Is this a deal or what ......

[Spacey]

Check this link out though on the aliexpress site

http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/565339514-Western-Flyer-Bike-Bicycle-Model-D-Restored-wholesalers.html

Does not look like a new bike.....look further down and you see this quote:

"Restored 1930s Western Flyer. New Departure Model D. Call Phil at 414-331-6324 with questions. Will be packed and shipped by UPS or buyer may pick up in Milwaukee, WI"

Screams Scam to me

[neptronix]

Oh yeah.. Phil obviously made 5 or more of those.
That fork also totally looks like carbon fiber

This is a test of the scam recognition system.. this is only a test..

[rojitor]

Just after reading 700$ i realized it is a scam, then i saw the picture HPC ... Wtf?? They are american and it is of course ali so i'm not surprised you confirm the scam,it's a pity because there's a lot of good sellers at ali that will never be trusted at first sight.

[dogman]

Well, scam or stolen, Do you feel lucky? I don't care how good the system is, I wouldn't be sending money to that dude.

I don't doubt for a new york minuite the components in the pic can be bought in china, for 1/10th US retail. I do doubt they can ship that thing to you free very quick. Then perhaps 3-4 months later, you finally get a box and it contains a $100 huffy. Oh,,, so sorry, just ship it back and we'll send you your bike....

It woluld be a fun experiment, with somebody elses money.

[richirich1113]

The guys at HPC had a good laugh when i called them and sent them the link to the site.

If it wasnt a scam why would the seller on Ali have to cut and paste someone elses product?

[whatever]

its possible you guys may have found someone involved with supply of hi power cycles, I back up j.harris' views,
I've also had many trips to china involving ebikes, and visited many factories, its amazing how cheap good quality bikes can be if you go to a factory, this may well be a good find. At this point its unknown.

[pelle242]

As before, if people have a problem report it to Aliexpress. They have a reputable escrow arrangement that I know works very well, and which offers similar levels of protection to that we are used to in the west.

Can you elaborate on this? From what I have heard before and from a quick google the escrow is not a real escrow at all and will always side with the vendors. I you have any personal experience I would love to hear about it since I am very reluctant do business with aliexpress unless using paypal.

[Jeremy Harris]

Can you elaborate on this? From what I have heard before and from a quick google the escrow is not a real escrow at all and will always side with the vendors. I you have any personal experience I would love to hear about it since I am very reluctant do business with aliexpress unless using paypal.

An acquaintance on another forum bought a bulk load of LED lights (household type) via Aliexpress. The goods never turned up, the seller stopped communicating and the chap made a claim to get his money back. Aliexpress refunded him all his money, although it took a few weeks to get sorted. His view was that their payment protection was OK, probably on a par with PayPal in terms of speed and effectiveness.

As a back stop, Aliexpress accept credit cards, so if their escrow system fails you could claim against your credit card company, I believe.

That's not to say that they are perfect, just that the only case I've heard where someone was at risk of losing a couple of thousand $ their protection sytem worked for him.

[pelle242]

Thanks!

[HighTekBikes]

This new Ali seller with no feedback and no contact info is selling "Bionx" kits for half dealer cost. These are manufactured in Canada. SCAM !

[neptronix]

its possible you guys may have found someone involved with supply of hi power cycles, I back up j.harris' views,
I've also had many trips to china involving ebikes, and visited many factories, its amazing how cheap good quality bikes can be if you go to a factory, this may well be a good find. At this point its unknown.

How does that explain the other dozens of bikes, ranging from $1000-$9000 retail, all at an asking price of $750 +/- $100 ?

And as mentioned, that they were copying and pasting ads for custom 1 off bikes made by people in the USA, but offering higher quantities?

Jesus Christ on a cracker.

Yeah they do have escrow protection, but there are ways around that. That's how i got taken for $80 and was sold a pack of 4 year old 1C cells as a 20C pack, with no recourse other than "well, you can ship it back"..

Someone order from these guys and get ripped off already, put the speculation to rest, since a few of you here won't listen to reason

[Jeremy Harris]

.............. since a few of you here won't listen to reason

On the contrary, some are only trying to stop a "mad shark feeding frenzy" developing, with accusations being made without any hard evidence. Maybe it is a scam, in which case the thing to do would be for an affected party (maybe HPC) to get Aliexpress to investigate and maybe take the seller off their site.

