I mean, Amazon is also full of bogus reviews so that doesn’t surprise me in the least. I’d say the star rating system is corrupted on MOST websites at this point.
Yeah, their battery modules seem readily available.
People tend to leave feedback at a much higher frequency on Taobao so there are often tens of thousands of reviews for relatively obscure items. A typical enthusiast flashlight will likely have at least 100 reviews. I’ve even seen over 1 million reviews for popular items so it’s hard for fake reviews to make a huge dent. In addition, you can only leave reviews for purchased items unlike on Amazon. Finally, there is no way to intimidate anyone on Taobao for negative reviews - I’m not sure where this wild claim came from. Seller feedback is very important, and they will bend over backwards to please you if you threaten a bad review.
For context, my wife and I have several thousand Taobao individual purchases between us and spent almost 100,000 USD total over 8 years. We have almost never received anything unexpected. And if you don’t like the item, return shipping is only 1 USD or so.
Reviewers that don’t know s**t on Ali:
“really bright”, “got in speedy time”, “good seller, will buy again”, or the (facepalm) “looks ok, haven’t tried yet”
Nothing factual, quantitative or any backstory. I don’t see any good in these reviews. Just ups the ratings, but that’s a merchants metric.
Then there are the occasional more descriptive fellows, but rarely a word about performance, reliability or functionality.
You get nagged to leave a comment as soon there is delivery confirmation.
I like to take the time to test the product and evaluate if any insightful comment might steer a potential client to or away from the product. Shame if the merchant or manufacturer didn’t respond to a problem, praise for correcting a faulty item.
But then nobody seems to upvote these tidbits of insight. Like they are numb or in a trance. Blind sheep of consumerism.
Do the Taobao’ers take the time to objectively review the item, perhaps vent some frustration on deceptive marketing / shitty product?
I would tend to believe the more reviews, the more just background noise. The feedback on Ali is typically Russian and the translation is just a piddle-paddle of nonsensical sentence fragments. Never any Chinese comments.
And to make it worse, you don’t get a picture of the product, but from the packaging…
I heard this from my Chinese friends and online forums. I have many Chinese friends and I don’t remember any of them ever mentioned that Taobao is trustworthy. For your question I just did a quick google search and randomly picked 2 links below. You can clearly see that Taobao even changed the rule in 2016 to mitigate consumer intimidation/harassment. If there is no such a thing as you described, why did Taobao even start the initiatives/change the rule? Not sure the situation nowadays. You said you have been shopping on Taobao over 8 years (well before 2016) so it will be a miracle you never heard it at all.
Recently Amazon removed many Chinese sellers and millions of fake reviews because these sellers paid/purchased fake reviews. I assume it is a widely accepted business model in China. I have to say that some sellers are actually pretty trustworthy and offer very good products/customer service based on my personal experience, such as Ravpower, etc. But anyway.
My Chinese friends told me that to only buy from the official or flagship stores if I ever want to try Taobao/Ali. I never tried Taobao but occasionally used Aliexpress. I only purchased from the official stores so no issues so far. I always check the sellers’ profiles (even with Amazon) when I explore the items and often see the same company behind different sellers. I guess this is another way to bypass the negative reviews/punishments. Another thing I don’t understand is why does Aliexpress collect sales tax. Neither 18650batterystore, Liion wholesale or illumn collects sales tax for my state. Does Aliexpress really send the collected sales tax to my state? I don’t believe it at all.
The Chinese people are living in a lying environment and from the onstart they are told to behave accordingly to the misinformation. So there are some that follow this philosophy through their everyday business and are tarnishing the more trustworthy ones. It could be said of some Amazon vendors also and don’t get me on eBay with much less honorable merchants. It’s quite degrading for the nation and many are honest in their ways.
But it is interesting the different sellers of the same company. I had assumed there was no exclusivity to anyone seller but that would also feed the counterfeits and sidestep any merchant wrongdoings.
As for state taxation, I had understood it as a consequence of the new trade deal with China. If the merchant (or store if you want to call it) doesn’t pay their dues, the state could request the import of such merchandise be seized or refused entrance. In Canada it’s part of the excise tax and products are seized, often sold to the best bidder and then found at Costco.
Sure, you can probably find some isolated cases of intimidation, but I highly doubt it is the normal experience. Again, I do almost all my shopping on Taobao and JD - even most of my food. I also buy high ticket items such as my 3080 GPU, AMD Ryzen 5950X, and my Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra on Taobao.
For example, this milk has 5 million reviews: 【蒙牛纯牛奶】蒙牛特仑苏纯牛奶250ml*16盒 整箱装（新老包装随机发货） 年货礼盒【行情 报价 价格 评测】-京东.
The faking of Amazon reviews is definitely believable since the platform is much more susceptible to abuse. People can leave reviews on products they haven’t bought and there are very few reviews for each product. This is more true for country specific Amazon such as Amazon.ca.
Thank you for your brilliant insights.
After the Supreme Court ruling a few years ago, pretty much every state is due their sales tax on any sale but the details vary a little, state to state. You’ll have to check your state tax laws as to who is responsible for collecting/paying the sales tax - depending on your state’s “cap” for retailers, it could be that small retailers who do not gross the cap amount don’t collect and remit the taxes because they aren’t required to, and doing so can be costly to them with the software and labor involved. It’s that way with Illumn for me, too, as well as MTN, Liion, and a handful of other small businesses, but the majority of places I order from do charge me tax (here and abroad). This must mean that Illumn’s sales are relatively low…surprises me. BUT…ultimately the tax is still due, so your state is probably like almost all and requires a self-reported/paid use tax. If the vendor didn’t collect it then it’s on you come tax time. Now, whether your use tax is investigated or enforced if you happen to not report or pay it…well, often it isn’t. If you’re ever audited, however, it’s entirely possible that you’ll have to add that use tax - precisely or estimated - and possibly penalties added. The caps states have legislated do vary by business type and sometimes location, too. The idea was to lift the cost burden from small businesses that can’t feasibly afford the money or labor to do the collection and remittance, but the state is still entitled to the money one way or another.
