Very disappointed with this company. She sent me a picture of july 2020 cells and sent me this
It make me think that these are used. I can see scratches on terminals and this particular cell came with 2.94v.
..
I think I should warn other people with this Shenzhen Basen company!
Would you share the picture that shows July 2020 production date?
I don't believe I've seen anyone receive cells newer than 2018, from Xuba, Basen, Lightning, etc. Though in the vast majority of cases (99%) date of manufacture is not known or not posted publicly here.
Old production date doesn't necessarily signify used cells, they are just as likely to be (much more likely in my opinion) to be new-old-stock being sold off at a discount as they can no longer be sold as new grade A through official channels. This would also explain why some sellers are warning that they are drying up.
Further, lightly scratched terminals are somewhat normal from what I've read, cells are tested at the factory and possibly again by middlemen.
I think I should start a refund process. what do you think?
If it were me, I would balance and capacity test the cells before attempting a refund (I'm not even sure you have grounds for a refund (apart from the low voltage cell if its bad) unless Basen explicitly stated your cells were from 2020, or explicitly represented the picture as your specific cells).
You may have a bad or weak cell, or at the least a cell that was not matched to the others based on voltage. Definitely worth investigating
If they did explicitly misrepresent the cells as being
produced in July 2020, that is disingenous and bad business.
As to:
Basically they lied about cell production date, balancing and matching cells before shipping!
Are you sure you correctly understood them, and they correctly understood you? No grey market reseller that I am aware of will balance the cells for you. Best you will get is voltage matching and maybe basic IR matching depending on reseller, which from the sound of it, they screwed up with at least 1 cell, unless the problem occurred during transit.
Best of luck with the testing, hopefully it was just stored at a lower voltage and its a healthy cell, if not, I would definitely pursue replacement of that cell.