There seems to be an assumption by some that bike stuff badged as being from a western country brand is made in the west, when there is a very strong probability that it was made in China or Taiwan. Even the really high-end stuff is often made out there, and their manufacturing system leaks like a sieve, so "genuine" parts do end up on street markets and thence on to ebay and the like. The scale of manufacture in China has to be seen to be believed; as well as making some of the dubious quality stuff we're all familiar with, and making fake copies of just about everything, they also produce goods for many of the big brand names that we probably don't think of as coming from there.

Manufacturing costs are such that few companies really make parts in the US, UK or Europe any more. As an example, I've had a quick look around my house in the last ten minutes and found that my "Japanese" Panasonic camera is really Chinese, as is the "Japanese" Sony LCD TV, the "Japanese" Sony audio/nav system in my car, the "Japanese" Sony audio system in the house, all of my PCs/laptops (two Samsung netbooks, an Asus Eee and an Acer desktop with a 24" screen) are actually made in China, too. Both my bikes are Chinese made, as are all the spares I have around, like Shimano gearsets etc. Even the new part I've just bought for my "French" heating system is actually made in China!

[deVries]

This new Ali seller with no feedback and no contact info is selling "Bionx" kits for half dealer cost. These are manufactured in Canada. SCAM !

IF the price is too good to be true, then it IS too good to be true.

A CF frame w/unobtainium specs IS unobtainium too.

The joke is on 'you' "sucker" !

Pull "that" trigger... I dare ya.

Just imagine the battery space needed on that wet-e-dream.

55mph 50 mile range Charger: 4a Charger (recharges in 2.5 Hours)

[d8veh]

I don't know about the protection from Aliexpress, but I do know about the protection from Paypal from my own experience when I was sent faulty goods:

You have to send the goods back to the supplier at your cost, and when they're signed for, you get your money back. If they didn't send you anything, so you didn't sign for it, then you can get your money back too.

I suspect that this supplier will send a $700 bike, which is different from the one in the picture so that you sign for it when the box arrives. You'll then have a cheap 250w hub-drive bike that you don't want, but it'll cost you $500 to send it back. Your best option then is to sell the bike on and take the loss rather than claiming.

There's no way in the world that that supplier has made copies of that bike and can sell them for $700 - get real!

[deVries]

Once you've been there, and seen how virtually everything we have here is manufactured and available (often in big street markets) for a tiny fraction of the prices that the same product sells for here in the west you might better appreciate that many "manufacturers" here in the west are often just the customers of big assembly plants in the far east. They are often good at disguising the origin of their product, but when you see the self-same thing (not a fake) for sale in a Chinese market for a fraction of the price you get that sobering realisation that we, in the west, just don't make stuff any more.

Yup, most of the manufacturing is in China except for the MIC in the USA. Even so, many parts would be sourced from overseas for military applications too

You're very correct that this bike could be for sale super cheap somewhere on the streets in China. Did you post a thread about your trip to China? I would thoroughly enjoy reading about your experience there, and if you did anything "electric bike" related too. Please Sir post-up a thread when you have some time, if possible. Thanks!

[amberwolf]

A similar link was found by someone else and posted in the Prodeco thread. That one would have to be a scam, as it doesn't even have the same bike in the pictures as is described in the text. Plus the same ad can be found in various places all over the web, just copied off the HPC site and pasted up. One ad is even for a place in Phoenix, AZ, and points to video of a different bike than is in the Aliexpress ad, too, but still uses the same ad text.

My short analysis:
viewtopic.php?p=580807#p580807
Interestingly the page/item referenced has been taken down.


I expect this is a scam by the same person or persons, or by copycats (or the other is the copycat, it doesn't actually matter).


Besides--why would an Aliexpress ad for a bike have the complete exact ad copy from HPC's own ads? I highly doubt that HPC copied it from Aliexpress or it's orignal vendor--the English in it "feels" American rather than translated. Yes, it is possible that HPC and this vendor worked together on the ad copy / product /etc., but it does not seem that way. I believe it is a scam.

[dogman]

Likely it is a scam, and the victim is the buyer and the selling site. They'll get yanked, but not before they make off with money.

Like I said, they very likely will ship something, chances are a $100 bike. It will arrive at your door 3-4 months later boat shipped. So they have your money for months before any fraud claims get made. Be alright for a lucky few though, if the first few buyers get sent the real product to prime the pump of the ponzi scheme, and you get to be the lucky one. Lucky you, you get a great deal, shipped to you fast, then blab on the net how great it was. Now they get 1000 orders, who all get sent a huffy.

So, you feel lucky? was that six rounds or just five? Use that money for the vegas trip.

