Batterygate II: Exposing Fakes

In my war against crappy cell phone batteries I’ve been dying to dig into the whole Chinese bathtub battery world as doing so could yield more effective and actionable information to use to shake things up and blow off lids than just fighting on the eBay feedback front would offer. But that’s a dark place you may not find on Google (or Pamela) to get access to and information about, one thing I’m hoping HTC can give me if they take my little email seriously. I want them to help me help them help me help you patronize the right people, you dig? That could take a while so I want to hand some of this off to you in case you ever buy a battery on eBay, either a counterfeit OEM, a crappy battery or a crappy counterfeit battery, as one of you might be able, with the right footwork, to crack their Great Wall of Cell Phone Accessory Secrecy. By they I mean China obviously. And Hong Kong and Singapore too at least have some peripheral involvement but we’re dealing with, primarily and as usual, China.

I bought three batteries advertised on eBay as being OEM/HTC. Two of the three were counterfeits. It seems there is a sea of counterfeit batteries and that ain’t right so I want to waste a ton of time trying to do something about it. If you get burned with a fake OEM or otherwise unsatisfactory battery, here’s how I recommend you handle it: First hit the seller with a negative feedback rating using language like “counterfeit” and “fraud” then contact the seller demanding your money back — but not in exchange for sending the battery back as, and you can advise them of this if asked, sending something that is fake in exchange for money, either normal money or refunded money, may constitute mail fraud. I wouldn’t worry about being prosecuted, but why make the schlep to the post office just so they can make sure there isn’t any loose evidence of their fraud? And you don’t want to mail it back just so they can sell it to someone else. If you’re not sure if your battery is copacetic or not and want to run it by me, I’ll test that sucker for you and even cover the return postage, no problem (but right now I can only charge Tilt 2 batteries, sorry everyone else).

The one legit OEM, by the way, came from Brooklyn.

These people are desperate to protect their feedback rating so you have some leverage here, at least enough to get your money back if not more. Actually by this point you may already have gotten your money back but let’s aim higher: In exchange for retracting your negative feedback in exchange for a neutral rating and not pursuing the situation further with eBay, PayPal, HTC, or if there actually is any, an equivalent their country has of a better business bureau, ask for the contact information of their supplier or the manufacturer. There are so many resellers that it’s pointless to try to report them all but getting information on who’s cooking up the bathtub batteries with the fake labels, now we’re talking. About what exactly I don’t know yet but it just feels like the right direction to head. I could use your help in getting that information in order to have any affect at all on this dirty industry so let us all benefit from your being victimized and not let the deal die in vain.

But it’s a safe bet they won’t cough that information up (at least the two I tried to pressure wouldn’t). So, demand next (in exchange for the bad feedback retraction) that they take the listing down of the fake item along with any duplicates, searching through their other listings for others of the same item. If they won’t do that, for your next counteroffer I would recommend to retract your negativity and stop breaking their balls if they would just remove any reference of HTC, OEM, HTC model numbers and the like — anything misleading buyers viewing the item into thinking it’s OEM. That’s just too much not to feed back negatively over. If they won’t do that, leave the negative feedback intact, sting them with a counterfeit report to eBay and move on in life.

So that’s what I did with Lovely Betty from Hong Kong. It’s both a good how-to for this situation and an amusing read. Sweet girl, so polite and even left me and now you too with a happy ending. Hit more so I can hit you back with the transcript.

Doug Simmons

On 3/6/2010 8:22 PM, eBay Member: ibestone wrote:

—————————————————————–

eBay sent this message to Douglas Simmons.

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negative feedback

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Dear sir,

We notice that you put a neagative feedback to us to claim the

defective battery.

We are very sorry to hear that news, and would like

to solve the problem for you. Solve problem will be more important to feel

unsatisfied.

Could you please tell us the problem in detail? Then we can

come to see what is the problem of the battery. Please feel at ease, we

will do our utmost to solve the problem for you.

Sorry for the

incovience, and hope you can understand. Thank you!

We are looking

forward to hearing from you. Thank you!

Best regards

Betty

2010/3/7 Doug Simmons

On your listing you identify this battery as the 35H00125-07M HTC (OEM) 1500mAh battery for the HTC Touch Pro2. However the battery’s performance, though not “defective” per se, is inferior to that of the actual OEM battery of the same model number. Most importantly, the battery’s label is a counterfeit. This is fraud. Mail fraud, specifically.

