Hmmm. This thread was about two weeks too late, maybe. Ordered a bulk charger. Has not shown up yet but has gone to the shipper. My thoughts follow:
For the charger I ordered, the shipping was very high. On the other hand, it is being sent international FedEx and that is expensive. I ship international FedEx occasionally so I know it is pricey. I don't know about BMS battery, but other items I've bought that were drop shipped from China that still have the shipping invoice on the package indicate that the shipping cost I paid was actually pretty close to what it cost to ship it. When you buy an item from a vendor local to your location, the shipping you pay is the local shipping. If the vendor bought it from China first, the shipping from China is hidden in the price and you don't see it. Just like with Ebay, you have to mentally add the shipping costs to the item cost to determine if it is a good deal. In my case, I (supposedly?) bought a 72V, 400 watt charger for $95.00 (shipping and all). If it actually works, that is a decent price. If it doesn't, then it will have been money down the toilet. I am a bit wary after reading the experiences of others. Will let you know.
I was ready for a long shipping date. This is not unusual for items bought from China. The item either does not exist until you buy it or the person selling it has to buy it from someone else. It is not what I prefer, but welcome to the New World Order, where everything is made in China, no matter where you buy it.
If you think it is only the small vendors, I got the second worst run-around of my online purchasing life from Lenovo, a pretty large company with US offices. The device was manufactured in China and the customer support was in India. I had a projected 5 day delivery moved out to three months. Then I called to cancel and was told it would take 5 days to cancel and until 5 days had passed, I would not know if the cancellation was in effect. And by the way, they may or may not email me to let me know if it was cancelled. I called and was on hold for over an hour. It was eventually cancelled. I did buy a Lenovo but from a local store. Was more expensive, but I walked out with it.
The worst runaround by far was for a pair of fake "Ugg" boots my wife thought she bought from Ugg for "a deal" but which were actually knockoffs being sold on a mock company website that were not actually leather and were not made by Ugg. The short version of the story is that when we got the boots, we eventually determined they were a knockoff, although I was somewhat impressed with the effort they went to in order to make them look legit; tags box, and all looked like the real thing. If you did not know what to look for, you'd have a hard time telling they were fakes. The shipping was express FedEx and was around $50 (invoice was on the boots). So we paid about $120 for a pair of synthetic boots that cost about $5 to make and $50 to ship from China. Visa would probably have reimbursed the charge but we had to be able to verify that we returned them and that their return was refused by the vendor. To return with signature verification would have cost about $60. We just chalked that up to experience.
Moral of the story is that if you do business in China with a small company, you had better be ready to eat the cost. If a large company, you had better be ready for a run-around. I don't blame the Chinese. I think in many cases, they are trying to run a legit business (Ugg boots vendors aside) and doing the best they can. There is just too much money to be made to let the opportunity pass.
I called the Ugg company to tell them about my experience and they had heard of literally 100s of fake internet companies springing up to sell fake Uggs. They exist for long enough to get some orders and then shut down before they get shut down officially. So while I was on the phone with Uggs, I mentioned that the actual Ugg boots are made in Australia but the representative said that while that was originally true, they are now made in China. Go figure! By the way, they are appropriately named boots and hideously over-priced in my opinion. However, it was the only thing my 15 year old wanted for Christmas last year and so we caved. As a final note to the story, we gave the boots to my daughter for Christmas even though I was becoming suspicious (this was before we found out for certain they were knockoffs; Ugg does not drop ship). My wife was in denial and thought that perhaps someone had gotten some from the factory and sold them black market. Actually, for a knockoff they weren't bad. A couple of days later, I snooped around the internet and determined that they were in fact knockoffs and were synthetic (microfiber looks a lot like suede by the way). We were in a quandary about what to do; in the end, we got the actual Uggs for my daughter after Christmas. We explained the fiasco and asked her if she had known they were knockoffs and she said that she had. I was impressed she didn't say anything to us about it. She is a good kid.
WHAT.
