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
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