Thanks for the advice, but I will pass. I enjoy taking part in some of these "too good to be true deals". Not trying to stop you from giving obvious advice to folks. It might save some newbies from making a mistake. But for the vast majority of us, we know exactly what we are doing and enjoy the wins and losses. This case is definitely not a loss no matter which way AE rules.
I have a dispute in progress and previously mentioned the comment from seller about false pictures for evidence (like others here) so I doubled down and found I could add 1 more photo making for a total of four.
I then sent a message, presumably to the seller. Lin Zhang answered and I had just asked who the manufacturer of the batts are. One name was the response: Liitokala.
I haven't read every post in the forum but I'm a little confused what Liitokala is... an original manufacturer name (relatively new), a reseller, in this case for batteries, a rewrapper?
As far as my wisdom goes LiitoKala doesn't manufacture batteries/cells, they just rewrap. Thus, the “DongGuan battery factory” isn't a real battery factory but just a rewrapping center of some sort plus God knows what else, because their contact there “ZhangNi” is by no means this girl found depicted in their liitokala Official Store (link to this store can be found in their site at the bottom left LiitoKala® banner):
It seems this people needs a nice deal of speaking truth ethics. Their lies and slip-ups are blatantly noticed from this side of the Great Firewall. Their particular beliefs in these matters need a good fix.
And you got the keep the cells. So not bad all in all. It sucks to not get 30qs but from the rough test I’ve seen they are worth 2.50 a cell. Would be good for powerbanks. Or lights around 5 or 6 amps. Definitely usable.
Well, I’m done with liitokala. I ordered a 26650 on 1 Jan, and they’ve repeatedly told me that it’s almost here, in spite of the fact that the tracking number was bogus. I finally demanded a refund, and now they’re just shovelling all this crap at me in messages on aliexpress about how they’ve proved to me that I received the package (they haven’t) and we’ve talked on the phone (we haven’t).
This was the Official Store (217753). I’m never ordering anything from any Liitokala store on aliexpress again. I can overlook selling new batteries as 30Qs, even if they don’t look exactly like them, but have pretty similar capacity and max current. That might not even be the store’s fault. But when their customer service (Ashley Zhang) thinks I have no capacity to tell her lies from the truth, I’m done. With the whole brand. When my Lii-500s need replacing, I’m not buying Liitokala chargers.
So I did all this with mine and they all work. They must be a pretty high current cell to run a Q8 on one cell. I’m not feeling quite so bad about it now.