for such evidence during the dispute process. At no point did they request additional photos, videos, or technical proof from me.

Since then, I have tried contacting AliExpress support multiple times by email and chat, but I am basically being ignored. The chatbot is useless and keeps repeating the same scripted answers, and reaching a real human support agent is nearly impossible.

So in the end:

• I wasted a huge amount of time
• I ended up without the product
• and I still lost €80 for absolutely nothing

Honestly, this experience completely destroyed my trust in AliExpress customer protection and after-sales support.

Has anyone here experienced something similar or managed to successfully escalate a case like this?