I've done a lot of talking lately at GearBest's thread (#1925 to #1937 and #2032 to #2041), regarding it's extremely expensive shipping policy for batteries, as also for not offering free tracking nr for orders over a certain amount (as they used to for orders over $40) as most of GB's competitors stil do (usually over $20-$25).
I'm opening this thread in order to post which of the known online Chinese e-shops (e.g. BangGood, DealsMachine, DX, FastTech, GearBest, KaiDomainm, Tmart) still offer Free Batterry Shipping to BLF member's country.
In addition to the well known online Chinese e-shops, I believe we could also inform which reliable Aliexpress stores (with high ranking score that we have bought from -or know others that bought- and had no problems) and other (than BG-DM-DX-FT-GB-KD-Tmart) reliable e-shops we know with competitive prices that ship batteries for free to our country, since (because of GB's and other known e-shops shipping policy or for any other reason) many of us (myself among those) have turned to other sellers in order to find cheap and good batteries.
Our country should be visible at our post (seen at our signature or posted), as each e-shop's shipping policy may be different per country (e.g. I know that GB doesn't offer free shipping for batteries to Greece, but offers it to Germany; strange, since they're both EU members and air-mail shipping legistlation for Li batteries must be the same for all countries).
Note:
As I'm always trying to be perfectly honest, I must inform you that it was GB's representative at BLF who PM'd me the idea to start a thread like this, saying that "if it could work (meaning free shipping for batteries) on GearBest too, then I will give you a $40 gift card as a thanks".
I don't know if that's true or if that's a way to make me stop saying the truth regarding their shipping policy, but I hope it's obvious that GB's offer for "a $40 gift card"... "if it could work" isn't the reason for I start this thread.
What I'm really hoping is that the feedback from this thread will be the reason to make the known Chinese e-shops that don't offer free shipping for batteries to our country understand that their shipping policy is wrong. They must find the way that some of their competitors already know, in order to offer competitive prices for good batteries and free shipping (or/and $0 to small charge for tracking nr) at the same time, as I'm sure we're not buying from them only batteries/flashlights/chargers, but many items.
I'm also hoping that this thread could be useful for BLF members, in order to get ideas where to buy batteries from (and why).
After some feedback posts I intend to make a table with e-shops/countries and what kind of shipping they provide for batteries. Don't ask me when I'm gonna make this table, cause it depends by my available time and the data we're gonna have. I'm not in a rush for "a $40 gift card"... "if it could work"!
- Evan
PS (edit) :
The reason why the thread's title is "Chinese e-shops", is because they ship all over the world. Posting local e-shops that ship batteries for free in a member's country might be interesting for some, but not for all BLF members. So please avoid posting domestic e-shops that you know they don't ship abroad. If they do you could post them, but you should have in mind that even if I could buy a battery like this from international.mtnelectronics, the extra shipping cost to Greece for a $4 simple part like this is $13.25, so... imagine what would it be for batteries!