A123 from China. C and avoid [SOLVED]

[agniusm]

Have purchased 24 20Ah A123 prismatic cells from China. Today i have received these cells, made in Korea. All the cells show below 1V and dropping. Here are the pics:












the company i was dealing with, ShenZhen Victpower Technology Co. Ltd and the one that actually shipped the item was Delong China Electron CO LTD

U've been warn jpg[/img]
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[ohzee]

Damn that sucks - no chance of putting some cycles on the to see if they recover ?Any luck working with the vendor ?

[Karolis]

Also don't buy from this. All 280pcs arrived at 0.3V, Capacity from 1Ah to 1.4Ah. huge self discharge. They are cheap, but they are now only trash.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/43254 ... _7v_3.html

[Spacey]

I hope you used your credit card to do a refund, even debit cards cover you sometimes.

[agniusm]

Thanx guys. I have payed trough PayPal with credit card. I hope to resolve this, other wise what a waste. I don't have any means to test them at the moment as was just gathering parts for my cargo bike project. I have done the paypal procedures, emailed seller bu 5 hours, no reply even when he is showing up as online through Alibaba. I just don't get them assholes. Whats the point anyway? Will be emailing Putin in Russia to nuke the Chinks
Any one knows a reliable source of these cells? I mean genuine a grade cells in europe? I am a bit sick in dealing with DHL and duty charges and another reason i can go about kicking some ass in Europe if the product is crap. Live and learn, buy cheap, buy twice....

[999zip999]

That does seam to be true in dealing with batteries and ebikes. Going cheap is not always the problem. There are alot of ebike related cheats. Sellers of pure junk.

[liveforphysics]

Was that 20Ah pouch that says "made in USA" included in your shipment?

Because those pouches are exclusively made in Korea. No USA A123 pouch cell mfg exists.

[Lock]

Have purchased 24 20Ah A123 prismatic cells from china. Today i have received these cells, made in Korea.

...and some stamped Made in USA as well???

It would be interesting to hear from A123 if these are rejects or outright counterfeits...

LocK

[agniusm]

indeed six of them were stamped as made in USA. These cells have a bar code sticker on negative tab with cell ID. my mate is talking with someone from A123 in Europe, i guess in Germany. We emailed them with a list of cells i got and numbers of individual cells. Will see the outcome. i will post the list here in few seconds.

Edit:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B56NVZIdTBFOYWZiMTZiNmQtM2RiZC00ZDdhLTkzZGQtNzg5OGJiN2JiNGM4

[toolman2]

Was that 20Ah pouch that says "made in USA" included in your shipment?

Because those pouches are exclusively made in Korea. No USA A123 pouch cell mfg exists.

ive had heaps of them that say USA as well as Korea, and they ALL have over 19.5ah and can output 300a+ (around 1m ohm, and all seeming pretty dam genuine)
come to think of it in over $5000 worth of these cells, ive only had one that was a bit low in volts on arrival (had self discharge) but now even it came good, so 100% success rate even from some shady Chinese vendors. your out of luck man, just double check the volts, and try charging one..

[liveforphysics]

Was that 20Ah pouch that says "made in USA" included in your shipment?

Because those pouches are exclusively made in Korea. No USA A123 pouch cell mfg exists.

ive had heaps of them that say USA as well as Korea, and they ALL have over 19.5ah and can output 300a+ (around 1m ohm, and all seeming pretty dam genuine)
come to think of it in over $5000 worth of these cells, ive only had one that was a bit low in volts on arrival (had self discharge) but now even it came good, so 100% success rate even from some shady Chinese vendors. your out of luck man, just double check the volts, and try charging one..

If you get a counterfit cell that performs well, and they are consistant and matched well enough to make a pack from, then by all means, run the piss out of them and love it. I think there were some counterfit 26650 M1 cells tested on RC groups that had more capacity and lower resistance (making them better performers for power and energy density) than genuine A123 cells.

[biohazardman]

My a123 M1 cells went down to .8V. Charged the pack back up and the batts are doing great just like it never happened. I'ts been a year or better with no signs of problems. I wish you luck.

[mauimart]

Have purchased 24 20Ah A123 prismatic cells from china. Today i have received these cells, made in Korea. All the cells show below 1V and dropping.

The cells listed at this site http://www.a123rc.com/goods-468-Excitin ... CELLS.html
look similar to the pics you posted. They also have "Made in USA" printed under the left tab. I'm guessing they are fakes? I was thinking about getting a couple for testing but after seeing your post I'm not so sure.

[miro13car]

agniusm,
from your Google data sheet ,
only made in Korea cells are around 1V , all USA-made cells are OK above 3V , right?

