eBay Battery Review Witch-hunt -- anybody?

So. I had a little conversation with some folks at eBay regarding the proliferation of fake, cheap, chinesium-ion batteries being sold, and the primary and secondary affects it's having on unwitting consumers and on entire sectors of the consumer electronics industry, not to mention regulations on postal mail, freight, and even air and bus travel. Even so far as cellphones and laptops being banned in certain circumstances, and cellphone and laptop companies making non-replaceable-battery products to avoid such liabilities of after-market chinesium-ion batteries finding their way into their products. Even e-cigarette vaporizers are facing state bans due to (in part, by argument) their propensity to explode in people's faces -- again, eBay batteries.

One of the takeaways of this conversation was that they would love to do something about batteries, but short of a wholesale ban on all batteries, eBay would need more community members actively engaged in finding and flagging fraudulent item listings, buying and testing and demanding a refund for mis-labeled and false claims of capacity and safe discharge voltage. When enough unrelated people flag and report and provide negative feedback and demand a product refund, the sellers can then be removed from the platform and their financials blacklisted as well (la PayPal, verified identity).

And it would definitely take a community. People dedicated to such a task, people with the equipment to perform actual charge/discharge tests and documented disassembly. Warm bodies to chase down the thousands of fraudulent sellers presently at large so we can reduce those numbers to hundreds, then dozens, and maybe eventually none.

Anyone up for a challenge?

Some ideas: We would keep good records of sellers and listings along with return address labels and tracking information where available to try to identify the factories and warehouses involved. Google Docs spreadsheet for collaboration. Focused attention on specific targets for successive flagging, negative feedback and refund demands.

And of course, reward the good guys with positive reviews posted on here.

I won't do this alone.

I would think the biggest problem would be the endless "shell game" that these shady companies do, if they get shut down or the heat is coming down on them they'll just change their name and wipe the slate clean. But it's sad how these companies will cause so many problems across a whole industry and even endanger people's lives.

Noble but why not start smaller? For example I just searched "18650" at Ebay. 23 of the 1st page of 50 results were all clearly fraudulent with impossible mAh claims. You don't need an army of volunteers or expensive test rigs to clean up half of ebay.

There are also entirely different ways of tackling the problem. Why pour time/energy/money into a company that doesn't care about you? There are plenty of independent battery sellers who you can trust. Some of them even test every batch of batteries they receive.

Of course it varies by country. In the US there is no shortage of good vendors. Illumn, Mountain Electronics, IMR Batteries, Vruzend, Li Ion Wholesale, Orbtronic, 18650 Battery Store, mAh Battery, RTD Vapor. In fact the number of good places to buy batteries is the biggest problem! So I've put together a regularly updated and searchable list of all of their inventories to make finding good deals fast and easy.

In other counties there are fewer options but you still have options. The UK has 18650.uk, EcoLux, FogStar. Eurasia has NKon. Canada has 18650Canada. Germany has Akkuteile.

Not to be negative but I don't see any practical way for what you describe to succeed, given the differential in effort and resources, and at the scale presented by this issue.

I try to buy my own batteries direct from authorized distributors whenever possible :shrug:

An educated consumer is the best defence against these types of companies but unfortunately many people don't bother to do even a little bit of research on the things they purchase. My fist quality led flashlight still works perfectly today (knock on wood) and the first lithium ion batteries are still going too, Olight cells btw. Albeit they are almost ready for retirement. It's the very real endangerment to people that these types of companies will do in the name of making a buck.

