Safe buying from China, Timelyrain - quality batteries?

[Afterburner]

I have been building my own ebikes for a couple years now and would like to move into buying directly from Chinese manufacturers. I have found the process rather daunting not only concerning the quality of Chinese products, but the pitfalls of choosing the wrong method of payment. I've been talking with a company called Timelyrain recently and was thinking of ordering two dolphin-style batteries from them. Before I spend upwards of $900 on a couple of these, I was trying to find someone who's bought from them and would like to get as many opinions as possible on the quality of the battery. I am trying to find a reliable supplier and potentially may order a dozen or more of these batteries. Any information you all could pass along would be greatly appreciated
Also, I know very little about making payments directly to a Chinese supplier and would like to hear from people who have, and how to make it a safe transaction. They (Timelyrain) are requesting that payment be made through T/T - a bank-to-bank, immediate transfer as I understand it. Is it better to have the payment held in escrow (I'm not sure exactly how to do that)? I understand many suppliers dislike this method as they are then at risk if the buyer doesn't release the funds. Any advice here would also be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance for the help!

Afterburner

Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2014 3:47 am
Location: Longmont, Colorado

 

[amberwolf]

Well, unless you know them personally and trust them, I wouldn't say it's "safe" to do that sort of transfer to anyone, much less a company you don't know across an ocean or two from you.

As for how safe any of this is, you might check out some of the various threads about problems with sellers, and good things about them (there are a couple of threads with quite a few vendors around the world listed in htem, as well as many individual threads), and then you could use that info to make your own judgement call.

Personally, I wouldn't do it--unless I could use a payment method that has a guaranteed way for me to reverse it on my end should the transaction go sour for whatever reason, I wouldn't send that much money anywhere I didn't trust for sure.