Negative Experience: PING from http://www.pingbattery.com

chilltrout

10 W
Joined
Oct 30, 2016
Messages
78
Having Been told that Ping make the best LIFEPO4 cells and wanting charge cycles I went for a 30ah 48v ping pack from http://www.pingbattery.com/
It worked alright for about 9months then began rapidly degrading due to a faulty puffy cell.
Ping took months to reply to my original message and after 3 months of waiting for a replacement cell that I have to work on myself It has apparently been sent to the wrong address and has now been sent back from china.
I gave ping the correct address after he asked for it but still defaulted back to my default paypal address (In australia we have federal government provided parcel lockers which are a god send for people like me that work 9-5 and I live a bit out of town and the postman can never find my concealed driveway so I dont use my actual address)

Anyway I guess I will wait another 3 months because of his incompetence for some cells that will never live up too the 1500 cycle claims..... Im only out $1500 thanks ping for this chinesium crap!

This guy is doing his best to keep me off my ebike I tell you what.
Do yourselves a favour and buy headway or some actual name brand lithium, these guys are dodgy as sin!
 
chilltrout wrote:

Having Been told that Ping make the best LIFEPO4 cells and wanting charge cycles I went for a 30ah 48v ping pack from http://www.pingbattery.com/
It worked alright for about 9months then began rapidly degrading due to a faulty puffy cell.
Ping took months to reply to my original message and after 3 months of waiting for a replacement cell that I have to work on myself It has apparently been sent to the wrong address and has now been sent back from china.
I gave ping the correct address after he asked for it but still defaulted back to my default paypal address (In australia we have federal government provided parcel lockers which are a god send for people like me that work 9-5 and I live a bit out of town and the postman can never find my concealed driveway so I dont use my actual address)

Anyway I guess I will wait another 3 months because of his incompetence for some cells that will never live up too the 1500 cycle claims..... Im only out $1500 thanks ping for this chinesium crap!

This guy is doing his best to keep me off my ebike I tell you what.
Do yourselves a favour and buy headway or some actual name brand lithium, these guys are dodgy as sin!

It's fine to post a problem with a vendor like Ping, but your story leaves a lot of questions about the details concerning the battery failure after nine months of use. I also understand the frustration of not getting the cell shipped to your preferred address, but again there are questions about whose fault that really is since you have an address in PayPal that doesn't seem to exist even for the postman.

Ping has provided good service to many members of this forum for about a decade. I have purchased at least half a dozen batteries from him over the years and all but one are still performing okay. One BMS went bad after 3 years on a V2.5 battery and I simply replaced the BMS with a V5.0 BMS over a year ago. In several cases others that I assisted with Ping batteries did not follow my charging "rules" closely enough and their Ping batteries, including the one that did fail completely, were about to be damaged when I intervened and carefully got the cells properly balanced. Those folks are all still enjoying their Ping batteries, and even the one that failed completely was replaced by the owner with another Ping battery.

My point on the above is that the user can destroy a battery, just like he can destroy a motor or a controller, etc. If indeed there was a bad cell in your original battery, well, it happens. To call Ping names and advise against using him based on your one experience seems over the top to me and I'm sure many on this forum would agree. If Ping battery failures were common, or become common, that would be another story.
 
Its all good to come to his defence I get it.
I really don't feel like I abuse these cells, Its in an electric scooter with a 1000w motor on a 30amp controller, would be lucky to ever even pull 30amp
I also maintain an 80% DOD and I believe the ping bms has quite a conservative LVC as it is anyway.
I let the battery balance once a fortnight and charge it every 2nd day, my commute is only 5km

Anyway all that aside, I just feel like everybody has these great experiences with him, but my pack fails in under a year and I get asked to pay for the cell and shipping.
He sent me a paypal refund last night and has resent the cell I believe and is now asking me to test the pack voltages, he never asked these questions the first time, still a good 6 weeks away from being back online.
That would never fly in Australia especially if you make claims of 1500 cycles :roll:

I could probably keep using this pack while the one cell is nuked but its just too annoying the sag kills it to quickly and I dont want to nuke the rest of the sting.
 
That was a good job explaining how you use the battery in what you think is a reasonable way, but even more questions are raised, which is probably why Ping questions if you may have caused the premature failure.

Why don't you let the battery charge and balance every day that you use it? This is the number one rule I stress to my group of Ping battery users. Namely, charge after each use and make sure all 16 LEDs light up every time. I find that good batteries that normally go to full charge and quickly balance will take longer to balance if they are either flogged harder than normal or discharged further than normal. I.e., one or more cells drifted off balance during the more extreme use and if not corrected will possibly drift off further. You stated you were hoping for many cycles, and the lighter your discharges the more cycles your battery will deliver, and not just the number of recharges, but the total Watt Hours delivered during the life of the battery.