LED Monkey: Chinese people need to use payment processors, too. eBay and Paypal very strict and hard on Chinese sellers, especially, and it's quite ruinous for them to receive too many negative feedbacks, flagged listings, and refund requests, especially within short order. They are required to show many government issued papers and bank issued papers. It also takes many many months to build up a new eBay account from scratch, which is why you find some fairly good deals with sub-10k feedback users, trying to work feedback so they can sell more than 1 quantity of an item, so they can sell more than 10 items, so they can sell in 'lots', so they can sell more expensive items, and so they can sell in certain at-risk categories, and so PayPal doesn't hold onto the money for 90 days to 6 months after a sale. True, many warehouses have 2, 3 or 4 eBay accounts, but generally no more than that, and mostly to protect themselves from sudden ruinous eBay smackdowns that would put them out of business. Which is why we need a coordinated effort to knock out their 3 accounts all at once.

parametrek: I explained a good many reasons why this is an important endeavor, but I don't know why you think "an army with test rigs" isn't needed. I only suggested that some people test the cells, which is actually very useful when requesting a refund because you can take photographic evidence of a misrepresentation and fraudulent listing to lend concrete credence to your claim. But "Locating good quality brands" wasn't one of those reasons. I understand there are alternative places to shop, and I do exactly that. You completely missed the point and I politely invite you to re-read my top post. Time and energy are to-each-their-own and need not be discussed or dictated or discouraged. Either you have time and want to spend the energy, or you quietly do not. I understand that everyone's priorities are different.

archimedes: There is scale, yes, but it's not insurmountable. With planning and coordination, and ready understanding from eBay, this is something that I see as few as 6 or 12 people doing, but certainly it would be a lot smoother going with a bunch more people willing to drop $2 or $3 each week on buying bogus batteries so they can leave legitimate negative-feedback and request legitimate refunds. As a buyer, you can only request so many refunds per month. Those who don't wish to spend money can always flag a listing as inappropriate / violation. Maybe even a banner blast on this forum to all site users asking them to "Please report at least one fraudulent eBay seller battery listing each day." could be enough to spam hammer the site with hundreds of reports that eBay staff can genuinely use to warrant action and take down listings.


^^^ DO THIS ^^^ DO THIS ^^^ DO THIS ^^^

The easiest way to do this is the following:

Don't buy batteries from EBay.
Done.

Thanks for reading my post completely, WalkIntoTheLight. You summed it up perfectly! Except that I don't, and never wanted to, buy batteries from eBay. Huh. Fancy that.

I'm imposing a restriction on any further negative comments unless they include citations from the original post. Otherwise your comment will be mocked and you will be humiliated.

Raccoon said:

Thanks for reading my post completely, WalkIntoTheLight. You summed it up perfectly! Except that I don't, and never wanted to, buy batteries from eBay. Huh. Fancy that.

I'm imposing a restriction on any further negative comments unless they include citations from the original post. Otherwise your comment will be mocked and you will be humiliated.

Click to expand...

Seriously? ... well then if we're going to play the "if --> then" game... if you mock and/or humiliate any comments, then you will be given some time off. Fair? I think so.

I mocked WalkIntoTheLight's comment because he didn't read my post. Is this a warning for my previous comment, or was that example acceptable decorum? I simply meant that I would basically repeat the same statements -- "Please read my post before replying with nonsensical unrelated conclusions that I should shop elsewhere. Your non-contribution to this thread has been duly noted." -- And so forth.

If not allowed, then I apologize and digress.

I did read your post. Your list will be endless. There's no point to it, since almost all sellers of lithium-ion batteries on EBay are selling crap. The easiest thing to do is just avoid EBay for batteries.

Raccoon said:

I mocked WalkIntoTheLight's comment because he didn't read my post. Is this a warning for my previous comment, or was that example acceptable decorum? I simply meant that I would basically repeat the same statements -- "Please read my post before replying with nonsensical unrelated conclusions that I should shop elsewhere. Your non-contribution to this thread has been duly noted." -- And so forth.

If not allowed, then I apologize and digress.

Click to expand...

Please don't be deliberately obtuse. You've been around CPF long enough to know what is and isn't allowed. In truth I'm a bit uneasy about your "call to action" to spam another site and post instructions on how to do it. As I personally do not like the idea of CPF being used for such a purpose, I think it best to close this thread where it is. Also considering you have stated you do not want any comments other than ones that agree with you, I can't really see any further need for the thread to stay open.

Sooo... thread closed. Have a lovely day! :wave: