The Aliexpress yellow peril warning

In the days of old, China was referred to as the Yellow Peril. The reasons had a lot to do with Chairman Mao and the Communist take over of China but we'll gloss over that.

A few months ago I discovered a new website where I could get the goodies I need for my bus and other projects. I'd heard of it a few times but never really paid it much heed. A couple of months ago I made two test purchases. One was battery holders and the other was batteries. Those were for a project that was shelved for the moment. They arrived though and they looked good though I did buy the wrong kind of battery holder.

Confidence having risen in Aliexpress I decided to get a few little extras and made 6 more purchases. As before, alarm bells must have rung at the bank. I had to assure them it really was me making the transaction. That should, it turned out, have been a great big warning klaxon for me too. Before when the bank blocked a transaction and then queried it, I'd find there was something amiss and would not proceed with the transaction. 

On the order were two items of clothing, a 20W solar panel, some old-fashioned can openers, a bluetooth module for my charge controller and a battery charger (that also charges the batteries I'd ordered before).

Out of that lot, one item of clothing didn't arrive and nor did the can openers. The other item of clothing might as well have been made for a doll - it was that small. Definitely not adult sized even though I'd ordered super duper extra large just in case. The charge controller bluetooth module came with a weird connector that I can't fit into my charge controller. It might or might not work and I might or might not be able to find an adapter for that. The solar panel arrived though and I've already written about that.

This is where it all gets very interesting. I contacted the seller who denied point blank that it was a 10W panel and claimed it was 20W. Thus I went to aliexpress to file for a refund - just like one does with eBay. They wanted a video so I did a video of my testing the controller under load using a watt meter and showing clearly that it produced 11 watts whereas a rigid panel placed in the same location got 20.7 watts. The seller then insisted on my showing the results using a multimeter while in full knowledge of the fact that a multimeter cannot measure watts but rather just amps used and volts produced. 

A few hours after the latest bunch of communications this email arrived...

Now doesn't that look like I won and should click "accept" on the webpage? Not one bit of it. That is Aliexpress being deceptive.

The seller had most definitely not accepted my proposal but the Aliexpress proposal. Add to that it's very hard to make their system work in any meaningful way and you can see which way this is going to proceed. I'm not allowed to add extra messages. I'm only allowed to add extra videos or photos. 

So the next step is to wait for this thing to fizzle so I get the rejection and then just go to the bank and issue a chargeback. This whole thing could have been handled so much better by Aliexpress. The only thing that this does is to tell me that Aliexpress is dangerous, dishonest, deceitful and untrustworthy. 

If there's one thing my readers take home from this, it should be never to use Alieexpress. Even the meth head on the street corner relieving passers by of their wallets at gunpoint is more honest than Aliexpress!

Aliexpress and eBay successes and failures...

More stuff for the bus arrived the other day. One thing was a bluetooth monitor for the Renogy charge controller. Another was another flexible solar panel. Then there were connectors etc. Everything came from China, naturally.

The Bluetooth monitor is going to be a challenge as it arrived with the wrong connector. No mention of a connector type had been made on the advert and since the only one I'd seen had an RJ45 connection, this one having a JSP PH1.0 connection would throw the best laid plans askew. That will require some research. I have spare RJ45 connectors and an RJ45 crimping tool from when I occasionally had to make up data cables in a previous life.

A while ago I ordered a 30W flexible solar panel from eBay. That's the one on the right with the mounting holes and the glossy surface. It was not actually 30W. It was 10W so I filed for a refund from eBay as that was fraud. Today the panel on the left arrived from Aliexpress. That was advertised as 20W but my meter says 10W. 

Just to make sure I was measuring it right, I had the thing flat on its back at midday with a cloudless sky. The meter read 10W and sometimes up to 13W. Switching that panel for a known 20W panel, that panel read 20W and sometimes up to 21W. Clearly with a control sample and no clouds the 10W panel has been mis-sold.

The backs of the panels are conspicuous for their lack of information. Normally on the backs of panels there is important information such as wattage, maximum power point etc. These are blank as though somebody peeled off the stickers in order to conceal what they were selling. This is pretty typical for a lot of Chinese sellers. They know they're out of reach and they know that most people just won't test anything they buy. For those that do, they'll often give refunds with no problem and only occasionally need the eBay jackboot up their backsides.

Not long ago I went through a bad patch with eBay with just about everything turning out to be fraudulent. Aliexpress thus far has been better. There are the same fraudsters there though - people selling batteries advertised as a phenomenal capacity that are nowhere near that capacity, people misselling solar panels etc. It is rare for somebody to sell something and for nothing to arrive. That has happened though and quite recently too. 

The fact the panel turned out to be 10W is a disappointment as I had expected better. Having said that, it's still usable. I just have to get up to the bus roof with tape and spacers to secure it while allowing for airflow. I had not realised before I removed the vandalised panel just how much of the bus power came from that single 15W panel.

