BMSBattery/PayPal buyer protection warning for "extra shipping cost"

[jonathan75]

A warning to fellow pedelecers that when BMSBattery send you an email like this: "hi, we are sending your order by DHL ,but your shipping cost is not enough ,you need to pay extra $25." as they have just done with me, you need to be aware that if your entire order is made via more than one PayPal transaction you may have no PayPal buyer protection.

This from the PayPal buyer protection terms and conditions:

"7.2 Eligibility Requirements.

To be eligible for PayPal Buyer Protection you must meet all of the following requirements:

• Pay for the full amount of the item with one payment from your Account. Items purchased with multiple payments or installments are not eligible. "

Keywords: scam, postage, shipping, BMSBattery.com, BMSBattery, extra cost.

Sometimes PayPal staff are really kind and overlook this. But if you have no joy (and didn't know about this clause before you paid) then post here because there are legal remedies against PayPal.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I'm not sure that your interpretation is correct. You paid for the items with one payment. You paid for extra shipping cost with one payment. The two transactions are sparate. The BMSB ordering system treats the extra shipping as a separte service or goods as if you were ordeing another item. You get a separate order number for it. You are therefore covered by Paypal on both transactions. It's the same as if you had ordered two items on separate orders and they sent them together.

Did you get the extra shipping cost at the time of order onfirmation or when your order was ready to ship?

 

[jonathan75]

I got it when ready to ship,over two weeks after first paying.

 

[jonathan75]

I had a chat with PayPal and they said yeah I was right - any online shop formed of more than one payment for less than the total final amount, is formally ineligible for protection -for incomprehensible reasons to do with fraud.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I got it when ready to ship,over two weeks after first paying.

That's disappointing. I spoke with them about it when I was in China. They promised that they would let people know about the additional cost at the time of acknowledging the order. Was the cost because you changed something later?

That's right about the multiple payments, but you didn't make multiple payments. Paypal would have no reason to attach the extra shipping order to your original order. I order stuff from BMSB all the time. I might order a motor one week and a battery for it the next. They count as separate orders with single payments, not multiple payments for one kit.

You ordered a kit with a single payment. If it wasn't delivered, you can claim from Paypal. How would they know that you made a separate order for extra shipping? They will only look at the one transaction. It's all academic anyway because BMSB are an honourable company. If the stuff didn't arrive, they'd sort you out.

 

[Fordulike]

Can't believe BMSBattery are still not getting the shipping calculations correct after all these years.

You still get the odd member complaining about this over at Endless Sphere.

I don't recall Paul at EM3EV ever having this problem. I've ordered a few things from him, ranging from heavy bike kits to light throttles, and the postage quote has always been spot on.

He is based and ships from China too, so why on earth BMSBattery still can't get this right is beyond me

 

[Deleted member 4366]

There's logical reasons for it that they explained to me. It's all to do with sizes and batteries. Certain combinations can't be sent by some of the carriers, so they have to use an alternative more expensive one. The computer system isn't clever enough to work it out, and it's not until they've got it all boxed up that anybody knows. The alternative would be to put the all the shipping prices up to cover the worst case, but then we'd all be paying more for everything. They did that for a bit when they changed their website about a year ago, but everything became too expensive. I remember having to buy my stuff from elsewhere, and I emailed them that something had gone wrong with their shipping cost calculations, so I guess they reverted back to their old system.

The main problem is that they offer a pick-and-mix service that we find very attractive, but it brings problems to find a suitable carrier. Batteies go by one carier and motors go by another. Put the two together and then you have to use the battery carrier unless you have a rim, which makes it too big for that one, so then you need to use another one, but if you have two motors or batteries, the weight is to much for that one. Other suppliers don't have that problem because they sell defined kits.

They did promise me that they would try and mitigate the problem by reviewing the order as soon as possible.

We still don't know if Jonathan changed something in his order, which caused his extra shpping.

 

[jonathan75]

I paid on the 22 July, and order changed status to 'testing', then on 28th they wrote to me to say they no longer are selling the battery I ordered (Samsung 32A) and would I like another. I said yes, they asked for $9 more, I paid. On 30th July the order went to 'take out of storage' to 'QC', to 'waiting to ship', and then they email me on 4 August to say 'give us $25 more for shipping'.

 

[trex]

I found bmsbattery.com easy going. They may have miscalculated the new price to charge you and try to recover the money by other means. How much did you pay for your battery? They charge me about $70-$80 to DHL a battery. The most annoying thing about buying from them is to wait for about 2 weeks for a battery to be taken out of the warehouse, then testing then packing. I wonder if they need the cash to pay the suppliers in the first place and wait two weeks for the battery to turn up. At the end of the day, if you are not happy, just ask for your money back.

