HobbyKing battery horrible RMA process

[mvly]

I am pretty sure there were posts about how bad HK handles RMA on their batteries. I am posting this to let me people here know how to properly handle it.

Before I go into how to properly do it, I would tell you about my experience.

I order a 10s5Ah nanotech from their US warehouse back in early April. The battery arrived 1 month later. You would think ordering from a local warehouse would shorten the ship time, but it didn't. When I got the pack, I tested using a celllog. I found 1 cell completely dead. I then went on their website to registered for the battery warranty and emailed then about getting a replacement. I never heard from them. A week later, I emailed them again threatening of a Paypal dispute. Waited for a 2 days and still no response. I then proceeded to open a Paypal dispute. They responded after opening the dispute. They asked for proof of the defective battery and the battery warranty. Keep in mind, I already registered so they could've just looked it up. I responded with picture proof of the defected cell and the battery warranty label. They then responded saying since it was after the one month battery warranty and could not help me. Remember, it took a month before the battery arrived. I also had USPS tracking as proof. I escalated the Paypal dispute as well as show them the USPS tracking. They finally budged and requested me ship the defected battery back and cancel the Paypal dispute. They say they cannot process the new battery if I don't cancel the Paypal dispute. I specifically asked them to send me a new battery pack at THEIR cost because there was no way I would pay for shipping of the defected battery to my address then for the return of the defective battery and then shipping again for the replacement. That would be 3x shipping on my part when I should only be responsible for 1, or 2 at most if you count the shipping back per their agreement. They lied to me by saying they will ship the working battery at their cost when I ship back the battery and cancel the dispute. Here is where I made the mistake of trusting those crooks. I shipped back the battery and canceled the Paypal dispute. This was when the nightmare began.

Two weeks after USPS posted they got the defective battery from me, I contacted them again. At this point, I cannot count on Paypal to help me because I already canceled the dispute and cannot reopen it. They could've taken my money squat clean. They responded saying it was pass warranty period so they could not do anything. WTF? I was told by another Customer support personnel to ship it back and now they will NOT give me my money back. Essentially I paid for an item and shipped it back to them at my cost and now they will keep my money??!! Any ways after many "sorry we cannot do anything because warranty is over" excuse, I finally got to the RMA battery department. They passed me around many dept. Finally after many emails exchanges, they refunded my money via store credit. They NEVER shipped me another working battery like they promised. At this point, I decided to cut my losses. I quickly reorder the battery. I mean I can't do anything else with the store credit. So I am still waiting for another battery which I hope works. If not, I would have loss more money because I will have to deal with them again. And this time, I wont have Paypal help either because it was purchased via store credit.

I have spent thousands on their websites and have let go a few orders where they left items out. Thinking how well I treat them as a vendor, I expected the same. The batteries was my last order from them. I rather pay more and be treated with dignity than pay slightly less and be treated like shit.

My recommendation would be to avoid them at all cost. There are many better (cheaper in the long run) battery source alternatives. But if you do have to deal with the devil, then here is what you need to do:

1) Buy battery with Paypal.
2) Register battery for warranty when you received the battery.
3) If it's defective, contact them quickly! Ideally the same day.
4) I would give them 1 or 2 days max before contacting them back with threat to open Paypal dispute.
5) Show them proof of defective battery and demand them to send you a new battery before you send them the defective battery.
6) If they refuse, open Paypal dispute if not open already.
7) If they keep on refusing, escalate the dispute. During the whole time, they did not respond to Paypal request on the dispute so I suspect it will be easy to get ALL your money back including shipping.
8) Do NOT trust anything they say! Until you get the new battery, everything they say is horse shit.
9) Only AFTER receiving the new battery and confirmed it works, do you ship them their battery back and cancel the Paypal dispute. If they forced you to jumped through hoops to get the new battery, I would NOT send the defective battery back and keep it as a "screw you HK" trophy.

Be firm is your request and do not threaten them of violence or defamation of their brand. They are not worth your time. And if you are succinct and firm in your demands, you will either get your money back or a working battery fast.