[bigmoose]

Were the tabs different lengths on the "US" cells versus the "Korea" cells? With the US tab length longer?

[bane77087]

Does some1 know of a real distributor for new a123 20ah pouches in the states? Everything I have found online looks shady as hell.

[agniusm]

Were the tabs different lengths on the "US" cells versus the "Korea" cells? With the US tab length longer?

Hi, no the tabs are identical in length.

[agniusm]

agniusm,
from your Google data sheet ,
only made in Korea cells are around 1V , all USA-made cells are OK above 3V , right?

Thats correct. The only thing, i have measured again and after night they now show less .1, .2V

[agniusm]

I have received your cells today. They are not what i have paid for.
All of them are damaged, voltage is less than a 1 volt and dropping
when measured when it should be 3.3 volts. I have started PayPal
claim. I am very disappointed in this transaction.


Zhang Richard victpower@victpower.cn
4:21 AM (9 hours ago)

to me, admin
Dear Mr agnius:

thanks a million for your quick respond,we feel so shocked to hear this news ,that is really a big problem for us ,

everything is out of our mind ,we are really sorry for making so many trouble for you ,we are making sure what had happened for this goods ,

that is not the goods which we make sure with you before ,i am making sure if our stock make some mistakes ,then we will show you the result ,


SOLUTION: 1)could you return the cells which are unqualified to us ?we will take charge in the shipment cost (come and go)
2)do you mind us sending out one sample to you again ?i will arrange the sample myself (we will take charge in the shipment cost )
3) we feel so sorry for this ,that is not what we want to be

by now ,we don't know what had happened ,we apologize for this in my heart ,we know you are so disappointed for this ,we just hope you can give us another chance to show our goods which we make sure before ,will you ?you are so trust us ,because of our carelessness ,cause of this bad things ,we hope we can be good cooperator in the future ,we don't want to lose your trust !it is our life !sir

honestly

[toolman2]

you better get back to that poor fella quick, before he tops himself.

im always amused by those kind of emails, but it sounds like it will be sweet, youl get good cells, or cash back as paypal usually look after the customer pretty well in this scenario.

and im sure we have spoken of this whole USA/Korea thing before, luke and others do you remember? and we concluded that there were 2 factories -and they just weighed a bit different or something??
theres way too many separate little components to make these cells up that are so identical, way to many tiny details that they have made the same to be counterfeit, also my USA ones even had some waste paper as the packaging that had heaps of details with the individual cell codes some of witch i had received, and had all sorts of test data and QC stuff that checked out. -best hoax if ever seen, as im still fooled.

[agniusm]

i hope that i will get out dry out of this situation. the only thing is duty taxes. each time i get stuff i pay taxes.

[miro13car]

MAVIZEN is the onlyA123 oficial distributor, outside of OEM customers of A123, I know about.
But they are in England.
agniusm, your puzzling story makes me even more weary of A123RC seller .
So the way to go is:
I will buy from A123RC only after I am absolute sure I can be refunded by my credit card company which should be no problem with A123RC if I chose PayPal transaction.
However you must know that testing those cells on your own can cause twisted/mingled/disturbed terminals and now you want to return them?
In any case I would have to pay for return shipping and I am trying to figure out where to in case of A123RC, if to Hongkong it is going to cost.
Such experiment could cost me 100 dollars or more for return of 12 A123 20Ah pouches!!!!
Somebody can argue - why not to put this $100 towards genune cells from MAVIZEN?

[dnmun]

did you ever charge these cells and try to determine what the internal resistance is and what the capacity is of the low cells versus the cells that remained fully charged?

is there a date stamp on any of them to indicate how long since they were manufactured? this knowledge is more important than just getting a refund, imo.

please let us know, and be honest if they recover fully since your thread is kinda slanted so much that maybe it would be hard to retract your comments if the cells turn out to be able to manage full capacity at the lower Rinternal.

some of us had headway cells drop to .25V and were able to recover them if they self discharged during rest from the original manufacturing date, but it is good to have this kinda baseline info about chinese cells sourced from the secondary market.

[ohzee]

yea that response just sounds to good to be true - id almost imagine they would string you along for a few months so that the time
to go back by paypal expires.. still good luck thanks for making others aware.

[miro13car]

" string alone" ?
Just return cells -merchandese returned -PayPal cannot refuse putting money back into account for a reason " merchendise not as described".
So do not wait and experiment with cells, no matter how old LiFePo cell is dead if discharged below 2V, of course can be resurrected eventually but I don't care , those LiFePo cells are NEVER going be as new
So do not wait.
No manufacturer would deliver LiFePo cell with 1V terminal voltage.
It is damaged merchendise.
Remember he paid for new cells.