Fake chargers (XTAR, Nitecore)!!!

As someone who has spent years working in customer facing roles I’d like to offer some advise.

I don’t think this situation has been handled well by BestVaping. As you say, nobody is perfect. Just look at the BLF lights thread and what happened with Rey. People got upset due to lack of communication, once he started telling people what was really happening everybody calmed down and his reputation improved - it went wrong and he did everything he could to make it right. I’d be more inclined to do business with him now than before as I know he understands how important it is to keep people informed.

As I understand things from the replies I’ve had from customer service:

You were selling XTAR chargers
XTAR stopped supplying you
You were offered the same items from a different seller for the same price
You stocked these from the new supplier to fill orders
XTAR contacted you to say these were not genuine goods.

If that really is the case then just say so, it doesn’t sound anywhere near as bad as the drawn out content of this thread. If you said ‘Hey, even we get caught out sometimes, we’ll increase our checks to make sure all our future stock is genuine’ then most people would have let this pass. Even better get proactive like FastTech and tell people how to check goods are genuine and that you’ll work with them on any fakes that slipped through the net.

You really could have turned this whole episode into a positive for yourselves and your customers, instead it’s become something of a stain on your company which is a real shame for everybody. Communication is the key. It’s not expensive and not that hard to get right.

I cant really believe that customer service would ever tell a customer something like that.

And the daft thing is that it could have been good publicity for BV / PW had they chosen to deal with it professionally.

I have an open order with them and I was contacted by them as they were concerned that I had ‘Threatened to raise a paypal dispute’ in this thread. As part of the mail exchange that followed I was sent a .gif attachment that was a screen shot of some English text that said just this.


Is that a troll question or do you really think what you described is authentic East-Asian cuisine?

I think you will feel rather stupid if you bother to go back and read what I posted!

It’s NOT me that is the Troll!

Marc.

You’re hungry again in 1 hour! :bigsmile:

Me thinks that you thought that I was talking to about your post in the first place, though I was simply trying to give verge's post some context.

You did follow up troll, though:

[quote=marcl] There have been problems with fake Chinese food before and to my knowledge the only way to tell is the fortune cookies [/quote]

Nope, I know no shame.

Anyway, off topic enough, fake or not, as long as my charger's not simply weighted with lead shot, and continues to charge batteries to a consistent level, I'm happy.

And especially suprised since I got it off FleaBay.

You know no intelligence neither! Read the whole post not one line, then you may understand what I said.

Dudes, get a room, all of you :D!

Im thinking about dissembling one of my i4 V2 just to take a look inside of it and post some pictures here, perhaps someone will be eager to compare them?

What do you say, should I?

Is there no way you can check the serial no with the company via email first. I’m not sure you will learn much taking it apart. What if they did that when they copied it? It should look the same if they reverse engineered it.

Marc.

It is just like marcl said. Two different chargers could look exactly the same both inside and outside, but still the other might be fake. Reverse engineering is very common in China. It is also possible that the fake products come from a same factory as original products.

I bought two nitecore battery chargers (i2 & i4) from this seller bellow from ebay.

http://stores.ebay.com/chingsumsum-super-store/Battery-Charger-/\_i.html?\_nkw=nitecore&submit=Search&\_fsub=5907200&\_sid=208716131

i2 for $16 and i4 for $22 (make offer) and with EU power cord.

Bellow is the answer from nitecore if they are original or not,

Hello Sir,

Thank you for your email. After checking the serial number, they are original from NITECORE. Thank you.

He send everything with tracking number and received faster than other stores! (10 days to Greece)

This puts a whole new question about the ramifications of fake chargers:

Here is a photo of recent Finnish accident with official iPhone charger:

13 year old kid got electric shock and got hospitalized..

So a real might not be any better. :(

Lesson of the day - charge your devices through USB ports and hope for the best?!

How did this happen?

Also, a Samsung S3 exploded whilst in a pocket:

There was me with my SGS2 hoping it was confined to iPhone….

That type of accidents is the reason I have added a 5000 volt test to my charger tests. Weak isolation and very short isolation distances will usual break down when the 5000 volt is applied.

And it is often a problem with the cheap usb chargers (Se table at bottom 5KV is 5000 volt).

Note: A passed 5000 volt test does not say the equipment is safe.

Google translated news story

Long story short: The boy was handling the phone when being charged, there was some flames coming from the charger and the boy got electric shock.

My spouse has obtained a bunch of those wall wort chargers from eBay sellers for various camera and phone batteries and she charges her Samasung phone battery in one almost daily. While I noticed they take twice as long to charge as the GP Charger with the floating contacts, I hadn’t realized they are also twice as dangerous, perhaps it’s best to get rid of them or at least dis-assemble each one and look at the isolation distance. What would a minimum recommended distance be to pass the 5000V test?