Aliexpress - again, have to ask your state’s tax authority but this was discussed here on another thread not long ago. My state does indeed receive taxes remitted by Ali. Made me glad - sort of - because although I don’t really mind paying sales tax, it would piss me off if someone was collecting it from me and not remitting it to where it’s ultimately due. Ali is big enough that they aren’t going to be breaking the trade agreements. They were on top of tax collection not too long after the Supreme Court decision was given and all the shakedown nuts and bolts immediately afterward.
Thanks a lot Correllux for your kind explanation, I have no issue with sales tax as long as Ali did pay the collected tax to my State and I didn’t notice the previous thread on BLF on this topic. I actually 100% support the Supreme Court’s ruling on sales tax. After shopping Amazon for 20+ years, I have been trying my best to shop locally as much as I can for several years already, Hopefully our local businesses can stay a little bit longer.
Sounds suspiciously like Fox News and OAN.
I think it is a common sense that taobao won’t start this initiatives and change its rules with strong wording specifically against consumer intimidation/harassment if it is just “probably” “isolated cases”. Very glad to hear you never experienced it and sincerely hope you never do in the future.
Regardless politics, the fact is that Chinese government does ban Google (even gmail) and most of social media including twitter, facebook, youtube, etc. It also uses a firewall to filter out everything it does not like.
Best bang for the buck batteries — laptop battery pack pulls!
Paid about $17 and the pack lasted only about a year… which isn’t great. However, upon harvesting I netted some decent cells. I’ve used them in a variety of flashlights, even high draw… and they held up fine.
In my experience with non-OEM HP laptop battery packs, a very slight decrease in charging capability causes the whole pack to be rejected. Meanwhile, most of the cells are perfectly fine. Sometimes all cells are fine and it’s the battery management hardware at fault. Case in point, the pack I just pulled has 4 18650 cells. Before the harvesting, when the pack was fully charged the diagnostic was showing 4.18v for 3 cells, but 4.08v for one of them. And in a matter of a mere 5 minutes, the laptop would power off. A quick check by the laptop diagnostic system showed batteries at 3.6v and 3.0v. How could this be? The battery pack hardware. I harvested the cells. 3 of them showed 4.19v. One of them showed 4.10v. I charged the weakest one. It did go up to 4.2v and remained cool to the touch. And even after resting a day, it showed 4.19v.
Btw… these cells are wrapped in light purple with the labeling of: HLY 18650 04 3.6v 0602 9.36Wh. Is “HLY” some specific brand designation?
Regarding my previous comment:
“The Chinese people are living in a lying environment and from the onstart they are told to behave accordingly to the misinformation.”
To which fogofwar responded:
“Thank you for your brilliant insights.”
I take it as a sarcastic pun. Out of context it could be taken as a narrow viewpoint as then requoted by flydiver:
“Sounds suspiciously like Fox News and OAN.”
It was not meant to be derogatory towards the Chinese people, but as a means to explain the inner workings of some merchants. The remaining part of my statement underscores this viewpoint.
My bad if it offended some members.
On a note, I have high regard for China and its endeavours, with the technological progress and opening in the last 30 years or so. And the people have made an enormous effort in their country’s wellbeing.
HLY cells are manufactured by a Chinese company called Jiangxi Hualiyuan Lithium Energy Co, these cells cost less $1 each.
OK, then… :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming:
Let’s apply your logic elsewhere. There are a lot rules against homicide, so murders are probably not just isolated cases. Overall, I don’t think you have proven convincingly that harassment is common. Sure, my evidence is anecdotal but at least Taobao has come up in dozens if not hundreds conversations in my years in China and have never heard of harassment.
Going back to topic, I think Lishen batteries hands down are the best bang for the buck 21700s. I’ve been using my flashlights a lot this weekend and I’m constantly impressed. The LR2170LA can drive my SBT 90.2 at turbo until 40% capacity is left. The LS2170SA and LS2170SF are also great.
It’s probably wise to not generalize 1.5 billion people and doesn’t move the conversation forward. A lot of the misrepresentations and lying by merchants also has to do with the platforms. Platforms that don’t enforce rules such as wish.com induce sellers to inflate numbers. If you’re an honest flashlight manufacturer that sells a 1,000 lumen light but get outcompeted by the 1 million lumen fake light, how would you feel? The honest manufacturers naturally will pull out and you’re going to be left with all the shady ones due to adverse selection. This is also why you see some of the better Chinese manufacturers come on this site to advertise.
I don’t understand your logic, taobao started business in 2003 with its original rules and regulations. 13 years later it started initialtives and changed its rules specifically against consumer harassment. You are saying that it is only due to isolated cases and used murder as an analogy. According to your logic, it is similar to a scenario in a country where murder was not illegal when it started its legal system. Do you know any country like this? It is quite interesting that you first said it is wild claim and then changed tone saying these were isolated cases after I provide evidences. It is actually not my business at all as I do not shop at taobao and will not do in the future. So I will just stop here.