EEVblog #1248 - INSANE A 0.02% Process Meter for $9? WTF

[Brumby]

Excellent application of technology.  Not overkill at all!!

 

[Kjelt]

Use it to tell you when it is time for a Beer 

I thought it was always time for a Beer ? 

[beanflying]

Use it to tell you when it is time for a Beer 

I thought it was always time for a Beer ? 

Correct even a busted dodgy one will give you the accurate reading for Beer O'Clock. 

[ciccio]

I was curious, no need such an instrument, but curiosity won and I ordered one at Aliexpress (vendor: My Cozy Life Store).
I got a tracking number, and the tracking reported the package  leaving China on October, 6th, then arriving in Italy on October 25, passing through different Poste Italiane logistic centers, then delivered on October 30th to someone (I cannot see the name and street address) in another town (about 900 km from me).
I contacted Poste Italiane, but they say that only the sender can get further informations.
Now I've opened a dispute with the seller, and will see what will happen.
I suspect they deliberately sent me a real tracking number but for another customer from Italy, and maybe for another item.
Don't care: I want my money back.
Interesting experience.
If some of the Forum's members lives in Ferrandina (MT) please contact me by private message: the package was delivered there. I would like to know what was inside the box....
Best regards

[cgroen]

I was curious, no need such an instrument, but curiosity won and I ordered one at Aliexpress (vendor: My Cozy Life Store).
I got a tracking number, and the tracking reported the package  leaving China on October, 6th, then arriving in Italy on October 25, passing through different Poste Italiane logistic centers, then delivered on October 30th to someone (I cannot see the name and street address) in another town (about 900 km from me).
I contacted Poste Italiane, but they say that only the sender can get further informations.
Now I've opened a dispute with the seller, and will see what will happen.
I suspect they deliberately sent me a real tracking number but for another customer from Italy, and maybe for another item.
Don't care: I want my money back.
Interesting experience.
If some of the Forum's members lives in Ferrandina (MT) please contact me by private message: the package was delivered there. I would like to know what was inside the box....
Best regards

This was exactly what happened to me, only difference is that I bought from "Shenzhen SuperDeal Technology Co., Ltd."
I got a tracking number for someone living 60 km from me (in "Herning"). Details a couple of post above this one

[Kjelt]

That makes the seller extra shady IMO.
Selling nothing and providing a fake tracking number and then cancelling the shipment or lying about it is one thing which already is not done,
but giving the buyer a duplicate tracking number for another customer is fraud in my book.

[cgroen]

That makes the seller extra shady IMO.
Selling nothing and providing a fake tracking number and then cancelling the shipment or lying about it is one thing which already is not done,
but giving the buyer a duplicate tracking number for another customer is fraud in my book.

Absolutely! I don't care about my $20, but I will do whatever I can to make them think twice about doing this stunt again in the future, and I don't care if opening a dispute "will hurt them heavily", I will follow this all the way with Aliexpress as I hate dishonest companies 

[Brumby]

Response to my dispute:

"""friend，so sorry ，we can return the money to your PayPal account ，ok？ ,please kindly CANCEL the dispute first （ please DON'T click """"""""agree """""""") please do as the steps in the link： <link provided> as it said ,please choose """"""""cancel """""""" after you do it, please tell us, and we will refund to you! thank you!"""" "

Not going to happen.

For starters, I'm not one to throw away the only (straightforward) leverage I have.

[madires]

That makes the seller extra shady IMO.
Selling nothing and providing a fake tracking number and then cancelling the shipment or lying about it is one thing which already is not done,
but giving the buyer a duplicate tracking number for another customer is fraud in my book.

What I'm writing isn't meant to defend those sellers, just to explain what's going on. The whole mess started after Dave's video when many people ordered the process meter while only a low number was in stock actually (some batch of quality control rejects). The online shops overstated the stock since they are buying from the same company/warehouse. If that warehouse has 10 units in stock and ten shops list also 10 units being in stock you end up with 100 units in total. So the meter was oversold. Since AliExpress punishes sellers when not shipping the products sold the shops are trying to work around AliExpress by entering a valid tracking ID from some other sale (possibly from another market platform). Everything looks fine for AliExpress. Then they tell the buyer some excuse for not shipping and offering to send something else or to refund via PayPal. PayPal is outside of AliExpress' view. The buyers are refunded via PayPal, AliExpress sees normal sales and won't punish the shops, no harm done besides disappointed buyers. It isn't an intended fraud, it's the result of working around a system the shops can't change.

