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AliExpress (Sellers or disputes) - the good, the bad & the ugly

GavCol

New Member
Joined
Apr 28, 2021
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27
Location
Sydney, Aus
Hi all,

Lovin' the wealth of info here. Such a compliment to Will's videos. I've learned a helluva lot over the past year to the point we recently ordered our own DIY components. Still waiting on the 8 x 320ah cells from China.

The reason for this post is that I have a good news experience for a change.
In my research travels through this forum, before my AliExpress DIY purchases, I came across some older posts about AliExpress. Some good, some fails, incl one that requested info on disputes but nothing was all in one place.

I really hope this thread does not turn into a slug fest and we just post facts about a seller/order/dispute/resolution.
This thread is intended for people to learn from others experiences and is not intended as a name and shame of AliExpress.

i.e. I don't blame Ebay (much) for all of the crap sellers that sell in that market place and I don't go to my local Westfields/mall/market to blame them for a dodgy retail store/stall. Any sales dispute I have I need to take up with the Seller.
I get it that it's a lot more difficult to do so for online retailers/marketplaces so I appreciate when those marketplaces (ebay/aliexpress) and payment services (paypal) have some controls in place to protect us (as much as possible).

Another post referenced that AliExpress favoured the local Chinese seller rather than a western world consumer. This has not been my experience so I thought I'd create a thread for everyone to report experiences for others to learn from.

My experience was I had ordered a 12v BMS from the official Daly store in AliExpress. What Daly sent me was a 24v BMS. I raised a dispute via the order and highlighted details of the product which clearly showed 12v in the title desc and also included images of the 24v 8S BMS I received.
1620709801377.png

Daly in turn rejected my dispute stating "it is customer buy the wrong model".
Not sure if it's possible to even get a 12v 8S bms so don't know why 8S was in the description unless it's for 1.5v cells !!. Either way I ordered 12v and received 24v.

To AliExpress' credit, they stepped in and took the side of the consumer and arranged a full refund via my paypal account.
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Defo happy with the result and hope this thread will be of use to others and updated with facts and hopefully not have to be shut down if it gets too aggro.

Now if only those damn 320ah cells would arrive !! It's cruel having to wait soo long !! ;)

Cheers
Gav
 
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Lucky you, that your dispute were finalized. I have a dispute open since ages and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENS.
1621157532814.png
The dispute should have been resolved long ago. "We will step in..." and if they don't?
I have definitely no way to complain, all you get is a robot that throws you back at the beginning of your complain.

You can not reach any human on that platform.

It is such a frustrating platform, that I decided to protect my nerves.
I will not purchase anything again at AliExpress until my dispute is answered and solved (which does not appear to become a realistic eventuality).
 
Hi all,

Lovin' the wealth of info here. Such a compliment to Will's videos. I've learned a helluva lot over the past year to the point we recently ordered our own DIY components. Still waiting on the 8 x 320ah cells from China.

The reason for this post is that I have a good news experience for a change.
In my research travels through this forum, before my AliExpress DIY purchases, I came across some older posts about AliExpress. Some good, some fails, incl one that requested info on disputes but nothing was all in one place.

I really hope this thread does not turn into a slug fest and we just post facts about a seller/order/dispute/resolution.
This thread is intended for people to learn from others experiences and is not intended as a name and shame of AliExpress.

i.e. I don't blame Ebay (much) for all of the crap sellers that sell in that market place and I don't go to my local Westfields/mall/market to blame them for a dodgy retail store/stall. Any sales dispute I have I need to take up with the Seller.
I get it that it's a lot more difficult to do so for online retailers/marketplaces so I appreciate when those marketplaces (ebay/aliexpress) and payment services (paypal) have some controls in place to protect us (as much as possible).

Another post referenced that AliExpress favoured the local Chinese seller rather than a western world consumer. This has not been my experience so I thought I'd create a thread for everyone to report experiences for others to learn from.

