AliExpress vs. AYN website shipping times and availability

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I see a lot of questions around ordering from AliExpress vs their AYN website, and when people can expect to recieve their order. I'm just here to share my personal experiences with both!

*TL;DR to save you from my ramblings, there is no clear way to actually know when they'll send it. It all seems to be based on what they have stocked rather than a sequential queue from when you placed your order or your order number. It's really all a guessing game, so be prepared to wait 2-3 months either way to save yourself from checking the dashboard daily lol and just enjoy the process. If it arrives earlier, then it'll be a nice surprise.*

First, I ordered my Batch 5 Thor from the AYN website back on April 3rd. It was originally estimated to ship by early May according to their CS. It didn't end up shipping until June 21 and it arrived on July 1. It was a white Pro model, and after a month of radio silence on their end, I was finally told that they ran out of white shells which is why my order was delayed by also about a month at least. I saw plenty of people already receiving their orders from the following Batch 6 during this time-- some even reporting only a one month wait from ordering through Ali-- while mine took 3 months in total.

The same day my order arrived, my sister and BIL got influenced to buy theirs too. There happened to be an AliExpress sale happening and after also seeing how others seemed to recieve their Ali orders quicker than the AYN website, they placed both their Batch 7 orders on July 1 through the official AYN shop on Ali. It was for a black Pro model and a purple 512GB Max.

Fast forward to end of July, they were having another AliExpress sale, and a nice stackable PayPal discount + cashback deal. I've been enjoying my Pro so much that I couldn't help but wish I got a Max for the extra RAM and storage. I couldn't resist the discount and have little impulse buy control, so I guess I placed another order for a white 512GB Max on July 31.

This batch began shipping on August 8 according to their official discord announcement. Today on August 12th, my sister's black Pro ordered on July 1 and my white Max ordered on July 31 got the shipped notification almost at the same time. A very pleasant surprise for me, but my BIL's purple Max ordered on the same day as my sister's black Pro is still awaiting delivery. I hoped to confirm that AliExpress is the "quicker" option, I suspected because Ali places a time limit on sellers to ship their items. However, I would reckon that like what happened to me on the AYN website order, they probably ran out of purple shells and they couldn't fulfill purple orders this time.

In comparison, my second Thor shipped only 12 days after placing the order, which is very different from my first order shipping almost two months later. It's estimated to arrive only within a month of placing my order like others experienced on AliExpress. But through this very loose test, it confirmed to me that they are not always sending out Thors entirely based on your order number like others were trying to predict. Others have also previously shared the same response from AYN about their purple and rainbow orders being delayed because they ran out of shells. At the same time, a one month wait time from order to arrival is entirely possible and it's not always a 2+ months wait which makes me hopeful that they can soon catch up with their pre-orders and just have Thors readily available.

What was your shipping experience on AYN's website or their official AliExpress store? 💭