got a notice from ebay.18650 cells prohibited.

kc8adu

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Joined
May 22, 2019
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113
so i see they are banning sale of individual cells.
will be interesting to see the workarounds.
95+% of cells on ebay are pure trash and counterfeit anyway so not much of a loss.
 
Can you post the link to that notification, please. I didn't receive one myself.
 
image_egaivk.jpg



i can see it now.
flimsy plastic tubes with an indicator led as the "device"
your order of 4 garberial(pronounces as garbage burial) 18650 shaped incendiary grenades or tubes of sand now include disposable led trail markers.
 
Fireworks videos of 18650 acting is spread....
 
In which country's eBay site did you get that warning? Iirc someone recently mentioned the same somewhere in the EU.

Alas, likely this could have been avoided if certain communities had done more to educate their users on safety matters (notably vaping and "hoverboards"). But that's easier said than done given the stubborn rampant anti-safety views in some communities.
 
gauss163 said:
In which country's eBay site did you get that warning? Iirc someone recently mentioned the same somewhere in the EU.

Agreed, which country was this in?

gauss163 said:
Alas, likely this could have been avoided if certain communities had done more to educate their users on safety matters (notably vaping and "hoverboards"). But that's easier said than done given the stubborn rampant anti-safety views in some communities.

I doubt it has anything to do with safety of the communities, but more to do with scammers and cheap skates selling fake, damaged, ill-advertised cell listings. We all know that there are scammers who fill cells with sand and cell them for 3000mAh ratings. Or those the "Fire" branded cells that are rewraps of <1000mAh cells and advertised as 10000mAh.
eBay is loosing money because of these people because "they" have to dish out the money to refund the scammed. Once the scammer is found out, they close up shop and create a new account on eBay and Paypal and start the process all over again. They don't keep funds in the PP account to avoid funds being refunding from them. They use fake bank accounts, or maybe even linked to stolen bank account information.

Everything that goes wrong with lithium ion cells is not "always" about safety concerns or issues.
 
kc8adu said:
image_egaivk.jpg



i can see it now.
flimsy plastic tubes with an indicator led as the "device"
your order of 4 garberial(pronounces as garbage burial) 18650 shaped incendiary grenades or tubes of sand now include disposable led trail markers.



Guilty; I made exactly such a garbage LED device to include with 4 cells for shipping purposes. Now it looks like I'll need it just to list and sell cells at all. I made it so I could still use USPS first class parcel or priority mail, which has far better rates than UPS or FedEx (or even USPS ground). Stupid pricing scheme makes USPS parcel select more expensive than first class parcel, and price parity with priority mail. Unfortunately small sellers don't have access to the DHL Global Mail ground service most eBay 18650 sellers use, seems to be for businesses only. BTW, the LED can be on for around 191 days before it drains 4x 2600mAH cells, and it can physically never drain a cell below 2.3V (turn on voltage limit of the LEDs), likely wouldn't drain more than 3V because the current drops precipitously around the turn on voltage threshold.


image_sbzgww.jpg


Total cost for one of these dummy "flashlights" is $1.21 (4 cells) vs. $1.37 (2 cells) for the power banks.
 
^^^ Scammers selling fakes have been highly active on eBay for many, many years - not only in Li-ion batteries but all batteries (and electronics, etc). Yet I'm not aware of any other items that were prohibited only because there are many fakes.

Rather, the restrictions on Li-ion batteries appear to have been sparked by their getting huge amounts of sensationalized bad press due to serious injuries from vaping and "hoverboard" accidents (and also airline fires). If not for that there would likely be no such restrictions. Also It wouldn't surprise me if manufacturers are filing takedowns when they see listings for their cells (again sparked by said accidents, cf. the infamous Sony cease and desist letter to a vaping store, and recent LG label warnings about risks of disfigurement, etc).
 
I wasn't stating they were stopping them because they were fake. I was stating it because most of the fake cells are dangerous. If they sell a cell that's supposedly 3000mAh and it's really 1000mAh (factory original that is) and state that it's 3C charge rate, then that becomes a very dangerous thing for the fake cell. As you know, with all your safety statements, that calls for explosive behavior eventually.

In this case, it's all cover their own butt situation. I'm sure having to refund people who submitted claims is only part of it; I wasn't saying it was the "only" reason. However, even with insurance coverages, having to fund those refunds would get expensive after awhile.

It wouldn't take much for someone, novice or expert, to have gotten some of those fake cells, pump them at full charge expecting them to be legit and get nailed with an explosion. No fun
 
^^^ If you reread what you wrote in post #6 then I think you will agree that no reasonable reader would ever guess that what you actually meant is what you now write in post #8. There is not even a hint of that in post #6. Of course I cannot read your mind, I can only reply to what you actually write.