My experience was I had ordered a 12v BMS from the official Daly store in AliExpress. What Daly sent me was a 24v BMS. I raised a dispute via the order and highlighted details of the product which clearly showed 12v in the title desc and also included images of the 24v 8S BMS I received.
View attachment 48636

Daly in turn rejected my dispute stating "it is customer buy the wrong model".
Not sure if it's possible to even get a 12v 8S bms so don't know why 8S was in the description unless it's for 1.5v cells !!. Either way I ordered 12v and received 24v.

To AliExpress' credit, they stepped in and took the side of the consumer and arranged a full refund via my paypal account.
View attachment 48642
View attachment 48641

Defo happy with the result and hope this thread will be of use to others and updated with facts and hopefully not have to be shut down if it gets too aggro.

Now if only those damn 320ah cells would arrive !! It's cruel having to wait soo long !! ;)

Cheers
Gav
If you have got a 24V 8S BMS, you can use it as a 12V-4S by using only the four first leads.
 
If you have got a 24V 8S BMS, you can use it as a 12V-4S by using only the four first leads.
ah, Thanks. I thought I couldn't because the product desc states:
"Customer need to identify the battery's series, then choose the same series BMS. Such as your battery is 24S, you must choose 24S BMS, can not choose 20 or other one. The number of series of BMS is fixed "

So I read that as having to use all 8 leads. Good to know that can use only what's needed.
 
Lucky you, that your dispute were finalized. I have a dispute open since ages and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENS.
View attachment 49193
The dispute should have been resolved long ago. "We will step in..." and if they don't?
I have definitely no way to complain, all you get is a robot that throws you back at the beginning of your complain.

You can not reach any human on that platform.

It is such a frustrating platform, that I decided to protect my nerves.
I will not purchase anything again at AliExpress until my dispute is answered and solved (which does not appear to become a realistic eventuality).

ah crap.... sorry to hear that.
I don't know why mine was different. Maybe because I used paypal and they have more weight behind them when arguing disputes or maybe there's different trade laws here in Australia.
 
i found that using paypal credit services is a good way to go , recently i had won a dispute that PayPal sorted out (got my money back),about 8 years ago i purchased from aliexpress with a cc and never received my order and lost my dispute(did not get my money back)Paypal got my money back within 14 days.
first i was very reluctant to place a order with aliexpress so i went on Paypal chat room and they assured me that if i don't get the product they will refund.
that being said there are many people who make purchases via aliexpress without a problem
 
Well... I got my 8 x 320ah cells and very happy with the quality and capacity tests so far.
Still more to go but have 615ah from approx 90%. (12v 2p4s)

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Yes, I had a bad experience recently with AliExpress (AE). It was not a lot of money but wasted a lot of time and the way it was handled was infuriating.

Background:
I came up a way to clean solar panels quickly & efficiently by using a portable battery powered water gun. Then feed the gun with 100% distilled purified water. Just get the gun and water bucket up to the roof and spray safely from a corner. No dangerous moving around or pushing a long brush around. Which, by the way, could potentially scratch the panel's glass with small stones you don't see depending on the quality of the panel's glass.

Product:
I ordered a "24V" slick looking portable water gun. The item surprisingly arrived within about a week from China. When I got it I was pretty enthused.

Problems:
Then I found out its only 20V because its charger outputs only 20V. I opened up the battery pack and found only only a 5s Lithium-Ion 18650 cells! For "24V" to be legit, it needs to be a 6s Lithium-Ion pack. With a 5s battery, the gun is only 21V at very most so stating 24V is an exaggeration of an entire Lithium-ion cell or 14.2%.

The problems don't end there! I charged the battery up to 100% using its charger. When I did a test run on the ground, the thing ran for about 7 seconds. Almost immediately showing obvious signs the battery is dying before the motor stopped. I let the battery rest and repeated the trigger down again and it lasts 4 seconds before dying. Each time the battery ran for less and less time. This is obviously a sign of a battery pack that won't hold a charge. I repeated this test a few more times with identical results.