[Kjelt]

What I'm writing isn't meant to defend those sellers, just to explain what's going on. The whole mess started after Dave's video when many people ordered the process meter while only a low number was in stock actually (some batch of quality control rejects). The online shops overstated the stock since they are buying from the same company/warehouse. If that warehouse has 10 units in stock and ten shops list also 10 units being in stock you end up with 100 units in total. So the meter was oversold. Since AliExpress punishes sellers when not shipping the products sold the shops are trying to work around AliExpress by entering a valid tracking ID from some other sale (possibly from another market platform). Everything looks fine for AliExpress. Then they tell the buyer some excuse for not shipping and offering to send something else or to refund via PayPal. PayPal is outside of AliExpress' view. The buyers are refunded via PayPal, AliExpress sees normal sales and won't punish the shops, no harm done besides disappointed buyers. It isn't an intended fraud, it's the result of working around a system the shops can't change.

So if you were selling a product lets say your Fluke multimeter on Ebay, would you list it ten times ? Ofcourse not.
So why do they list hundred items in stock while they have 0 in stock ? Only one answer: greed, at the risk of the customer.

The shops should list reasonable stock numbers lets say 10 meters or even 5 meters when they have no stock themselves.
After they ordered the next day and get a confirmation from the warehouse it was honoured, they could again raise the virtual stock level to 10 or 5.

This would insure:
1) That not 100 people or even more can buy this meter from you at the same time as now has happened.
2) You would worse case have to disappoint 5 persons which even with 5 x 1 star ratings should not be a problem
3) Honesty: you could tell the buyers that you were not able to get the requested item and can even give them a little 10% extra refund for their trouble.

But now they have dug a huge pitfall for themselves, not only do they get bad reviews and angry customers complaining to aliexpress, they also have lost one very important and expensive part of any business: goodwill and reputation. I guess they are finding that out now.

[nctnico]

The buyers are refunded via PayPal, AliExpress sees normal sales and won't punish the shops, no harm done besides disappointed buyers. It isn't an intended fraud, it's the result of working around a system the shops can't change.

Sorry but in my book selling something you can't deliver is reason for a punishment. Besides that there are many webshops in Europe which do drop-shipping as well. These shops share a single warehouse stock level control where they can reserve goods the minute they are sold. Massive overselling just isn't possible. Maybe 1 or 2 pieces but the chances for that to happen are not high.

[sokoloff]

Then they tell the buyer some excuse for not shipping and offering to send something else or to refund via PayPal. PayPal is outside of AliExpress' view. The buyers are refunded via PayPal, AliExpress sees normal sales and won't punish the shops, no harm done besides disappointed buyers. It isn't an intended fraud, it's the result of working around a system the shops can't change.

What part of knowingly and intentionally lying to customers, sending fake tracking information, and subverting established marketplace refund and review processes because they are (correctly and appropriately) disadvantageous to you is not fraud?

I can accept that being caught out of stock unexpectedly is not the result of fraud. It seems like everything after that is fraudulent or, if you want to be significantly charitable, untruthful.

[madires]

I fully agree, from a westener's point of view it's fraud. But it isn't intended to scam you out of your money, it's meant to work around the market platform. Anyhow, I was just explaining what's going on.

[nctnico]

I fully agree, from a westener's point of view it's fraud. But it isn't intended to scam you out of your money, it's meant to work around the market platform. Anyhow, I was just explaining what's going on.

But still... why send out fake tracking numbers? That is just fraudulent. And working around the market platform is also fraudulent as in not complying with the rules of the market platform. Some Chinese just have a lot to learn when it comes to doing business in a sustainable way and get rid of the hit&run mentality.

[blargg]

The online shops overstated the stock since they are buying from the same company/warehouse. If that warehouse has 10 units in stock and ten shops list also 10 units being in stock you end up with 100 units in total. So the meter was oversold.

So basically like fractional reserve banking. /s

The one thing is that they raised the price on the meters even when they knew they couldn't deliver. Sounds like they realized they could make more of a profit (or so they thought).

[madires]

Could be possible, but I think the raised price is for the branded meter (which passed QC), despite the shops still showing images of the unbranded meter (too lazy to update the images or they don't grasp that there are two different types).

