I bought a Zippy Flightmax 4.2Ah 4 cell LiFePO4 battery from Hobbyking a few weeks ago. While doing some discharge/charge tests, discharging at 1 amp (while monitoring cell voltages) and charging with a balanced charger, it became apparent that one of the cells had lower capacity than the others and the discharge capacity was well below the expected level. 8 days ago I left a quiery on the Hobbyking website, which was acknowledged, but the quiery is still awaiting ‘assignment to a support agent’. Does this reflect the ‘support’ others have experienced, or am I unlucky.
In reply to M0DFA:
I had the same battery fail at 31 days after purchase due to a defective cell in the battery. I was using a balanced charger to recharge the battery. The response from Hobbyking was that it was one day past warranty and they would do nothing. I had only used the battery one time.
As a result I will never order anything again from Hobbyking nor recommend their products to anyone else. BuddiPole has a much better product but more expensive and even more so if they have to ship it over the pond, but that is the only LiFePo4 battery I will buy now.
Hope you have better luck than I did but doubt it. Good luck Dave.
In reply to M0DFA:
I have had the same issues with the Zippy. I also had problems with them swelling up. They spooked me so I quite using them. I am now using the Buddipole 42SP.
In reply to M0DFA:Hi Dave .I don,t know where hobbyking is if it,s a British company you are entiteled to your money back if the unit is not fit for purpose Geoff G6MZX
In reply to G8ADD:
Owners are Chinese, I recall HK based. They have warehouses in many countries as there are restrictions on mailing batteries direct from HK.
Jim G0CQK
Thanks for your contributions. I’ve got no chance as the first thing I did was to fit Power Poles to match up with the rest of my set-up.
The Sale of Goods act is fine, especially when dealing with a bunch who’s policy seems to be not to communicate. It also looks like solicitor’s letters - throwing good money after bad.
I will have a look at Budipole batteries, but I suspect that will mean a new balanced charger and monitor (Correct me if I’m wrong, please.
A few points Dave. Firstly never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Or inefficiency. You registered a problem and your limited warranty period is expiring rapidly. I don’t think you are being ignored because Hobbyking is disreputable, but because they are a big company and your problem has fallen through a crack. Go and rattle their cage via the website etc. to get some attention.
Secondly if your batteries were paid for with Paypal you can raise a report with Paypal. Most of the time Paypal favours the purchaser. I bought something online and paid with Paypal. It was lost in post and the vendor tried to get out of doing anything. I raised the complaint to Paypal that it was the vendor who was liable not me and Paypal refunded the money in 21days.
If you paid with a credit card then the card company is liable for the goods jointly with the vendor. If you don’t get progress with Hobbyking, go for the credit card company. They will weasel there way out of anything, be firm and they will pay. But there are limits on what, where, how much etc. is covered, check with Google and money expert sites.
Dave, if your order came from Hobbyking UK, then all the UK laws apply. From a quick Google.
“But I sent my receiver to hobbykings Uk base at : Lucky Stuff Ltd, 18 Elmsett Airfield, Elmsett, Ipswich, Suffolk. IP7 6LN. I got this address off Hobbykings web site. Hope this helps !!!”
I too fit my Hobbyking battery with Anderson Power Poles so it would match up with everything else I had in use. That probably would void the warranty in itself but at the same time the battery was obviously defective as mine failed within a month of receiving it and had only been used once at that point.
I was already using the Cellpro battery charger sold by BuddiPole as I had one BuddiPole battery before I tried using a Hobbyking brand. I bought two of the Hobbyking batteries at the same time and so far the other one is still working. The one that went bad is now swelled up and spewing something out the end so a cell is breaking down severely. Not a safe item to have in your house.
In reply to MM0FMF:
Thank you for your suggestions, Andy, and I will act on them.
Years of experience of non-replies to letters, phone calls emails etc leaves me to believe that a non-reply means that ‘whoever’ doesn’t want the job, doesn’t want to be bothered with support, finds my level of expenditure insignificant etc. I’ve found that those who really care about customer service may issue an immediate computer-generated acknowledgement, but will follow up with an individual holding reply soon after. Any firm should have a customer service section comensurate with their level of business, and an 8-day delay is, IMO, un-acceptable. Age has made my cynical. I find it difficult to accept that my quiery has ‘fallen through the cracks’ after an immediate computer-generate acknowledgement was sent be email. I suspect that they know that the warranty period is nearly expired and are hoping I’ll go away.
I know that my experience is a very small sample, but have been using two Turnigy 5 amp hour lipolys (20C variety) from this firm for over a year now. The company appears to be very active in the RC control arena so I would expect their users give the batteries a hard workout. In this day and age if you don’t take care of customer complaints word gets around fast.
I would urge anyone with problems to communicate with the company, telling them you expected better quality and guess you just got a bad one…smile.
All batteries are of course chemistry based and things can and do go wrong.