Massive fraud on 18650s in the Littokala Aliexpress stores!

I sent my own photos with one from the seller's page. He called them fake. But I also provided a link to the 30Q lygte-info review page.

Seller new proposal: no refund/no return.

Well, of course the good merchant is going to say that.

I was told that “the picture provided is false”. I asked for clarification and there was silence.

Aliexpress will step in in 4 days. Can’t wait.

Hopefully, Ali sees the pattern of his/her responses.

Mine came in, what exactly should I say to the seller? I ordered 6 30q, and as you have all said the top does not have 3 prongs. How do we explain how these are fakes ?

^

I recommend you contact the seller first and give him a chance to make it right. That will help you if you have to raise a dispute. Always looks better if you tried to work it out without Ali's assistance first. The seller never responded to my attempt to work it out.

You can only provide 3 pictures as evidence when you raise the dispute. I would try to take photos that show the following deviations from the pictures in the product page:

  • Wrapper that is slightly darker and has irregularities. Authentic 30Q's are lighter colored and nicer quality.
  • No Samsung product run and manufacturing date stamps on the metal can. You will need to strip the wrapper off a cells to do that. Include the wrapper in the picture next to the stripped cell. I plan to rewrap mine anyway as I don't want anyone to confuse them with actual 30Q's.
  • Top of cell that has 4 prongs.

Hello! :-)

Related thread for those of you who may be interested: Seems like I got a six-pack of counterfeit/fake Samsung ICR18650-30B cells :-/

Well, I have a shipment with presumed fake cells on the way, should land home soon. This is of interest to me because we need to devise a way to make our rights to prevail.

Cheers ^:)

Interestingly…
this shipment from Liitokala Factory Store was unusual because it was not delivered by the postman but by a courier. I believe it’s my first courier delivery from China.
Today I got a shipment of 21700-40A from Liitoka Official Store.
Courier too. And batteries came in exactly the same cardboard box. With exactly the same cushion.
They were very cheap too, ~$3.5 each.
Is there a serious risk of them being fake too?

I ordered an authentic NCR18650B from Illumn just so I can compare them side-to-side and gather evidence to file my claim. Please keep us informed here what works/doesn’t work when dealing with these scumbag sellers please.

So I wanted to see what these counterfeit 30Qs would do with my limited tests. Clearly, I wasn't going for max output with a D4 XP-L. I didn't want to start an uncontrolled cascade reaction with these unknown cells ! Edit: Ok, changed my mind... I read about 8.4A with my D4 v's 9.8A from a newish Sony VTC5.

I used two lights: W612 host (QLITE REV.A 7135*8 3.04A LED DRIVER & XM-L2 U3 3D LED on Noctigon 20mm MCPCB) and GB Convoy S2 (XP-L HI)

1∆= 1st charge, delta meaning 'change in' V, A.

Here are the results:

cell # V (init)+/-.01 A (W612) A (S2) V (1∆) mAh A (1∆ W612 A (1∆ S2)
1 3.62 2.0 1.92 4.20 2046 2.90 3.24
2 3.62 2.12 1.96

4.19

1995 2.96 3.27
3 3.62 2.1 1.90 4.19 2008 3.14 3.24
4 3.62 2.05 1.98 4.18 1946 3.13 3.25
5 3.62 4.19 1953 3.12 3.22
6 3.62 4.18 1915 3.12 3.27

I was a little surprised that these fakes pushed the S2 that hard but not the W612. Then again, I used the S2 for to its' consistency in manufacturing.

The first current readings were prior to charging and I started charging 5 & 6 without a current read.

Given the starting voltage, can I really expect to get 3,000 mAh?

If this helps anyone to figure out who manufactured these cells, then great!

While everything is possible, nearly for sure those ones are authentic because there's just no cheaper 21700 available with close enough specs to make it worth bulkfaking. In fact, that probably is the cheapest 21700 being produced right now.

Cheers ^:)

So frustrating…
I’m on holiday and won’t be home until next Thursday… I have 18 of these coming…another cu s2 and a d4….

Hopefully everything is at the post office and I can dig into this thread a bit deeper that I can here with a phone and mediocre wifi…. I’ve only received one AliExpress delivery notification…I expect two from them….

