how do they get those >98% ratings when so much of what they sell is fake? Do they pump it up somehow ?
They are very good at gaming the system, i’ll never forget the one review that a SK68 was not 1000 lumens as advertised and the seller responded that the customer was trying to get a freebee. I think a naive customer is not unlikely to believe that explanation even though a Q5 chip with an alkaline could never do that many lumens.
It is annoying how they are getting away with blatant lies and misinformation, but most buyers are not ‘Torch Enthusiasts’ like us. They simply don’t realise what they are buying. If it actually turns up, and actually works, and is actually much brighter than their old incandescent one, they are happy.
This thread has sparked a question of mine and I’m not sure if this has been asked and answered before. So technically we can always open a dispute to claim our money for the flashlight we received which is nowhere near the claimed “2000 lumens”… this way we can easily ruin the business of FT, BG, DX, WB… any Aliexpress/ebay budget flashlight sellers, right?
For instance I order a J18 with “4500 lumens” printed on its body, tested it and I got only 2500 lumens. Now I have all the rights to file a dispute in Paypal saying that FT is cheating me!
(P.S. As a flashaholic I understand that all the lumens claim of these budget lights is always off by too much (or completely Wrong). I just try to gather some opinions regarding this issue, not that I want to be an *hole to go around and take advantage on things like this. J18 is a great light anyway. 
)
3 stories from me:
A while back I ordered 2 Samsung galaxy s3 batteries. Looked to me exactly the same as original. Now some 6 months later, both of them are swollen up, with very little capacity left. So what the heck, I open them up, and see that the seller actually only somehow put a “samsung” foil over a fake cell, which was rated at 1600mAh, instead of 2100mAh. I probably destroyed it fast by charing it up to 4.35V instead to 4.2V as it was designed for.
So I order one from a 99.8% seller, says GENUINE on the listing, and this time I receive a different, non samsung cell, says 2300mAh on it, I tested it to have around 1260mAh.
Few weeks ago, I purchased TP4056 charger boards, provided sample pictures and asked in advance “is it genuine….” ,of course I got fakes.
With chinese sellers you have to assume it is fake unless proven otherwise, i would never buy a chinese battery, and i buy lights that are reviewed on BLF and batteries from stores that BLFers have found to be genuine (so far i have only bought batteries from intl outdoor and fasttech)
For a while people were ‘selling’ say stickers or some other $0.01 items, to shills, or real, and then trying to scam on more expensive items.
When youre talking about a few dollars for an item, the scrutiny isnt the same as it might be for a $1000 item.
Feedback is often left soon after items arrive and will likely unless DOA be positive, then get a small amount of use. By the time problems arise, if its only a few dollar item, either the buyer loses interest in following it up, or time has expired.
As others have said, some people are completely uninformed. If its brighter than anything they have owned before, it must be awesome.
Just a coupe of possible explanations.
Wrappers for pretty much any popular cell are readily obtainable, and easily fitted. For all we know the wrappers themselves could even be ‘genuine’ as they are likely made in China.
I think the simple answer is, ebay don’t really care. Until they are legally forced to clean up their act and be responsible for their sellers, they simply couldn’t give a toss.
There are pretty much no checks to create an ebay account, so with very little effort you could easily fake up ratings and feedback.
And I think there is a trend that if you have an issue, a seller will request you don’t leave negative feedback if you want a refund. In other words a form of entrapment. But they do this scaremongering so as to try and con others based on their good rating.
I actually made a complaint to ebay regarding what I call feedback trading. Their response was that feedback was part of the transaction, and therefore it was correct that a seller might withhold leaving your feedback until you have left it for them, as they are responding to the entire transaction. I stated this was clearly prone to making feedback useless, and just makes people with 100% scared to offer true feedback. They again stated feedback was part of the entire transaction.
Personally I never leave feedback until the seller has. That means that sellers with thousands of feedback items often never leave feedback. As a seller, I leave feedback as soon as Im aware the buyer has paid, in my opinion that is as much as the buyer can be expected to do, and the only thing Im going to comment on in feedback.
