Ebay Battery Sale

[Roy Von Rogers]

Has anyone dealt with this person ???

http://cgi.ebay.com/LiFePO4-36v-20Ah-BA ... 7C294%3A50

Sorry shows no longer available, but if I go to ebay directly shows good...weird


Roy

 

[dogman dan]

So who is he? Cammycc and Ping are the only ones that made my list of sellers with a customer service reputation when there is a problem. Mr Lau is on the avoid list for sure, he often turns up with wierd selling names that include strange combinations of words and numbers, and will have lots of old feedback for inexpensive electronic stuff. So he makes a selling name to switch to way in advance, and sells only dinky stuff that will never generate bad feedback.

 

[avsmith66]

Mr Lau is on the avoid list for sure, he often turns up with wierd selling names that include strange combinations of words and numbers, and will have lots of old feedback for inexpensive electronic stuff. So he makes a selling name to switch to way in advance, and sells only dinky stuff that will never generate bad feedback.

He also takes so long to ship for free, that by the time you receive the "bad" battery, the listing on ebay has expired, and you cannot leave negative feedback, further disguising his reputation.

Additionally this makes it more difficult to file a paypal claim. His free shipping gives the expression "on a Slow boat from China" validity.

I won the bid for his battery in September of 2008. Received the battery the end of January 2009. I have shipped the battery back to China which I am sure cost me a lot more than it cost him to ship it to me.

I am still awaiting a resolution from paypal and it is now April 2009.


Known Ebay ID's:

mp3hk

Most recent know email addresses.

3721c7@gmail.com
chan71@gmail.com
plypal@petpetgold.com
tonyyan51@gmail.com

Also in most of the email correspondence the email was closed "Thanks and Have a nice day!
Emma

In the ebay listings the pictures of the batteries have a label on them with the web site LiFePO4.HK.

If anyone can add info to this, please do. I want to make as many people as possible aware to stay away from this seller.

AVS

 

[Rob Melektau]

He is now listed on Ebay as '2707co'

http://shop.ebay.ca/merchant/2707co

 

[needWheels]

I'm almost convinced he uses different seller names for different kinds of packs.
There is a 48v 15ah thread here about one of his packs that turned out good enough.
I'll know more soon as I risked buying a pack from him which should arrive this week.

I can't speak for quality as I have no idea, but as far as communications, they were excellent, I had two emails with him before the sale and several afterwards, all were replied to within an hour if it was China business time or 24 hours if it was too late there. While the auction only included the slower free boat shipping, he really wanted me to have a faster method and I negotiated with him to $25 for airmail (it was all the money I had left!). In the end he shipped it EMS which is even faster and more expensive for him (airmail = 2-3 weeks, EMS = 1 week or so)

It's occurred to me that if he wanted to hide problems and try to escape ebay claims, he would not offer airmail/ems at all and just let it go on the slow boat but that's not what he did. He even sent me an email at the end to let me know that there is holiday in China in the first few days of May so I would not be able to reach him as he will be away but he would be back. So that's good, honest communication in my book, at least so far.

So maybe he is learning from mistakes and getting better. I'll start a new thread with photos, etc. when my pack finally arrives (it's currently in customs at JFK NYC)

 

[Gordon]

googled his contact name (tonyyan51) and found he has good ebay feedback but all of it from 2005. No recent feedback.

The name is also the name of a popular Hong Kong movie star. 8)

 

[needWheels]

That's funny about the movie star. I don't know what insight that may show into his personality good or bad.

All emails are signed "Emma" but again I don't know if that's him trying to be clever or indirect, or if maybe he has an english speaking secretary that does correspondence for him because he doesn't speak english. It's funny how I have a higher tolerance for that than when I call some support line that is India and the guy introduces himself as "Steve" - I understand why they wouldn't want to use their full/real identity as I have worked in call centers but why "americanize" their names, are they ashamed of being in India? I suspect some HK/CN vendors do the same thing, they think Americans have a low tolerance for things not American so they try to adapt. They might not be wrong about the average American unfortunately.

ps. many ebay sellers, not just HK/CN have multiple seller accounts because all it takes is one customer to be upset illegitimately to ruin your entire account - I keep one account for buying and another for selling just in case someone wants to be a jerk

 

[Olavi]

Hi!

I have also won an auction created by 2707co and after winning found out that the seller was mr. Lau. My pack was 48V 20Ah made of 7669130L 3.2V 4Ah (16s5p) prismatic cells with a 6A charger. Delivery was free and it took less than a week to get the battery to Europe. I measured voltage on balance wires and all groups had 3.66V.

Currently I don't have a motor to test the battery, but I hope to find a fine rear motor for 700cc wheel and I can let you know, how this pack will last at 30-40A peak usage, if there is such interest. I will ask advice in a separate post

 

[needWheels]

Olavi, that must be the other kind of battery he is selling, it looks different too right?
Like shrink wrapped. Can I ask how much you paid?

I see some people got it around $400 which would be better than my deal on the older 18650 pack Oh well.

I guess since my setup is 16s with 224 cells that's 16 strings of 14 cells each = 19.8ah @ 1.4ah or 16.8ah @ 1.2ah

(those who got the 15ah pack got 16 strings of 11 cells = 15.4ah @ 1.4ah or 13.2 @ 1.2ah)

Your starting voltage will be rather high @ 58.5 volts so be careful if you use it on a 36v controller.

 

[Olavi]

Hi!

Yes this battery is shrink wrapped, I payd about $407, delivery was included. Yesterday I tried the charger first time, cooler is a bit loud, but this could be fixed with a better fan. Before charging voltage of the battery was 53,7 V and in the beginning charger used 4,85 A current to charge the battery, current decreased slowly to 0,08A and then I disconnected the charger. Final voltage was 58,9V, is this good enough?

I think when the battery would be empty then this charger could give real 6A charge, so at least this is not just an advertisement I was afraid of.

 

[needWheels]

Yeah I think you got a better deal than I did as I stupidly bought the older 18650 packs he sells.

The prismatic cells seem to be better quality.

I wouldn't stress over the charger, that's nothing compared to how you could have gotten taken on the battery itself.

Charging at lower rate will make the cells last longer anyway.

 

[avsmith66]

I'm very sorry to hear that Lau has added another victim to his list. The only way you will ever get any results with them is by using a paypal dispute. The emails will always come back that they are willing to do anything to help as long as you mail the parts back, which of course will end up costing you more than the battery and charger did in the first place.

Do yourself a favor and start the paypal dispute now before it is too late. Once you get to the point where paypal decides in your favor, and asks you to return the items to China, then you can negotiate with Lau and end the dispute once you get what you want.

AVS

 

[needWheels]

Well there's 45 days to file a dispute so you can literally test things for a month and see how they work.
I'm just dealing with a charger that was DOA (same model as Olavi's photo) and he wants me to pay to ship back and the wants me to pay for air shipping a new one. You can read the drama over here if you care.