As for the ad copy, every china vendor cuts and pastes each others ads. How many times have you seen the same smiling cuitie in that battery factory? It's been in zillions of battery ads. All lithium batteries in china come from one factory? NOT.

[kersley]

Sorry for been a bit lete but I have just seen this thread. The same bike is still been sold on Aliexpress to this day.Why haven't HPC done something about this?
I have to agree with Jeremy. A few years ago, I was selling Nike trainers on Ebay making thousands. I went over to China and visited many factories, some small and others huge.
Ebay was flooded with Nike trainers at the time, many were fakes. I met my good friend Albert who help me source the real deal.
The factory that supplied me was the same company that supplied JD Sports and Footlocker here in the UK. At the time I got each pair boxed for £12.00 and selling at JD'S FOR A WHOPPING £129.99
NOW THINK ABOUT IT? How much did it cost to make? to be able to sell at £12.00? Another thing worth knowing is this...
When the shoes didn't pass quality control, what do you do with 70.000 pairs of trainers? you sell them cheap to whoever wants to buy and sold as seconds which made it through to ebay.

Just to put an end to this.. I will ask my friend Albert to look into this seller and I will keep you all posted.
Cheers
Kersley

PS... I'm based in SE London UK and looking for a business partner to start an electric bike conversion company.. anyone interested please get in touch..

[Hyena]

While I agree with Jeremy on the costing of stuff in Asia in this particular case it's a scam. I've seen several of these before and the proof is that it has now been yanked from the site.

I nearly fell for one of these myself a 2 years back when I found an alibaba seller flogging A2B metro bikes for around $900 delivered for 3+ units.
At the time I thought bargain - I can easily sell 2 for half the retail price and pocket the 3rd for myself for free. Yeah a brand name item like this is expensive in the western world but actually producing that in china for around $700 is totally doable. I got close pulling the trigger, by bank transfer (russian roulette at the best of times!) when after several emails the seller said he'd include a 4th for free with express shipping if I completed the transaction by the end of the week. This is when I knew it was too good to be true. As mentioned before the air shipping cost for sending a whole bike is HUGE and even if they can produce a knock off lamborghini with the cheapest of shit parts for $1000 they can't ship it to you for next to nothing.
In my case above a few days later the seller and their links to their products were gone, but not before they made off with atleast 1 guys money.
When googling to see if they looked legit I came across a guy drop shipping these bikes on ebay locally. He had resonable feedback but I suspect he'd seen the same alibaba link as me. Shortly after I found a thread on the alibaba forums started by him saying he'd be ripped off and the seller was now in the wind with nearly 3 grand of his money.

General rules for buying from china / alibaba or the likes - if it's a branded item and looks too good to be true it probably is.
oem, unbranded and random chinese branded stuff is usually OK, albeit sometimes of questionable quality.

[kersley]

Did you say yanked from the site? What site?
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/62 ... alers.html

[Sunder]

Did you say yanked from the site? What site?
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/62 ... alers.html

No feedback, new seller, prices way too good to be true (Come on, $6000 TVs sold at $750? yeah, right) Looks like the scammers are at it again.

The irony, is if that it was like 30% off, rather than 90% off, they probably would be able to scam more money...

[Spicerack]

A buddy is looking at getting an electric bike and asked what I thought of these in aliexpress:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HPC-F1-TORNADO-ELECTRIC-26-BIKE-BICYCLE-5000W-POWER-SYSTEM-21-FRAME/690213374.html

I said that it looked massively overstated in terms of power and range- 5kW out of that hub? Really? 55mph AND 50 miles range?? All seems a little too good to be true.....

Heck, if it was that good, wouldn't we all be buying something like that rather than spending alot more and then having to build it?

[GrayKard]

A buddy is looking at getting an electric bike and asked what I thought of these in aliexpress:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HPC-F1-TORNADO-ELECTRIC-26-BIKE-BICYCLE-5000W-POWER-SYSTEM-21-FRAME/690213374.html

I said that it looked massively overstated in terms of power and range- 5kW out of that hub? Really? 55mph AND 50 miles range?? All seems a little too good to be true.....

Heck, if it was that good, wouldn't we all be buying something like that rather than spending alot more and then having to build it?

This thread has a lot of info on that bike. http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=39838

[Spicerack]

Aww shoot. I did do a search but clearly my keywords wern't good enough. Thanks!

[neptronix]

Amazingly, less exaggerated than the hanebrink X5 specs...