AliExpress Issue - Cannot add to cart

Pretty much all my crafty supplies except for paper and glue come from AliEx.

Mostly I buy dies.  Lots and lots of dies.  3-6$ a set I can afford and not feel like I've wasted my whole hobby budget on a single item.  So, some caveats about buying there.  If you don't hit the expedited shipping threshold or pay for faster delivery, it can take up to two months to stuff to arrive.  Probably about half the stuff on there in metal cutting dies are knockoffs of other brands.  The rest are things like generic shapes, rarely exclusive designed-for-that-shop items, and designs adapted from clipart or other vector images. 

Like eBay, there are thousands of individual shops/sellers on AliExpress.  The service and quality varies.  I would consider myself *extremely* picky and I get about an average of 1/3 of items that fail my standards and end up requesting refunds for.  Typical problems might be things like the size is off, missing poke hole, manufacturing error / flaw, or rarely, damaged in the mail.  While that might seem like a high failure rate, I've  gotten refunds when asked for 99.9% of the time (when provided photo evidence of the problem, of course).  It's worth the hassle for me because there's no way I'd be able to afford the variety of dies I own otherwise. 

It's important to pick sellers who have clear listings.  Read the reviews.  If you are in doubt about what you're looking at, pass.  There's almost always someone else who's selling the same thing or a very similar item.  Shops vary on shipping costs, combined shipping discounts, coupons, and other bonuses. Read listing details carefully.

The search on AliExpress is, quite frankly, garbage.  It heavily prioritizes showing sponsored, previously viewed, and wishlisted items no matter what search terms are put in, making it more like shopping a flea market than a store.  www.pricearchive.org/ or reverse image searches are better at finding things on AliEx than its internal search is.  Logging out helps a little too, but it's annoying.  Shops and listings tend to be transient, very few stick around for years.  There are regular sales, the biggest of which being on November 11 (11.11).  Most months have some kind of sale, usually in the realm of a 10% discount on orders of 40$ or similar.

If you open a dispute, never, never, ever close it, no matter what the seller tells you.  Once a dispute is in progress, let AliExpress deal with the resolution.  You only have a 15 day window upon receipt of your package to put in a claim if something's wrong, so be proactive.  Test everything you get as soon as possible, don't just toss it in a bin and give five stars because it arrived. 

Other things I've bought include embossing mat, specialty paper, laser cut wooden pieces, stamps and assorted tools.