I love that sellers just block customers, behaving like western snowflakes. It's kind of funny.
Always lean hard on AliExpress when you have a problem with a seller, if you can prove you're right, in my experience, they help you.
AliExpress today is not AliExpress 5 years ago.
Same with Chinese sellers in general. It's become much easier to communicate for example. It used to be that the language barrier made it impossible to have any nuanced conversation. Now I feel I can ask fairly complex questions and get an answer that passes the smell test.
Also, they innovate now, they're past the pure copying phase. You can't innovate and be a brain dead donkey, the two don't go together.