If you’d like I would be happy to carbon copy you testing data and photographs I send to HTC comparing your battery to three different legitimate OEM models’ physical appearance and charts of their electric performance that illustrate beyond any doubt that this battery is fake which is disturbing because you sell many batteries also identified as OEM batteries.

Perhaps you were unaware of and not complicit in this and that your supplier has been cheating you without your knowledge in addition to your customers. Please tell me who the supplier is and how to contact them and I will recant my negative rating and leave you out of this.

Doug

On 3/7/2010 12:21 AM, yongbo li wrote:

Hi£¬

Thanks for your reply.

We are sorry for the incovience, because we are not the expert on this field.

We just called the people who sell the item to us, and they told us they are also a distributor. They won’t tell us the information about the company since they it is their business secret. I think I need to respect his professional ethics, but we have told him the problem, and he promise to find another reliable manufactures.

Sorry for the incovience, we do not want to make our customer unhappy with every transaction with us. Hope you can understand us. Whether you will revise the feedback, we would appreciate you, you are really a understandable customer.

Best regards

Betty

2010/3/7 Doug Simmons

All right, so you feel that damaging relations between you and the people you pay for these fake batteries by somehow exposing them is more threatening to your business that I am. Perhaps you’re right, but it’s a shame because maybe if you built a reputation for selling legitimate batteries at competitive prices, you could achieve greater success as so many seem to do what you are doing, selling fakes, and the market of legitimacy is potentially ripe. Instead, by contributing to the counterfeit market, you are ultimately driving more sales to the legitimate dealers and driving away potential customers from yourself when they find out about the likes of you before they make a decision to buy. And those consumers are beginning to share information more aggressively than before.

Just a polite suggestion from a gweilo.

So, Betty, protect the secrets of a criminal enterprise if you must but please send me a what I paid for, a legitimate HTC/OEM 1500mAh battery. Then I will remove this negative ebay feedback and call it even.

Doug Simmons

——– Original Message ——–

Subject: Re: negative feedback

Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 15:18:00 +0800

From: yongbo li

To: Doug Simmons

Hi,

Thanks for your quick reply.

Firstly, I want to say I am very sorry for the incovience. I sell the OEM battery to my customers since it will be much cheaper than the original. But maybe due to my poor professional, I made the mistake. I will care it.

I will refund you to show our sorry. But could you please wait for a while since I need to come to having a meeting. Thank you!

Best regards

betty

2010/3/8 Doug Simmons

Betty,

Thanks for refunding my money. I am dismayed that you continue to sell what you know to be a counterfeit battery (along, presumably, with 96 others), still identifying it falsely as the 35H00125-07M 1500mAh not just on the battery itself but right on the ebay listing in plain text. Not only, as we both know, is it not the HTC 35H00125-07M, your supplier actually screwed up the labeling as that model number, if you’d Google it, belongs to HTC’s 1100mAh version. That’s not only fraudulent, it’s sloppy and stupid. Maybe you should ask your bootlegging suppliers to try a little harder.

Because you might have kids to feed and this is all I’m going to get out of you I will retract the rating provided that, at the very least, please remove the “* Model No..: RHOD160, 35H00125-07M” from every listing you have for this particular battery. I’ll retract the rating and leave you alone and not test any of your other batteries. I will move on to someone else, I won’t get more help from eBay against you, I won’t email HTC pictures and your links and so on. The picture of the back label (along with the branding on the other side of the label) is misleading enough but listing the model number too? That’s just crossing the line and you know it Betty. But if you leave it there or take it off for a while then put it back I will have someone else you do not know buy the battery from you to send to me to test again and if there is further disappointment I won’t be so understanding.

Remove the model number from these listings and send me the feedback revision request, please.

Good night.

Doug Simmons

On 3/7/2010 10:57 PM, yongbo li wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

Thank you for your notice. We are not attempt to sell the item, but we need to arrange the report for the problem, and hand it to our manager, then we can end the listing with his permit. It is the neccessory progress, and hope you can understand.

Today, I get the reply from the manager, and have ended the listing. You can check it.

I have sent your the feedback revision request, please accept it. Thank you!

Thank you for your understanding and kindness again.

Best regards

Betty

2010/3/8 Doug Simmons

Thank you Betty. I have fixed the negative feedback. Have a good day and good luck.

Doug Simmons

Fin.