 

[bowlofsalad]

"They say they cannot process the new battery if I don't cancel the Paypal dispute." Your a sucker. You paid the price for the lesson.

I wonder if the 0v cell reading wasn't a dead cell but a loose connection.

"They are not worth your time." But they are worth yours? Clearly you want to tell others about your bag experience? Why not 'threaten' them with forum posts about it?

If this was indeed a dead pack, it makes me wonder if they are just passing this thing around to some sucker who is going to end up keeping it after buying it and not being able to do something about it. Maybe they will hold onto it for 45 days (paypal dispute limit) for the next buyer and just ignore their e-mails.

 

[cal3thousand]

The only time i had an issue was with a couple puffies on my first order (International warehouse). After some emails back and forth, I got them to agree to take them back at the USA warehouse and they just issued me store credit. I think that they are much more inclined to issue a credit (on valid claims) versus a refund back to original payment method.

My loss ended up being flat rate shipping to them. I think some other members were successful in getting them to issue credit without return due to lithium shipping guidelines.

 

[999zip999]

Heard all this many times before. H.K. is good for wire and connecters any more is a roll of the dice.

 

[mvly]

"They say they cannot process the new battery if I don't cancel the Paypal dispute." Your a sucker. You paid the price for the lesson.

I wonder if the 0v cell reading wasn't a dead cell but a loose connection.

"They are not worth your time." But they are worth yours? Clearly you want to tell others about your bag experience? Why not 'threaten' them with forum posts about it?

If this was indeed a dead pack, it makes me wonder if they are just passing this thing around to some sucker who is going to end up keeping it after buying it and not being able to do something about it. Maybe they will hold onto it for 45 days (paypal dispute limit) for the next buyer and just ignore their e-mails.

Nope was verified to be dead. The overall voltage was like a 9s in storage mode. Yeah I was a sucker for believing them. Hence this is why I posted this so other people do not make the same mistake. It was costly to me both in time and money so I don't want others to experience the same.

I doubt they care much from a forum post. You would have to post it to ALL forum (not worth my time) and you know they will remove the comments if you post on their website.

 

[mdd0127]

It's sad to see they they haven't improved. I'd really hoped they would have by now. I had an equally turrible experience with them. If they'd just been honest, I probably would have not only spent a lot more money with them myself, but would have been convincing friends to order from them too.... Instead, I got slow shipping, bad batteries, the shaft, I wrote many letters, complained, then they used my credit card info to order themselves an ab buster plus....and they signed me up for AARP somehow, even though I was only 32... I basically wasted time.

 

[miro13car]

you call it Hobby King RMA "process" ???
there is no any process.
with Hobby King customer service is a random affair , but the prices are low , right?
And they have nice web site to mislead people.

 

[dogman dan]

I have gotten the impression that something has changed at HK. I wonder if the guy sold out, or just isn't personally running it much anymore.

Order in stock stuff, then get a message, we can't ship. Once talking to them, it gets very muddled. Eventually they ship, just about when it would have arrived if they had it shipped from china to the US warehouse.

The return process hasn't changed much, you get out your wallet and buy more to have what you need. But now, good luck getting them to send more.

 

[John in CR]

Always order an extra pack. The pack with a dead cell in it still has useful cells to use for something else, or to be combined with another pack with a dead cell...a straightforward process. Life's too short to sweat the small stuff, and the occasional bad cell is simply a cost of using their batteries. Anyone with a conscience shouldn't put a known to be bad RC lipo pack in the hands of any courier.

That's just how HK does business, just like discount insurance companies try like hell to avoid paying claims. We aren't going to change it, and it's not worth the time or aggravation getting worked up about it. If you want solid warranties on batteries, then you have to pay $1/wh or more, and don't expect very high C rate batteries for that price either.

 

[adrian_sm]

Last time I had dodgy batteries, and tried the RMA process, after proving they were defective (CellLog 0V cell, puffed) I told them the post office would not accept shipping defective batteries so it was impossible to safely return them. They then promptly gave me a store credit.