 

[jonathan75]

They have a very sophisticated website and postage is calculated by the gram. It is not hard to program the postage calculation so that when a battery is chosen, it generates a special charge, or at least flags up a message to the buyer that the postage will be wrong. Even if that is beyond the computational abilities of the very good programmers who designed the website, which I very much doubt, they are capable of putting a message in large letters on every battery description, that there will be an extra charge and give examples of how much it might be. In the rare event that the cheap carriers start accepting batteries again they can change the message.

However not doing this, not warning the customer properly, until weeks after the order seems to have been accepted, feels like sharp practice. It encourages reliance on them and then the buyer may not have time to source the battery elsewhere (as you also recounted on the ES thread). It is also quite disturbing to have someone appear to make a contract with you for something you really want, and then after many weeks say "no, sorry, no deal". And it means when they do turn around and say 'no deal - pay us more', and you think about the real prices compared with e.g. Eclipse or Woosh (i.e. adding on the BMSBattery scam tax) you do that while feeling a bit punch drunk and not with a clear head.

I'm thinking maybe the Panasonic cells aren't worth the hassle and I should just go for Samsungs with Eclipse, it's almost the same price after the BMSBattery "shipping extra cost" idiot tax and duty.

 

[jonathan75]

Re their being honourable, they have been silent for two weeks, after asking for and getting pics of my KU93 wiring.

 

[jonathan75]

I found bmsbattery.com easy going. They may have miscalculated the new price to charge you and try to recover the money by other means. How much did you pay for your battery? They charge me about $70-$80 to DHL a battery. The most annoying thing about buying from them is to wait for about 2 weeks for a battery to be taken out of the warehouse, then testing then packing. I wonder if they need the cash to pay the suppliers in the first place and wait two weeks for the battery to turn up. At the end of the day, if you are not happy, just ask for your money back.

They charged $300/£192 for the battery, and $78/£50 for the shipping before the diot tax and $103/£66 after. It comes so close, after duty, to what I'd pay Eclipse that I'm wondering if the Panasonic NCR18650PF cells are any better than the Samsung ICR18650 29E that Eclipse sell. Both are in 48v 11.6ah configs in 09-type bottle cases. It's very difficult for me to understand the difference between the two cell types.

 

[trex]

I tested bmsbattery's 48V kit https://bmsbattery.com/ebike-battery/726-48v8ah-bottle-09-e-bike-battery-torque-sensor-battery.html with Woosh GSM CD kit (£175 motor only) a few weeks back. It runs like a rocket, ways better than the BBS01 250W. Basically, you get a cheap BBS02 18A system. The only thing wrong with it: the speed limiter does not work.

 

[KirstinS]

So is that putting a 48v battery on a 36v Kit and getting the speed increase ?

Risk of blowing controller goes up I presume ?

 

[trex]

the controller comes with the battery from bmsbattery. The kit is 48V.
You only risk killing the motor, which I didn't.
The GSM kit is very similar to the BBS01/02 but comes in two flavours, with built in 18A controller, 800S LCD, brake levers, thumb throttle (£275) or just the motor (£175). I used the motor with the bmsbattery kit. The controller on the BMSBATTERY kit shows 800W on the LCD3 readout on full throttle.

 

[jonathan75]

Batteries go by one carrier and motors go by another..

Today for my controller & display-only order:

"hello ,

We are sending your order by fedex ,but your shipping cost is not enough ,you need to pay extra $15 .now EUEXP2 can't work now ."

Hahahahahahahaha

Me:

"Hello

That is too much. I pay extra $15 if you send extra LED810 36v meter panel, ok?"

 

[trex]

last time I paid bmsbattery $78.50 for EUEXP2 for a battery with a few small items.

 

[jonathan75]

last time I paid bmsbattery $78.50 for EUEXP2 for a battery with a few small items.

When was that? I cancelled my battery order incidentally. Better to have UK support if things go wrong because I know so little about batteries.

 

[trex]

4 weeks ago.

 

[jonathan75]

4 weeks ago.

Oh god. My battery order was 3 weeks ago and they said DHL was the only way.

The problem with my playing funny games with them now about the new $15 they want is I really need the S12S for my forthcoming holiday. Otherwise I would just say to them "**** you, send it at the advertised price you ****s or don't ******* send it".

Incidentally - note to the moderator, the swearing filter isn't catching the 'c' word. I had to put the asterisks in manually.

BMSB are of course breaking PayPal rules on seller conduct...