eBay

extrasensorysystems · ‎10-11-2014

I bought 10 pcs of an allegedly 6000mAh LiPo battery from the seller.
They are black and appear to be of the brand "Ultrafire".

And they are fake.

On receiving the batteries, I topped them up and one immediately reported error in the charger.

This spurred me to measuring their factual capacity, which was very low.

The one that reported error only had 14mAh and the rest were between 400 and 520mAh.

I looked around and saw that several people had discovered their newly purchased batteries were fake - some were filled with flour and contained a very very minimal cell. So I decided to take my 14mAh battery apart to see what was inside.

(Careful if doing this, easy to make LiPo batteries explode or you will burn your fingers.
I am an engineer. I am licensed to do this at home)

I peeled the black plastic cover off the outside of the battery and found to my surprise that the battery had received a "used car painting". Inside, it was BLUE and clearly marked 3.2V, 1.5Ah. That's one quarter of what the outside plastic cover promises.

And the battery itself ... one third of that, one 10th of the promised capacity in the listing.

Naturally I sent the seller a message complaining about it and he said he would refund me $1.80.
I replied back to him, that no-no, I actually bought 10 and they are all like that (this was before I started picking one apart).
That would be US$ 18, thank you.
He came back and offered me $6 and claimed I would then save the shipping.

Or NOT.

I have escalated this to a PayPal case. I don't have several days to haggle over fraudulent batteries worth $18.

But consider yourself warned ... that scam is getting WAY too popular.

Kent

extrasensorysystems · ‎10-11-2014

In fact, it turned out to be a bad, blue 1.5Ah battery wrapped in a black wrapper.

http://youtu.be/KYS3nvygQD8

toby_le_pue · ‎10-11-2014

If you checked them as soon as you got them like you said

then how come you didn't leave a Negative feedback or a

followup feedback to the feedback he left you.

Looking at his feedback I would never have bought from

him in the first place.

dipmicro · ‎10-13-2014

I have two questions:

(Careful if doing this, easy to make LiPo batteries explode or you will burn your fingers.
I am an engineer. I am licensed to do this at home)

What kind of "license" do you have to unpeel LiPo batteries jacket at home?

Energy density of LiPo is 250–730 W·h/L @ 3.3-3.7V and volume of 18650 is 17.7mL so storable energy will be 4.4-12.9Wh, i.e. 1.3Ah - 3.7Ah. How did you figure this would really be 6Ah if theoretical maximum of this chemistry for given volume is 3.7Ah ?

patken123 · ‎10-14-2014

Thank you for the heads up,ebay probably is the main outlet for these crooks to unload their fake batteries,it must be profitable to spend the amount of time they must have spent on covering blue ultrafire with black or fill them with flour.

Ebay was my main source for rechargeable batteries for years,I still think if I do my research properly I still might find a few good sellers although it is a much harder task now .

I hope you'll get your money back.

afantiques · ‎10-14-2014

Seems to me the absurdly low price should be warning enough.

extrasensorysystems · ‎10-19-2014

Well... Nothing more than participating in the invention of LiPo in Denmark. I had one of the first 4 ever produced in my Motorola Cellphone. The University of Odense was highly involved. One of my buddies from the helicopter flying school was co-owner of the company that developed them. You should have seen the first ones, if you think the modern ones are tricky.

Then I went on to designing the battery maintenance systems for the Predator and Globalhawk programs and I have also made the LiPo charger used on the ISS space station for the EVA suits. It's based on an already mil spec Christie CBS lead acid charger, but with different software.

I have 12 years at the Technical University of Denmark under the belt, including both electronics and chemistry.
That ought to be enough to take a battery apart safely.

I had no clue the 18650 batteries were 17ml. Never had one in my hand before. The impulse to buy was simply, wow, that's great for my flashlight. Not everything can be a research project.

K

afantiques · ‎10-19-2014

And with all that the price and energy density did not seem at all fishy?

theundercutter · ‎10-19-2014

The best your going to get with an 18650 battery is around 2800mAh, and that's if you buy a genuine Sanyo or Panasonic or comparable and they run about $6 each.