The next question raised is what are you doing for charging the battery every other day if not using the standard charger and charging until all the LEDs light up? I can think of lots of possibilities here, but have no idea why you would only balance the pack every two weeks.

It may seem I am picking on you and as such defending Ping, but I think these are important points for long term battery health and you opened up the door for this type of discussion, not just for yourself, but for other Ping battery users, and even those using other vendors batteries. I would welcome any discussion concerning why I am wrong, and what would be a better way to care for a Ping battery.
 
Purchased 3 Ping batteries years ago and I ran the hell out of them. I had some technical difficulties with the BMS portion, but the cells and battery were solid.
 
Rassy said:
That was a good job explaining how you use the battery in what you think is a reasonable way, but even more questions are raised, which is probably why Ping questions if you may have caused the premature failure.

Why don't you let the battery charge and balance every day that you use it? This is the number one rule I stress to my group of Ping battery users. Namely, charge after each use and make sure all 16 LEDs light up every time. I find that good batteries that normally go to full charge and quickly balance will take longer to balance if they are either flogged harder than normal or discharged further than normal. I.e., one or more cells drifted off balance during the more extreme use and if not corrected will possibly drift off further. You stated you were hoping for many cycles, and the lighter your discharges the more cycles your battery will deliver, and not just the number of recharges, but the total Watt Hours delivered during the life of the battery.

The next question raised is what are you doing for charging the battery every other day if not using the standard charger and charging until all the LEDs light up? I can think of lots of possibilities here, but have no idea why you would only balance the pack every two weeks.

It may seem I am picking on you and as such defending Ping, but I think these are important points for long term battery health and you opened up the door for this type of discussion, not just for yourself, but for other Ping battery users, and even those using other vendors batteries. I would welcome any discussion concerning why I am wrong, and what would be a better way to care for a Ping battery.


Wow so many assumptions in this I never said anything about what charger I used.
I actually have the 9amp from him so I'll ask you to please stop assuming
As if I haven't tested the voltages how the hell did I know a cell failed.
I also have 2 8s alarm buzzers on the pack so I'm essentially always measuring the cell voltages which is how I caught the issue.
Furthermore as mentioned previously I only draw a max of 30amps which is 1c the pack is rated for a lot more then that so at no point have I been "thrashing it" sorry if you struggle with maths but the figures were all there no need to assume anything.
Also there is no advice about this charging procedure, but in the 48hrs between charging I'd be lucky to use 10ah of 30ah
I'm not recharging between 15% DOD cycles and see no reason too. If I was using 10ah a day I might but nahhhh. Every 2nd weekend I went for a big ride and gave it a 24hr balance. But like using the thing every day I just don't have time for it to live on the charger and when I can see the cells are balanced then I see no reason to balance. After all people bulk charge these kind of cells in solar arrays.

Anyway if I'm wrong about being angry for a 9 month old LiFePO4 pack failing with less then 300 cycles (more like 100 mby 150). It's just discussting he made me pay for the new cell and shipping it's like warranties don't exist. And this suggests to me low quality, why would you warrenty something you don't trust...
 
This was my mistake to ship the package to your PayPal address. Not by any of our staff, but by me. I'm very sorry for this mistake. We will ship a new cell group (6x cells) and parts to you. I know that might not be enough to make you calm down soon, since I haven't got your response on the testing. If you still don't want to talk to me, these 6 cells should resolve the problem. If they cannot, I hope you calm down and contact me.

What made me to send this post was that you doubted our warranty. Maybe the anger made you forget something. Maybe the discussion above made you more angry. Anyway, I need to list the history of this case here to clarify our warranty. After all, we have devoted much to this in the past 10 years.

- back in May this year, you told me you have a puffed cell in your battery pack. "Its probably almost 2 years old now" (your words).
- since you said it's 2 years, I directly sent cost of the new cell instead of warranty procedures. Also, I recommended you replace all the 6 cells in parallel in that group.
- you said you wanted to try one cell first. If it doesn't work, you will purchase more cells to replace the whole group.
- you gave me the shipping address and asked for a PayPal invoice. Then we sent the invoice and received the payment.
- I wanted to double check the version of the cells. Your email address cannot be found in our customer database. You said this battery pack was purchased together with a bike from the guy who built it for you. You cannot get in contact with him now. You said it could be end of 2015 or start of 2016 and gave me size of the battery pack.
- I confirmed they're V5 cells and shipped the new cell to your PayPal shipping address (my mistake).
 
Also, if you post a picture of the half pack with puffed cell and a picture of the BMS, maybe guys here or I can tell you what caused the problem and give you some advices.
 
I think I see the light now. Each time you respond more is revealed about how you have used this battery and more actual details are left out. I hope when you receive your replacement cells you will consider both the above statements I have made and the ones I intend to make in this post. Otherwise, assuming (there's that word again) you are able to properly repair the pack, I would expect it to soon fail again.

As far as Ping is concerned, he seems to be doing his best to help you in spite of your thread title and quite nasty first post even though the battery was clearly out of warranty, a fact you purposely attempted to hide from the forum, not with a lie, but by claiming only 9 months of usage. You can't buy any product with a 12 month warranty, let it set on the shelf for a year (or wherever it sat), then use it for almost a year, then claim it should still be under warranty.

I've also noticed some similarities between what you have said and what I notice folks with rc or other battery experience often say. Mainly comments about voltage alarms and bulk charging. They seem to think they can do a better job caring for their batteries with other means instead of letting the BMS do it's job. I don't think they understand the unique voltage curve of LiFeP04.

Why you choose to charge for over an hour every other day with a 9 amp bulk charger when the standard 5 amp charger Ping supplies with that battery could charge and balance it in an hour every day (based on your declared usage) is still beyond me and in all likelihood IMO is the cause of the battery failure. If I have misunderstood your charging procedures please correct me.

I could go on, but don't feel there is any point to any further discussion unless asked.
 
Alan B said:
Is there a reason you don't update your PayPal address to use your Parcel locker?
Is there a reason why this matters when it's stated that the shipping address was communicated to the vendor?
 
Ahhh the battery died after 9 months during the last semester of uni took me about 3 months to actually look at it and then I contacted ping for the first time and never received a response, I tried again a few months later and then quit because of the drama and a cheap 10ah 18650 pack and a complete lack of time to do anything because of postgrad.
After another 6 months of looking at the thing everyday and getting more and more pissed off I finally tried again and just bit my tongue and bought the cell... which has left me here.
Now once again I see this $1500aud pack on a desk in my garage every time I leave my house and it just reminds me how god damn annoying it is to deal with chinese vendors.
Pics on the weekend nowhere near enough time to magically rip a pack apart and get some nudes..... I love how 90% of you have nothing to do with your time and assume I have a few hours to do this mid week.... at the moment Thesis is life..... Also why I bought the LiFePO4 instead of brand name 18650s thinking it would save me these headaches.

All good for now thanks Ping for finally sorting me out lets just hope you got the address right, but still packless for however long the supertanker takes to roll up to port.
Also for all the geniuses out there in internet land, my paypal adress is my home address I pay all my bills with paypal which is why it defaults to primary....... And as mentioned previously I live on a block with a concealed driveway, just yesterday the fedex man missed it and I got an email saying my address didn't exist, unfortunately fedex refuse to land parcels in po boxes :roll: . Id actually had a lengthy email chain where I had provided the address, which has some strange formatting and requested that it be sent there, Ping has addressed this and apologised for which I am grateful.

For any of you that have regular dealings with chinesium vendors you will realise how much a pain it is and how quickly you will jump on any chance to avoid it (10ah el cheapo pack), I only resurfaced this and followed it up because my 10ah pack is starting to loose capacity and I realised hey I spet a boatload of money on this broken thing maybe I can finally get it going.

Also let us also remember that any manufacturer of merit gives a damn long warranty on these kinds of cells for like 5+ years (tesla, lg, etc) so this to me is another thing that screams amature hour.
 
ebikkies said:
Alan B said:
Is there a reason you don't update your PayPal address to use your Parcel locker?
Is there a reason why this matters when it's stated that the shipping address was communicated to the vendor?

Yes, it does matter for several reasons. When shipping with PayPal, using the default address protects the shipper, and it is the default thing that happens when shipping by PayPal. Providing a different address removes protections that PayPal provides, and incurs extra effort and the potential for mistakes to the vendor (such as forgetting to enter the separately provided address, or mistyping it, or the user providing an incorrect address). Many small businesses will not ship to a different address for these reasons. Scams often use different addresses as part of their scheme to take advantage of the vendor. It is a simple question, and not updating the PayPal shipping information is asking for shipping errors. Vendors generally try to comply with these requests, but it is better for the customer to fix their PayPal info since it will lead to this problem for them again in the future. In this case the customer clearly has a different address they prefer to receive packages, so why not do it? As a vendor myself (not in the ebike market) I'm curious why people don't take this simple step. I've had international packages lost or returned (very costly) due to this customer error (they didn't let me know they moved, etc, so not quite like this case, but if they had updated their PayPal address it would have automatically gone to the new place). PayPal has a number of valuable services which we pay for when we use it, and handling the shipping address, and verifying it, is one of them. Forgetting to update PayPal is certainly understandable when moving, but for a static situation it makes less sense.

