In my view you are very safe on Aliexpress as they have a comprehensive buyer protection scheme. I think eBay is much more of a lottery.
Payment is via an escrow arrangement. The seller doesn't get any money until the buyer indicates the goods have been received and is happy with them, it's a closed-loop buying activity, within the promised delivery time.
And they have automated systems that look for suspicious seller activity - which does happen on such a huge marketplace - which when found freezes the transaction and applies a full buyer refund.
Just check out the seller sales stats and reviews. CCTV Camera China has been mentioned a lot here.
But right now is the start of the 2-week Chinese New Year, where everything stops.
Selling fakes on a marketplace is bad news for its reputation, Aliexpress are very active against this.
But Hikvision fakes - I don't think I've heard anyone on this forum say they've had one.
But what we have seen is 'grey imports', or OEM models, items that Hikvsion have tried to limit to a specific region, to protect the authorised reseller chain's profit margins, which may fall foul of firmware features that try to inhibit their use, eg 'language mismatch' etc.
But people can be very inquisitive and inventive in developing ways to deal with these small barriers.
