EDIT: worse than I thought "Make" your own UltraFire 18650s!

And as the old saying goes, “if it sounds too good to be true …”

Yes. I don’t know about the batteries, but genuine UltraFire lights are of noticeably superior build quality when compared to the array of UltraFire branded products out there that aren’t actually made by them at all. Still budget, and not necessarily great, but better.

There is a joke about a farmer that had a watermelon patch. He spent all spring and summer working in the field to cultivate watermelons. However as they ripened, he noticed that there was a thief that came in the middle of the each night and stole 1 watermelon. He set up traps, tried staying up all night to catch the thief. Nothing worked. One day he had a great idea, he made a big sign at put it in the patch. It read “DANGER, one of these watermelons is poisoned” He went to bed that night and slept well, thinking surely no one would risk stealing the poisoned melon. He woke up the next morning and sure enough, no water melon had been stolen. However he was horrified to notice that someone had added to sign “now there are two”.

The moral is that if you can’t tell the real from the counterfeit, then you must assume counterfeit.

I think this is a huge discovery,and a ridiculous show of stupidity.Any one can buy these and put bunk cells in them and pawn them off as new.It makes you wonder if the one you have or had isn't a salvaged battery in a new wrapper.You could probably see this just encourages scammers and is even another reason to stay away from these batteries.

I may order some for my scavenged batteries. :P I had been planning on getting some heatshrink but I might as well make them Ultrafire. :P

At a good price?

I did a search for “fake batteries and people are complaining of fake batteries in all kinds of forums for many hobbies and activities that use Li-Ion cells. We are not alone. RC enthusiasts, ecig users etc.

I also have found many other sleeves for other brands and other battery parts for rolling your own, possibly from recycled cells. Even NCR and Panasonic. I have edited my first post and included many more links.

Ordering 10 of the NCR18650 ones. :D I will post up pictures when (if) they arrive.

I have send numerous emails to different eBay sellers of 18650 batteries.
All with ‘……Fire’ in their brandname of batteries.

I’ve told them that I was very concerned about explosive batteries…
Could the seller guarantee that his battery was safe?

This is one of the answers I got back this night…


“Thanks for your message.
Oh, i am so sorry for you, I understand you.* I am
not sure that they will exploding when you use it.* But i have sold so many
many, there was not any customer report said it is exploding. So i believe
it is safe. But my friend, if you are a little worry about it, i suggested
that you could purchase in your location. I think it will more safe. Do you
agree?

Kind regards!
———————————————————————————————————-

Wow, it’s scary to see that trustable brand (Panasonic) labels are getting faked too.
I’m trying to make it safe for myself (I test every cell ‘on arrival’), but some users who rely on label might get deceived this way. :confused:

eBay is selling potentially dangerous goods.
Has anyone informed them about the dangers of fake 18650 batteries?

Is it possible to organise some kind of platform to make eBay ban the 18650 sellers, who can’t prove that their product is genuine new and safe?
Something like www.18650Dangers.com?

If there are so much more people who are complaining about the Chinese 18650 Fraud, then it must be possible to put the pressure on eBay.

It’s funny, when I first saw a label with NCR on it, in my ignorance, I thought it stood for National Cash Resister (NCR)

It all comes down to trusted sellers. We do the same when we go to a restaurant to eat. We could get all worked up worrying about sanitary conditions, food spoilage etc. But instead we trust the operator and food service workers to be knowledgeable and understand the potential dangers of serving bad food.
Same goes with buying batteries. We need to buy from vendors that know and understand the risks of buying and selling bad Li-ion cells.

In the U.S. there are lawyers everywhere, and people are sue happy. I hesitate to gift Li-ion flashlights because of the potential risks to the recipient AND giver. These EBay sellers that sell Li-ion batteries are incurring a huge exposure to risk and a lawsuit if something ever goes wrong, especially if they are selling from the U.S. To me it unthinkable. I only charge my cells in the car, because if something goes wrong, it’s just the car. I have left the house several times with cells in the house charger and turned around to remove them because I was uncomfortable leaving them in. The reality is that any seller of Li-ion cells has, in effect, cells charging in homes all over the world. How do they sleep at night?

We should only buy from trusted sellers that have done their due diligence and are selling good and safe cells. That is one reason why they are entitled to a profit.

I think I may stick with Trustfire Flames with the hologram labels. Much more expensive to produce heatshrink with the hologram and these type of counterfeiters dont want to bother with that extra investment. All the other brands are easy to clone.

batteryfraud.org might be better . . encourages trusted sellers and doesn’t discourage 18650s.

You’re totally right!
It would be a good thing if we can do something about this fraud.

I’m going to stick with Panny cells from trusted vendors, Kuma, CNQG, eFest etc. Just like the extra capacity.

+1

I thought of this when the TrustFire 3000s came out and stuck with them for that very reason. Too “costly” (I hope) to get hologram wraps. Also, I don’t know if anybody else noticed or not, but TrustFire has been putting a second small hologram sticker on the outside of the double pack shrink wrap as a backup measure.

I bet they were pretty upset that they lost customers due to the fakes out there.

I haven’t seen any but given the ease of making the labels, and the widespread counterfeiting of brands, I would assume Sanyo deals that were too good to be true… are.

How does the thief know that he didn't poison the same watermelon as the owner ??.

..maybe there is only one poisoned watermelon.

Yes, my lamp-loving friend, but which one would you eat?