I measured resistance of nearly new VTC5A, fake VTC5A and suspected Lii-40A.
In order:
12 mOhm, 16 mOhm, 10 mOhm.

Fakes are better than I expected. Lii-40A looks OK.

Note: I don’t trust the results to be close to accurate, but relatively should be OK.

What instrument did you use to make these internal resistance measurements? I am trying to zero in on one that is relatively accurate - or at least consistent. Thanks!

Basically this if you want to test both capacity and resistance with a 4-wire tester. Can do up to 10A.

If you only want resistance:

I guess those are 1KHz AC resistance figures, ¿doesn't it? Curious to see a higher figure for the VTC5A versus the Lii-40A, namely whereas its DC IR should be lower.

I do plan on accurately measuring cell DC IR with the aid of a precision power supply and a voltmeter with probes right at the battery terminals. Noting down the initial cell resting voltage, then proceeding to charge pump 5 - 10A of current into the battery for a brief timed lapse at which exact half time the loaded cell voltage is noted down. At last the final cell resting voltage is also taken into account (a tiny little while after the current is stopped to allow the voltage to settle). Cell DC IR is then calculated by substracting average cell resting voltage (½(Vrestinit + Vrestfinal)) from the loaded cell voltage to attain a dV value which is converted into the cell DC IR dividing it by the charge current value.

Cheers ^:)

Zanflare F1. I tried multiple insertions and here I show the best result.
I don’t trust the absolute values at all. But relative are usable. I should have made it clear…

THANK YOU ” ImA4Wheelr ” for that test :beer:

Next time a battery sale occurs and the price looks too good to be true, it’s very possible get Bamboozled.

Spend a few dollars more from reputable suppliers and you cannot go wrong.

Next time I try to warn others about possibly getting Bamboozled and another member here attempts to quieten me, I will not be silent.

My last two dozen 18650’s I’ve bought from well-known US retailers. I’ve ordered plenty of cells from Chinese retailers, and for the most part I’ve received what appears to be genuine cells. But, there’s definitely a lot more risk from Chinese dealers, and they can produce pretty convincing fakes. When it comes to lithium-ion cells, I’ve decided that safety is more important than saving a few bucks. These cells will last for years or hundreds of cycles, so it’s only pennies per charge.

If I was buying disposable batteries, I might be more willing to take some risk to save a bit of money.

That said, I do think there are good Chinese retailers that sell genuine cells. But there’s also a risk that their suppliers may change and they could start getting fakes. It could happen to US retailers too, but I think (just my uninformed opinion) that the risk is less.

Also, the packaging I get when ordering from the US is far superior to the packaging I’ve got from Chinese dealers. Less chance of the cells getting knocked around and damaged in transit.

I’d order from Canadian retailers, but the selection sucks and the prices are double.

@WalkIntotheLight, since our sellers suuuuuck, I would recommend buying this:

And prying the cells out.

Guess what I got? 10x 2800mAh 20A cells. They were actually legit cells, and tested between 2798mAh, and 2852mAh.

Absolutely awesome. The regular 18650 sellers are gouging us haaard.

That’s what my eBay guy does he gets new brand name packs, from dewalt,kobalt,snapper,hoverboard batteries and strips them out and sells them.
Usually cheaper around 4 dollars a cell because a lot of people don’t like to buy cells with tab marks ke dremal marks grinding them off. The namebrands get the best batteries. The middle men who supply 99.9 percent of the market the grade flucatutes. Minding Your mAhs – Ep001 – Battery Mooch - YouTube
Mooch has some on it there around the 5 minute mark. He has other videos explain how all true a grades go directly to oems. If anyones interested. You see it in his test every few months he will rerun new samples from illumn,imr, and others sellers. Like hg2 was originally a 20 amp cell to him. The last test months back it now reached its cdc at 19 amps now. Without his government equipment or hjks can’t really tell a difference.

Tool packs are the best way if you truly want best of batch. And when you can get them. A good sale or clearance on them you can rack up on cells. When they change out the displays they have to recycle the batteries with it. Doesn’t hurt to look. I found 2 new Milwaukee packs with 10 brand new 20r each a few ago.