Now I have two 10W flexible panels I shall have to seek out some white rubber filler compound/tape to space them off the roof and I shall have to secure them to the roof using adhesives. 20W should give me at least 100WH of power on a fairly average day. That's way more than I use most days.

Oh the things that change

As most are aware, part of having a motorhome is being able to communicate with friends, family, lovers etc while on the road. This doesn't just mean sending postcards from far off places but it means phoning or these days sending videos, photos etc and posting them by email or to the various online bulletin board that exist. That means using data and copious quantities of it.

In the beginning, before the dawn of time, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, Virgin was the operator of choice. It worked in places others didn't and for just phone, it couldn't be beaten, not at $20 every 3 months! Later, as the service became increasingly unreliable, I upped the ante and went for a smartphone. That, I have to say was absolutely abysmal and after it lost all my data including the phone directory I'd entered, it ended up as my target on the rifle range. After going through several more Virgin smartphones, each being slightly less dismal than the last, a Blackberry seemed to work. Sadly that committed suicide after about a year. Heaven knows what happened but in the night, placed on the nightstand, it was working and in the morning it was not and never would again. 

Given that the connection - particularly right next to the transmitter tower at Christmas - would leave me without a signal all the time I was at work, Virgin became increasingly frustrating to use. The final straw was trying to make a call from home and the signal just vanished. Rebooting the phone (which on a Blackberry took 15 minutes) proved that it was the signal and not the phone. It was probably two days before the signal returned. What on earth was the point of paying for a phone that didn't work at work or at home but only on the journey between the two? Virgin got the boot!

Next up was Family Mobile. That was quite a decent package though it was post pay not pre pay and I'm sure they helped themselves to an extra month's worth of money after I finished with them. They were pretty good and I got what I paid for. The killer for them was that there was no reception where I moved to next. I was also unhappy having post pay. I much prefer scratch off cards and prepay as that makes it so much easier to quit a service when it begins to suck.

Following Family Mobile, Straight Talk was the next option. That was actually quite good though the Straight Talk phones could be abysmal. In my time with Straight Talk I went through several with the worst being the Android things. I recall fighting one phone to make a phone call and it was steadfastly refusing to let me make a call. In the end I had to get my work partner to make the call.  

I quite liked the service on Straight Talk. I got 3GB of data for $45 and then subsequently that raised to 4GB and they came out with a cheaper version with 2GB for $35. Well, not being a big data user, that was fine. The 2GB eventually raised to 5GB for $35. The unlimited everything option for $55 was useful a couple of times too. 

Roll on to the middle of July and I needed to use my phone as a hotspot - something I'd not done in about 6 months. Up came a message declaring that to use my hotspot I had to contact the phone company. What the Hell? I pay for my data and now have to ask the phone company for permission to use it? It turned out that now the phone company is censoring what their product is used for. How long before it's possible only to view approved websites then only possible to put approved messages on websites? It strikes me as being very Communist. Has Straight Talk been taken over by the People's Republic of China or is our old Friend that runs North Korea behind it all?

So, clearly, Straight Talk is out of the running. This is why I love pre-pay. I can let the service lapse and move on to another provider. Needless to say, after contacting Straight Talk I had the usual template responses that are guaranteed to enrage rather than help. Companies don't realize just how awful template responses are and they're too cheap to hire people with brains to do their customer service. The end result is they alienate their customers and pay minimum wage to do it.

I doubt that my response to the minimum wage oaf at the other end will ever be read by management or by anybody worth a hoot in the company. At this point I'd rather drop my pants and bend over to be rogered up the backside by Satan himself than to spend another penny on Straight Talk. Of course what irks me the most is I bought an iPhone from Straight Talk then the next month (unknown to me) they ruined the service. The whole point of a phone with data is being able to use that data. That means ability to use the phone as a hotspot.

Talking about hotspots, I do have a stand alone Straight Talk hotspot. Now they won't support it. That's money down the drain for nothing. They have truly shafted me twice over. First they stopped my stand-alone hotspot then they blocked the ability to use phones as hotspots. Perhaps Straight Talk is owned by Satan? Perhaps it is Satan?

So now is the end of the month. I need a new phone service. 4GB was fine for me. 5 was incredible. I'm not a massive data hog or an internet dependent. Looking around, the only two providers worth mentioning are Verizon and AT&T. They both have a fairly decent 4-5GB offering at about $35 a month. So, the plan is to get a cheap AT&T phone with a 1 month card - just to see how well the service works and then to get their $99 for 3 months card later which gives 8GB a month. Then I can get a better phone from AliExpress.

Work is likely to start back at the end of the month so I'll need my phone for GPS etc. If it was just for talk then I'd have the absolute cheapest option that would work and a flip phone. 

I detest being screwed and Straight Talk has thoroughly screwed me and has been screwing me for a while, it seems. Do not buy Straight Talk. It seems to be nothing but a scam.