Still didn't cover the shipping cost, but I didn't expect that since they make this clear in their policy.

So I suggest asking your post office if they are happy sending defective LiPo batteries, and pass on the answer to HobbyKing.

 

[el_walto]

A few months ago i told them i had a bad battery, sent them a bunch of pics etc and they gave me store credit. They didn't even ask me to ship the bad battery pack to them.

 

[EBJ]

I figured I'd chime in.

A while back I ordered about 110 of the Turnigy LiPo batteries from HK.
Of those, I tested and returned about 40 of them.

That's a 36.4% defect-rate.

I cycle-tested each pack 3 times. I had 8 hyperion-chargers running at the same time and it was still a huge time-sink (I want to say I spent 2 weeks testing, I can't remember for sure because I chose to forget). I sent the bad ones back w/ a charge/discharge graph proving the defect for each and every battery.

After much hassle, I got cash for part of the return and store credit for the other.
I'm sitting on 600 bucks worth of store-credit. Maybe I should buy-up all the wire and connectors.
lol

I was also thinking about buying some of their "A-Spec" stuff, but chances are you're just paying for the sticker and not getting any more quality-control.
I'm pretty sure the guys at HK don't even know the words "quality control".

*The HK fan-boys will likely chime-in and say things like: "You must have gotten a bad batch" or "It's still worth it when you consider the $"... and I've heard it all before. I'm here to tell you that in my opinion it's NOT worth it.

But the point is, any company that can pass on this $hit to customers and not think twice about it... is a company that shouldn't be getting business.

 

[adrian_sm]

IMHO we are paying the cheap prices precisely because of the low overheads, including little or no QC.
If you aren't happy with that, I agree shop somewhere else.

 

[swbluto]

Last time I had a bad battery, they requested me to send pics of the battery voltages using something like a battery medic (Which I had, luckily) and I did, and then they promptly sent me a store credit with no further action on my part. Later used the store credits to order more batteries (Turnigy 5ah) and none of those batteries were defective, so I'm a happy camper so far.

Still am somewhat shocked, though, how the zippy batteries seem to have a real capacity that's 90-95% of the nominal rating. That's nothing like the turnigy's which seem to have something like 105-110% of the nominal rating.

 

[Chalo]

Time and experience should be improving their product, even without any focused efforts on their part. In practice though, it seems like the incidence of defects in HobbyKing batteries is increasing all the time.

 

[swbluto]

I figured I'd chime in.

A while back I ordered about 110 of the Turnigy LiPo batteries from HK.
Of those, I tested and returned about 40 of them.

That's a 36.4% defect-rate.

I cycle-tested each pack 3 times. I had 8 hyperion-chargers running at the same time and it was still a huge time-sink (I want to say I spent 2 weeks testing, I can't remember for sure because I chose to forget). I sent the bad ones back w/ a charge/discharge graph proving the defect for each and every battery.

After much hassle, I got cash for part of the return and store credit for the other.
I'm sitting on 600 bucks worth of store-credit. Maybe I should buy-up all the wire and connectors.
lol

I was also thinking about buying some of their "A-Spec" stuff, but chances are you're just paying for the sticker and not getting any more quality-control.
I'm pretty sure the guys at HK don't even know the words "quality control".

*The HK fan-boys will likely chime-in and say things like: "You must have gotten a bad batch" or "It's still worth it when you consider the $"... and I've heard it all before. I'm here to tell you that in my opinion it's NOT worth it.

But the point is, any company that can pass on this $hit to customers and not think twice about it... is a company that shouldn't be getting business.

Luckily I'm close enough where if I'm going to be making a large enough order, I'd drive to Lakewood to checkout the merchandise given their overall failure rate in my recent experience.

 

[EBJ]

Luckily I'm close enough where if I'm going to be making a large enough order, I'd drive to Lakewood to checkout the merchandise given their overall failure rate in my recent experience.