IMO, feedback should be withheld by the system until both parties have left it. And it should be the seller leaving feedback when payment is received, and the buyer when (s)he has time to inspect and test the item(s).
Another issue is, the little ebay do care about is only the process of selling the item, not the item in question, which makes any of the feedback pretty useless anyhow.
e.g.
When you record feedback it’s along the lines of:
How accurate was the item description?
How satisfied were you with the seller’s communication?
How quickly did the seller dispatch the item?
How reasonable were the P&P charges?
Ok description is a little vague. As a re-seller only lists what is claimed from whoever they bought the item from (maker/wholesaler, etc.)
But nowhere does ebay feedback ever ask you if the item was any good. Or about the specific item you actually bought.
that is awesome :bigsmile:
hehe genuinely fake runners
I just got a full refund for the samsung batteries, after stating that I have no plans of ever using them and I’d gladly send a video of their destruction.
The TP4065 guy is asking how much money do I want back, I said all of it, even though it’s less than 4$… I feel a bit sorry for them because I’m arguing about such a low amount.
so will they say that this product genuine FAKE?
fake fake, counterfeit fake, knockoff fake, you got me
not to mention what you see when you ’oogle counterfeit trustfire - Google Search
or similar searches.
I guess once everything is digital, “reality” becomes meaningless.
Well, i ordered 14500 LiFePO4 batteries from *bay labeled 1200 mAh and on arrival they measured ~600 mAh, so i complained of false advertising, opened a paypal dispute and got 50% of the cost back. If everyone would do this consequently, this fraud business would dry out…
yep, we should all file disputes about false advertised and fake products, they are counting on us not doing it. Even though my wife just told me “leave the poor b*s alone, that money might be worth more to them than it is to you”
You have to remember, Ebay don’t care, why would they, and they only pay lip service to stopping fake or counterfeit items.
Fake or real they still get a $$ cut, so why should they care.
Plus few companies are willing to really take them on.
I remember talking to the owner of a medium size company in Germany, about people selling fakes of their products on ebay and why didn’t he try and stop it, he simply said “ebay have bigger lawyer’s than we do”
Also often when you buy something genuine and it turns out fake, the seller offers a full refund as soon as you question it, on the condition you leave good feedback, what do most buyers do, waste a lot of time dealing with it and risk losing a paypal dispute?, or just leave good feedback take the refund and move on?, most take the latter
I have mixed feelings about this.
I avoided ebay for years, but over the past six months or so, I’ve bought a lot of stuff from EBay.
I shop ebay looking for deals. I expect that any given item/transaction could be crap, and that over time, I’m going to have some bad experiences. I manage that risk by keeping my orders small and the items cheap. With the exception of a lot of untested (and very crappy dell batteries) I don’t think I’ve spent more than $30 or so in any one order, and I don’t think I’ve spent more than $25 on a single item. As a further mitigation, I expected that when I do get crap, some percentage of the time it will be redressed by the seller, or by paypal/ebay.
So far though, I’m actually doing better than expected. There were two USB bike lights that I won bids for that never arrived. Ebay quickly found in my favor. I’ve probably spend $5 on boards I thought would have a TP4056, but instead had a knockoff. A few items weren’t quite as described, and I quickly worked out a partial refund from the sellers. I also got a USB meter that didn’t work right. The seller sent me a new one right away. I just got an order of test leads that had apparently been confused with someone else’s. The seller told me to keep them and got me a tracking number on the replacement less than 12-hours from when I reported the problem.
So, as an informed consumer, I might buy something with inflated specs because I think I know what I’ll actually get, and find that is still a good deal. Having done that, it would be crappy for me to turn around and give the seller poor feedback.
On the other hand, I really wish EBay did provide a mechanism that would allow me to share my perspective with other buyers who might be interested in the same item from the same seller. Ebay would be more useful to me if I could better trust the listings, and the ratings.