Seller:
I messaged the seller with these details and they were friendly and said "don't worry we'll take care of it". Seller kept asking same questions about things I've already mentioned in detail. I figured it was a language barrier so kept at it. Already I'm getting bad signs they're just stalling. Then the seller wants a full video documenting this. I do so taking like 30+ minutes to shoot the video and edit it together with good editing and clear labels describing each step.

I uploaded it to Google Photos. A day later, they said they can't view it. Probably because of China's Firewall. Fine, so I upload it to Dropbox and for sure they can view it there. A day later they said they can't view it and don't give a reason. They say to e-mail the video. I told them emailing large attachments problematic. I had to go back an re-encode the video to a much lower bitrate to get it to fit. I eventually get it to email. A day later they still say they can't view it. I'm starting to get very frustrated and replied back how I can get the video to them in 3 locations and they still can't view it.

They recommend I file an official AE dispute. I do so. I include the video and full description. A day later, AE closes the dispute saying they can't view the video. WTF? I go to the dispute page and am able to play the video perfectly. Each of my dispute items are marked as "invalid" and reason is "cannot view video". Are you f'ing kidding? Even if one cannot view a video, you wouldn't mark the dispute "invalid" on a technicality which is complete bogus technicality in the first place. I knew I had been scammed at this point.

I filed back an angry message to the seller basically saying "I'm done with you" and gave ultimatum to properly resolve this within a few days. I shamed him asking hime to consider how the world would suck if every seller was like him.

In the end, I followed through on my threat to them and called my credit card company. I explained everything in detail and the representative was totally responsive. The next day the charge was reversed.

Sneaky B*stard:
I don't know how the seller "got" to AE and got them to mark the dispute as "invalid". But AE really really went down hill in my books. I will use them with great distrust going forward. The seller was a sneaky b*stard. He knew exactly what he was doing. He ended most messages with "don't worry we'll take care of it". He stalled and stalled on each and every step. He asked repeatedly asked the same questions over and over again. He said he couldn't view the videos but I'm sure he didn't even look at them!

Inside Job:
The scariest thing is how the seller got AE judgment to go his way. But I'm figuring the entire operation was an inside job scam. The seller was working through a plan to sell a pallets and pallets full of these defective and overly exaggerated water guns. He probably saved a bunch of money to whomever contracted him out to sell these guns into the market. I'm sure most buyers fell for it and chalked it up to another bad China purchase. Sadly, these sellers make China look bad but there are a lot of good sellers there too though.
 
I also have had a purchase where the seller was obviously just trying to rip me off.

In that case, my item went a LONG time and never had a tracking number posted to the purchase .... the seller ignored all my requests for tracking information. Finally, it was near the time the purchase period would expire and I filed a dispute.
As soon as I filed the dispute, a tracking number showed up on the order and showed that it had been delivered. Problem was, the delivery was made to an address on the other side of the country from me.
Luckily, I had made the purchase with PayPal so I also filed a dispute with them and posted the bogus tracking information. The seller never did respond to PayPal and I got a refund in a few days.
It is totally frustrating when someone on the other side of the world is just in it for the people they can scam.

It was very similar in the early days of Ebay. There were a lot of scam artists on there too.
I think things have been cleaned up somewhat on Ebay because of tightening of rules and PayPal intervention pushing most of the scammers off of there.

I have never understood the criminal mind .... but have learned to recognize a scammer and how to protect myself from them. Like these people who call and claim the are fundraising for the police and have this very much military / authoritative tone .... can you imagine where they are there is a whole room full of these people trying to scam you .... What's wrong with these people? Get a real Job ... it probably won't be as much work.
 
My problem with AliExpress was apparently not the seller who tells that he agrees to refund, but the AliExpress processes, where the dispute got stalled without any progress. If something gets wrong you just can't reach a human.
I filed a complaint via PayPal but AliExpress closed it without further explanation.
I wrote via PayPal (the only way I have to write something to them] that I will not purchase anything more, until my claim is resolved or a human contacts me to resolve it.
Now their robot nags me every day per eMail asking why I don't purchase any more...
It lands now in the spam folder...
 