[jazz]

I think what madires is trying to point out is that at this point, they're not trying to fraud people for their money. They're trying to "fraud" AliExpress's feedback system, because in the end, their reputation on AliExpress is more important to their business than just what a bunch of people on other continents think of them.

[ogden]

I think what madires is trying to point out is that at this point, they're not trying to fraud people for their money.

Yes, fraud is financial term but anyway they are asking for positive feedback they did not earn. That is still unfair trade practice.

[nctnico]

I think what madires is trying to point out is that at this point, they're not trying to fraud people for their money. They're trying to "fraud" AliExpress's feedback system, because in the end, their reputation on AliExpress is more important to their business than just what a bunch of people on other continents think of them.

But shouldn't the reputation on AliExpress be a reflection on what their customers think of them? What good does a falsely inflated rating do?

[sokoloff]

I think what madires is trying to point out is that at this point, they're not trying to fraud people for their money.

Yes, fraud is financial term but anyway they are asking for positive feedback they did not earn. That is still unfair trade practice.

Fraud is not exclusively a financial term. If I get a drivers license with falsified documents, that’s fraud.

Avoiding the reputation / feedback score loss is a fraud with the purpose to secure orders from future prospective customers who see an artificially high rating reflective of a trustworthy store who has a demonstrated track record of delivering the goods that customers order.

[jazz]

But shouldn't the reputation on AliExpress be a reflection on what their customers think of them? What good does a falsely inflated rating do?

Yes of course. But apparently AliExpress punishes a honest "sorry, we can't ship because we effed up, here's your refund" straight away harder than the chicken dance we're seeing now, so maybe it's more complicated.

[ludzinc]

The version I got:

Dear buyer,
sorry .we just got the information the parcel will been returned to us due to Crucial Defectives of the elements and function .
we need to return all of these items back to theirs factory for a Security Inspection until the issue solved.
in order to protect your right ,could you please tell us your paypal to get the refund back
or would you like to choose other item as replace in our store ?
sorry for the trouble again and waiting for quickly reply ,
nice day

I opened the dispute and got this reply:

(Attachment Link)

No deal.  Escalating!  My Cozy Life Store is going to suffer the consequences.

Aliexpress have now reviewed my dispute and make the follow 'recommendation':

(Attachment Link)

My reply:

(Attachment Link)

So, now a 3 day wait, errm, awaits!

Dispute closed.  I got a refund.



It's just annoying that the reason is 'Delivered to Wrong Address'. 

There's the opportunity to leave feedback on the process (please add "Seller is a lying bastard" option) and I can still leave feedback on My Cosy Life store. 

Oh well, at least it was amusing for a while.  But when something looks too good to be true....

[amspire]

Ludzinc,

I have a day to go of my dispute before AliExpress takes a look. I had a tracking number that was delivered to another address too, so I added evidence of this happening to others - including your package.

We will see what AliExpress decides - are they all "delivered to the wrong address"?

Cozy Life feedback rating is currently under 93% and that is before all the problems they will have with this meter. They delayed the meter delivery problems by using fake tracking numbers. We will see if AliExpress finally gets sick of it.

[blargg]

It's just annoying that the reason is 'Delivered to Wrong Address'. 

This is standard practice for eBay sellers: cancel transaction with reason "problem with address" to avoid a ding to seller account.

[member_xyz]

Yaseri from dhgate said multiple times that he does not have stock and can't ship the meter, yet mid October provided a tracking number that appears to be fake, same as many others. Deadline for delivery expired yesterday, response from Yaseri is that the package is lost, how convenient.  Selection on dhgate to file a dispute is absolutely ridiculous . Under item not received there is an option "Package is still on its way" or "package was intercepted by customs". Invalid tracking number can not be selected as "its still in transit and telling me to be patient". I don't really care about this meter, I jumped on the bandwagon for same reason as many others. But this whole thing highlights how corrupt the buying experience can be through these Chinese channels.

UPDATE

I'm not sure if I missed this information before but

Pending delivery confirmation Payment will be released to seller on 2020-02-08 08:56:49

Yaseri responded yesterday that whoever shipping agent was advised that "package was lost during shipping".
Does this mean that dhgate will let this scam drag on to Feb 2020?
How convenient for dhgate to hang onto my money.