Buying batteries long-distance from ANY vendor is problematic, compounded by the shipping limitations for lithium. We really need local service on lithium batteries. There is just no good way to get them fixed without a local entity to do that.

I see in his last posting that he gave a reason related to paying bills, perhaps that makes sense, though I suspect he could still change it to his locker, but this will continue to be a problem for vendors shipping to him and it removes important protections.
 
The Original Poster said he/she/it (trying to be politically correct here) "was too busy"..... to update his paypal info, which always makes me laugh when I see people state that they are too busy. Too busy, too busy to
A) Update Paypal Info - Takes like 5 minutes if that
B) Inspect Battery - Maybe an hour or two, so the game plan would be to do it in smaller steps, say 15-30 minutes at a time, then by the end of 1 week should have the battery pack bare.

No no, no time in the day, not a spare 15 minutes anywhere. Must order food in and not cook, makes sense with the year long "Thesis" every minute of every day = No Time, Too Busy!
 
To check state of charge check each cell group and write down on a piece of paper like this.
1. 3.45v
2. 3.33v
3. 2.98v

16. Xxx volt
Then voltage of charger and battery.
This is a start. We will walk you thru the next steps after you take the first step. Best to post in battery section and get started. Fixing that ping.
 
Im not sure why you guys think I cant probe some cell's
Assuming im an idiot is just juvenile......

Pings new cells came today so at least he got that right....

Also I hardly see the point in listing 15 voltages that are the same and 1 that is different..... Its not really going to change anything......
But I will when I get the pack apart to put these new cells in......
There are 15cells that are balanced all the time and 1 that is not.... If I leave the pack balance for a few days eventually they are all the same.... If I use the pack I get about 18ah and then get close to LVC on one line all the others remain balanced.......

Im just saying I have had better experience with vpower......

sooo many dots!

Also Thank you Li Ping for the cells! like I said before they came today and I will hopefully get a chance to fix the pack this week/end
 
VPower rang a bell, I had a slight gag reflex and figured something was up and so it began.....

**Note** Only because you mention Vpower twice (sure not in the first post) still I figured somethings amiss, figure it was on the slow sell.

and so it began.....
Interesting info.....


https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=82751&p=1214301&hilit=Vpower#p1214295
Drunkskunk wrote:
I didn't mean to sound like that ebay kit is bad. I have no idea. But it is a risk. ebay vendors are notorious for the batteries they sell. Some of them are simply amazing, like Mr Ping, and his batteries. his customer service is first rate, and his batteries last for a long time. I think Dogman has one from many years ago. Other vendors, like Vpower are known for selling junk that doesn't always work, and when it does, it rarely works well.

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=81005&p=1193032&hilit=Vpower#p1193032
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=53387&p=1147606&hilit=Vpower#p1147597
 
Im sorry I fail to see the relevance Markz.
My ping broke quickly
My Vpower has lasted for years
Thats not to say other people haven't had bad experiences it just ping is a hell of a lot more expensive so one would assume better right?
 
Good to hear that Ping sent you some replacement cells.

I have a pair of 48V 15AH Ping batteries that are over four years old and starting to show some age factors, so I figure at some point I will open them up and make two good 48V 10AH packs out of the best cells.

I've also seen where guys have had trouble working on their packs while trying to replace cells, such as tearing off tabs, causing shorts, puncturing cells, applying too much pressure, etc., so any advice, techniques, pictures, cautions, etc. you can share when you open your pack and work on it would be appreciated.
 
I had a flawless experience with ping, but that is my case. I guess others could have some problems Nevertheless mr ping looks a solid and responsible seller to me. I hope you fix your problem.
 
chilltrout, did you fix your battery?

I ran across something a bit odd, namely that earlier this year in May of 2017 you purchased a used 48V 30AH Ping battery with a puffed cell. Is this the battery you have been talking about in this thread?

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=87950&p=1285376#p1285376
 
Nope i was gonna buy it for parts but decided not too in the end, had the wrong cells and BMS, 2.5 Vs 5 iirc
 
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