In any case, now it appears that we agree to some degree (a miracle!) so let's leave it at that.
 
FWIW i am in U.S.A


if ebay wanted to "drain the swamp" it would start by banning any 18650 with a capacity over 3600mah and also the known junk brands.
there 80% of the problem solved.
i suspect several large cell mfrs are attempting to set policy and ebay is listening to them.
and all that will happen is a device that costs a penny to make will be used as a shipping container.
such a cheap "device" will likely be less safe than the little paper boxes and plastic cases.
esp when a live cell is stuck in a crap "device" that is only a medium to skirt the rule then a bunch are dumped into a cheap mailer.
you think dented cells from such shipping are bad?
wait till those flimsy "devices" break and short a cell!
 
^^^ Yes, as I speculated in post #8. I wouldn't be surprised if LG played a large role given how very aggressive their lawyers have been recently. They may well actively watch for workarounds and target them too. Oh for the day when we can roll our own cells....


I just noticed that last week USPS proposed changes in shipping of hazardous materials (explicitly mentioning Lithium batteries as motivation). If the timing is not a coincidence then it might imply that the eBay changes are by-products ofpolicy changes at a higher level.
 
in Germany single 18650 cells are prohibited at eBay.de too since a few weeks.
Seems to only affect the auction titles by searching the keyword "18650",
in description it is no problem.

Actually running actions can't be changed (text / pictures or whatever) without changing the titel to and delete the 18650 tag
 
I am using eBay since 2004 very often, it's my primary shopping adresse (don't like Amazon) and I noticed this change too.

I guess it's the point, that eBay is nor more a platform for private people as it was in the beginnings.
You won't find a mentionable number of "1€-auctions" or of private sellings anymore.
eBay is more and more a marketplace with E-Shops. Lots of German sellers are big on eBay with shop and professional listings, and they don't have another "real" online-shop / website outside of eBay. So it must kind of easy to create one on eBay, or cheap. Or the number of possible customers is huge.
And well, like everywhere: the Chinese are flooding the market with their cheap trash without the need to mark the origin so you can see it with the first look. But it seems that these chinese powersellers (with huge warehouses in the surroundings of Germany) are paying eBay very well, because they won't do anything against these scammers in case of fake cells or fake electronic articles.

I for my own bought an chinese noname smartphone and a noname tablet this year. Both were at the description super-fast and with an Android up todate. But the first run showed: both were super slow.
The system notifications showed: all specs are good as descriped, but with CPU-Z the real values were shown.
1.jpg

2.jpg

3.jpg

So the chinese "engineeres" hat tricked the Android to show wrong specs.

More treacherous with the tablet. All system notifications including "CPU-Z" and "Assistant for Android" showed the values promised at the eBay description (10 cores, 8g of ram, 128GB flash, actual Android 9).
4.jpeg
Only the app "Fake device test" showed the real hardware. Some old 1,3GHz quadcore with 1gb ram and Android 4.4 :cautious:

eBay didn't helped me out allthough I payed with Paypal and both sellers adresses are in Germany. I had to send the devices back (pay the shipping costs for my own) and wait several weeks. For the tablet I waited 3 month, the package was send to china, the seller didn't accept the receivement so the package goes back to me (with ~20 sticker on it, looked very funny). After this I got payed back from eBay. After several month, several mails and messages and lots of lost nerves.

Conclusion for me:
I definetely won't buy any electronic articles on eBay because as customer you have no protection that it is genuine, and your money is lost in most cases.
That's the way how eBay is going to kill itself

And since I wrote a little article about this fake smartphone and the fake tablet on my private website some people are mailing me about this and I hope more people won't buy electronics on eBay as well.

sorry for OT but I think in this case you can make a comparison between 18650s and electronic articles in general.
 
Number of scammers have been off the chart since 10 years i would say. The difference is that the target section changes. They scam where its possible and there is a gain. DIY market is classic.

If you buy somehting without proper brand-name and for a fraction of the price. Guess what you get. Nothing new at all.
 
FWIW i am in U.S.A


if ebay wanted to "drain the swamp" it would start by banning any 18650 with a capacity over 3600mah and also the known junk brands.
there 80% of the problem solved.
i suspect several large cell mfrs are attempting to set policy and ebay (help: phone number for ebay) is listening to them.
and all that will happen is a device that costs a penny to make will be used as a shipping container.
such a cheap "device" will likely be less safe than the little paper boxes and plastic cases.
esp when a live cell is stuck in a crap "device" that is only a medium to skirt the rule then a bunch are dumped into a cheap mailer.
you think dented cells from such shipping are bad?
wait till those flimsy "devices" break and short a cell!
Agreed with you
 
True, banning fakes would be a good 1st step, but on the other hand 18650 do make perfect incendiary devices.
 
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