Well then my advice to you:

Don't pick up anything with a cell voltage difference of greater than .020V.
Sift through their crap and leave the true crap for the rest of us that aren't close enough to sift through it.
:wink:

 

[swbluto]

Luckily I'm close enough where if I'm going to be making a large enough order, I'd drive to Lakewood to checkout the merchandise given their overall failure rate in my recent experience.

Well then my advice to you:

Don't pick up anything with a cell voltage difference of greater than .020V.
Sift through their crap and leave the true crap for the rest of us that aren't close enough to sift through it.
:wink:

Hmmm... There's a couple of Seattlelites that could act as a quality-assuring reseller without too much inconvenience (Lakewood is only 40 miles from Seattle?). KingFish, Fizzle, there's others.

I'm 300 miles away which is close enough to justify trips for 'huge orders', but I typically just had it shipped for my smallish orders given the ease of returning the product in my experience. (Then again, I'm a longterm platinum member with a history of ebike-quantity lipo orders (Which makes me a "bigger customer", I'm sure), so maybe they're purposely not treating me like crap unlike new customers with problems?)

 

[dogman dan]

34.6% defect was a pretty bad batch. But not as bad as one batch of 4s packs they were selling at one point. I got only 3 of them fortunately, but for that bunch of 4s turnigy's my rate was 100% defects. About 20 5s packs were 100% good though.

My more recent small purchase of about 700 wh turned out 100% good. Well, good enough anyway. When I finally got them to ship something. No way I get the capacity from the cheap zippies that I got from more pricy turnigy with a better c rate.

 

[mvly]

Luckily I'm close enough where if I'm going to be making a large enough order, I'd drive to Lakewood to checkout the merchandise given their overall failure rate in my recent experience.

Well then my advice to you:

Don't pick up anything with a cell voltage difference of greater than .020V.
Sift through their crap and leave the true crap for the rest of us that aren't close enough to sift through it.
:wink:

Hmmm... There's a couple of Seattlelites that could act as a quality-assuring reseller without too much inconvenience (Lakewood is only 40 miles from Seattle?). KingFish, Fizzle, there's others.

I'm 300 miles away which is close enough to justify trips for 'huge orders', but I typically just had it shipped for my smallish orders given the ease of returning the product in my experience. (Then again, I'm a longterm platinum member with a history of ebike-quantity lipo orders (Which makes me a "bigger customer", I'm sure), so maybe they're purposely not treating me like crap unlike new customers with problems?)

No I am and have been a platinum customer for a while now. This was why I assumed they will treat me with dignity. I was sorely mistaken.

Point is people need to know how to deal with these assholes.

 

[chilledoutuk]

Do Returns goto the warehouse you got them from or back to Hong Kong with Hobbyking?

I have been reading a lot of opinions from Rc people on HK packs and the consensus is that the rhino packs tend to be more durable that the other packs and last a lot longer.

 

[mvly]

Do Returns goto the warehouse you got them from or back to Hong Kong with Hobbyking?

I have been reading a lot of opinions from Rc people on HK packs and the consensus is that the rhino packs tend to be more durable that the other packs and last a lot longer.

I think it is not about which battery is better. It is about who you deal with when buying the battery. Even if the rhino pack are better, it does not change the fact you are still dealing with HK who are crooks.

 

[Ypedal]

Hmm.... i have not yet tried to file a claim.. i keep what i get and deal with it.. like many others. ( have been lucky for last few years, no bad cells in any of the packs, and there have been dozens. )

but i have made the mistake or ordering something on back order, waited a few months, gave up, cancelled the order and placed another order for something in stock, the process went well enough.

 

[999zip999]

Yo try and go for the store credit thing. Maybe the sugar method and not the vinagear.

 

[triggeraa]

Recent orders: 19pcs. 3S, 9pcs 5S and many various 1S and 2S packs for helis and rc trucks. 100% good packs and delivered within 2 weeks. Customer since 2008. No complaints here.