Do you mean that the same frame from ali and not ali is not the same?
It may be, it may not be. Aliexpress is notoriously shady. You can buy counterfeits of everything on there. You have sellers popping up and disappearing constantly. You have brands like ltwoo specifically saying that "ltwoo official" on aliexpress has NOTHING to do with them.
Inversely, when you deal by email with a salesrep from a on OEM, and/or via whatsapp, you are most likely talking to an actual human (in the case of farsports, for example, they have several sales rep, they re different real humans). Ditto if you use their website, you're much more likely to interact with someone who actually works at the factory, who actually cares (or is paid to care).
Aliexpress, on the other hand, could be great, or could be bad. It's almost impossible to have a useful conversation using the aliexpress message system, too, and you can never know whether you're talking to one person, or 10.
Essentially, Aliexpress is a minefield, so if you can avoid it, it's for the best. Also, if you buy a frame by email, you bought an OEM frame. If you buy on aliexpress, you bought a frame on aliexpress. They might technically be the same frame, but i trust the email method more.
Spcycle sell open moulds, i'm not sure who makes them: hard to know what you're buying, from whom, from when. can you get a frame that was made 3 years ago that was forgotten in a corner somewhere, while the guy before you got the same frame, but made the day before? 100%.
Tantan is a clone peddler and has a very checkered reputation.
Airwolf is a basket case.
Then you have all the fakes.
That's probably 60+% of what you'll find on aliexpress.
You will find people saying that aliexpress helped them when they bought a faulty counterfeit, when the seller wouldnt, to which i say: 1. why would you trust a crook and 2. dont buy fakes.
A lot boils down to human psychology. The more faceless / friction-less you are to the seller, the more likely you are to get bottom of the barrel stuff.