I ordered a few times a few dozens (imho brand new and genuine) 18650 LiCo cells from Liitokaala Official store and all stuff I got was within spec. But I never ordered other stuff like LiFePo4 cells from them. Maybe Amy is a better source for LiFePo4 cells ?
 
Well... I got my 8 x 320ah cells and very happy with the quality and capacity tests so far.
Still more to go but have 615ah from approx 90%. (12v 2p4s)

View attachment 53293
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I received 144 batteries that are heavy bumped in the middle battery from PWOD ! What can I do now ? Can I chargeback from credit card ? How ?

105FBB91-61DF-40C7-BD9E-5B2469252EE6.jpeg

This is the seller :

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I waited for 110 days and still din not get all the batteries.
 
after 75 days you were entitled to full refund and still likely to get the batteries anyway and that's just for the delivery issues.
This happened to someone else on this forum.

As for the bulging cells, it looks like they charged them fully (without compression) before shipping them.
You may find they'll reduce to normal size if you discharge them. Could take a while x 144 !!
Mine bulged when I first charged them without compression but then reduced when I discharged them.

If still no joy or you're not happy then you'll need to take that up with the supplier and or AliExpress/Alibaba
I cannot see from your images if you used Liitokala official store or the LiitokalaVaricore flagship store or some other store. It is not visible.
Other people on this forum have had issues with the flagship store but I am very happy with the Liitokala official store.
 
after 75 days you were entitled to full refund and still likely to get the batteries anyway and that's just for the delivery issues.
This happened to someone else on this forum.

As for the bulging cells, it looks like they charged them fully (without compression) before shipping them.
You may find they'll reduce to normal size if you discharge them. Could take a while x 144 !!
Mine bulged when I first charged them without compression but then reduced when I discharged them.

If still no joy or you're not happy then you'll need to take that up with the supplier and or AliExpress/Alibaba
I cannot see from your images if you used Liitokala official store or the LiitokalaVaricore flagship store or some other store. It is not visible.
Other people on this forum have had issues with the flagship store but I am very happy with the Liitokala official store.

is it possible that batteries have bumps because of transport in metallic container with train in desert heat from China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan to direct sungeat without any ventilation and inside the container can get over 100C .

Also he did not follow any UN3481 lithium battery transport protocols and any marks of fragile was cured from the mix as you can see below :

7FD42C13-AF74-4F69-9C0C-013E1FDF0A5A.jpeg

not is not possible to refund because seller protected himself by delivering to EU warehouse. If I was canceling the order before it arrived to EU warehouse he blackmailed me and said he will sell the batteries with $650 for a pack of for instead of $519 what I paid 110 days ago, so I will have no option.

Can I open dispute after getting the batteries? What is the best way to do it ?


So I was not able to open any dispute because of the blackmail and he extended delivery time


I used PWOD seller . Check this image with the seller name and product title:

6155039E-B818-4020-B20D-F9817C677AD1.png
 
PWOD is only in the product description and not an indication of the actual seller or the store you purchased from.
You've cropped off the seller from the top of the image.

Unfortunately I cannot comment on the impacts of temperature of train journeys between China & Europe. It's not something you'll ever get a complete answer to.
You're best bet is to raise an issue via your aliexpress order page and hopefully you've paid for the cells with paypal and not a credit card as paypal may help if aliexpress doesn't. Some credit card institutions may also get involved but I haven't heard too many of those cases.
 
Some credit card institutions may also get involved but I haven't heard too many of those cases.
They will get involved if a dispute is opened with them. People have received full refunds. I don't know if it happens in every case, but it does happen.
 
Unfortunately I cannot comment on the impacts of temperature of train journeys between China & Europe. It's not something you'll ever get a complete answer to.
Imagine how hot a dark red shipping container, on the top of the pile, in the middle of the Pacific, with full sun can get. My white trailer can get over 120°f, and it has some shade for a lot of the day.
 
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