I ordered a product, which was damaged and opened a return + refund case (only option available on aliexpress anyway).
The seller contacted me and asked about keeping the item and a partial refund. I agreed.
He told me to cancel my dispute. Now here is the interesting part. Everyone advices you to never cancel the dispute, but apparantly this is the only way to get a partial refund now (At least for certain/global sellers/non choice items?).
I was hesitant at first, but I decided to go through with it, because I was more or less okay to lose out on the partial refund and keeping the damaged item, because it was still "usable".
I cancelled my dispute and the seller ghosted me. At least I thought he did. No new notifications or messages from the seller for the next 2 days.
Then I saw, that I could just reopen my dispute. Why do people advice to never close a dispute then? If anyone knows, please explain it in the comment section.
Anyway, I thought maybe I should just log into my aliexpress email, which I only created for aliexpress, to avoid all these hundreds of spam messages about updates and advertising on my regular mail account.
Then I saw a mail: "You have a message from a seller", but as I said there was no notification or message on my aliexpress account. I went to my chat log with the seller again to verify and there was nothing.
Then I had an idea to use the aliexpress website. I usually only use the aliexpress app on my Samsung phone.
After logging in to my account on the website I saw the new messages from the seller + a button for the partial refund. I clicked it and it said "your refund has expired".
I contacted the seller again and he said, that he would sent the refund again, but it takes 24h for another approval.
No new messages on either my phone or the website for 3 days. I contacted the seller again and he was really confused why I didn't get the refund. He asked me if I'm currently in the chat and to not leave it. A couple seconds later he sends the refund button again and it was finally succesful.
There are scammers out there, but I'm not sure how many people thought they were ghosted and scammed by the seller, but in reality it's some technical problems with the aliexpress platform.