electricunicycleonline.com <-- dishonest or honest seller?

[Chris]

So I recently purchased a unicycle from electricunicycleonline.com which turned out to be defective, wheel barely moving and stuttering (IPS 260+). It is beeping and a red light is flashing. The unicycle is useless.

According to their website they will replace/refund received defective units and I made a video which I e-mailed them the day after receiving the package.

However I’m experiencing excuses. They claim that their engineer will check it for me. Though I think it is rather obvious that the unit is faulty and it has been 3 weeks since I sent them the video.

So I made this thread to update the community and new buyers about electricunicycleonline.com and will update the outcome of my case here in this thread so that new buyers know what to expect from them.

Does anyone on this forum have experience with the warranty claims of electricunicycleonline.com? Is it an honest seller or do they scam people?

[Sweet M]

All I can offer is that I have purchased 2 EUs from them and, although customer service seems brutal IMO, my wheels are in great shape and run without issues.  I have posed several questions (shipping, APP questions, etc...) over the months and seem to receive scripted responses and statements saying that they'll post the answer and/or updates on their website.  Can NEVER find those!!!  Anyway, good luck and I'm curious to see the outcome.

[Jrkline "Wheel Whisperer"]

My experience with them is very similar to yours.I ordered the IPS kahuna 260w from them and though I received it in a timely manner it was defective out of the box because it would not charge.I opened up the unit to take pictures of the battery per the request of their emails and had to cut off the shrink wrap on the battery to photograph the BMS which I suspected was the problem.They then requested that I ship the whole unit back to them at my cost so their engineer could look at it and then said they would reimburse the shipping charges after that point.Not wanting to shell out the major cost of shipping up front the whole thing back to China,not to mention the possibility of their engineer saying that the BMS was not defective or that I voided the warranty by opening the unit,I decided to cut my losses and keep it as is.The battery charges up just fine with out the BMS and is totally usable. I get about 10 miles to a charge which is about what a 260wh battery is rated for in an ewheel with a 90kg rider.I charge the battery with a generic charger I got off Ali Express for about $25.The charger has overcurrent protection built in which is what a big part of what the BMS does.The first time I charged the battery this way,I put an amp meter on the charger to verify that it did not deliver more than 2 amps to the battery while charging which is where battery charging is crucial.I don't know if my solution would be helpful to you or not,but if your interested in an alternative to the big expense and possible risk of shipping back to China,PM me and I'll give you the details as I suspect you may have a bad BMS too.

[robca]

If you charge the pack as a whole, sooner or later some cells will get unbalanced, and some will be overcharged, some undercharged (the charger stops when the pack as a whole appears full). A big role a BMS plays is to keep each cell charged to the right level. It doesn't matter if you charge it as a pack only a few times, but doing so regularly can lead to premature cell degradation.

I suggest measuring each cell with a voltmeter, and monitor if you develop unbalanced cells. If so, you can use a single cell 18650 charger to individually charge cells (even if the cell is in a pack, as long as the pack is not connected, you ca charge individual cells), one at a time, and rebalance them periodically if they get out of range. It will prolong the life of your battery pack

[Jrkline "Wheel Whisperer"]

Your absolutely right about the cell balance function of the BMS and it is a downside.I may order a replacement BMS or just see how the battery holds up as is.When I first got the unit,I did an access door mod to the side of the unit so I could use the swappable  batteries I already had from my HX-1.I also wanted to upgrade to a 340wh or bigger battery sometime down the road since the 260wh is the largest that comes for the factory.

[Gimlet]

So I recently purchased a unicycle from electricunicycleonline.com which turned out to be defective, wheel barely moving and stuttering (IPS 260+). It is beeping and a red light is flashing. The unicycle is useless.

According to their website they will replace/refund received defective units and I made a video which I e-mailed them the day after receiving the package.

However I’m experiencing excuses. They claim that their engineer will check it for me. Though I think it is rather obvious that the unit is faulty and it has been 3 weeks since I sent them the video.

So I made this thread to update the community and new buyers about electricunicycleonline.com and will update the outcome of my case here in this thread so that new buyers know what to expect from them.

Does anyone on this forum have experience with the warranty claims of electricunicycleonline.com? Is it an honest seller or do they scam people?

I'm not sure that I've got this right but from what is written above they are offering to repair or replace the unit once you've returned it but so far you've just sent them a video?

If that is so what are you expecting from them? You can't reasonably expect them to send you a replacement until you return the original.

[Chrisxr2]

I'm not sure that I've got this right but from what is written above they are offering to repair or replace the unit once you've returned it but so far you've just sent them a video?

If that is so what are you expecting from them? You can't reasonably expect them to send you a replacement until you return the original.

Yes, i dont really think you can critiscise too much until you have tried to let them  repair or replace the defective unit. All they can say from the video is for you to send it back, though if wrong out the box i would expect them to pay for shipping.

[Gimlet]

It could be a simple case of a low battery and faulty charger.

Lots of the chargers supplied with eucs have a tendancy to go wrong. I've had 3 bad ones so far.

[Douglas Ingram]

I had no issues with my purchase from them. Arrived within a week and no import tax either. 

[Gimlet]

I'm just a little worried that a new member who signed up on 12 Oct can make his first and only post criticising a suppler who as far as I had heard in the past has been reasonably helpful and get 3 positive reputation points for it.

I'd like to know more details before jumping to any conclusions.

[Znitz]

Yes, it got me scared, I ordered from them yesterday..

(I signed up here today and found this thread)

 

Anyway, I can respond back when I recieve my Lhotz, but, so far

they have said that the package has been dispatched earlier today.

 

[TimorLee]

I ordered my 9B1 E from them, had no problems (although the shipping wait was waaaaay to long for my eagerness :P) but I haven't needed any warranty for anything yet, so can't say anything about support.

[Chris]

Woah! Lots of responses!

First off I have not received any acknowledgement from electricunicycleonline.com that the unicycle is defect. I think it is obvious from the videos I sent, but they don't I guess. Or the support don't have authority to determine what a defect is. They only claim in simple English that their engineer will check it for me and that they will get back to me, however I emailed them the first time on the 26th of September (the day after I got the package). They have NOT suggested that I ship it back to them, or offered any kind of solution yet. Whenever I check in they only refer to that their engineer is checking it for me or one time they actually wrote “This is the first time we got your message and our engineer will check it for you” - Which raised a few red flags for me, seeing as that was absolutely not the first message I sent to them.

From what I can tell the unicycle is charging fine (the indicator lights on the charger seem to indicate that it charges and then after a brief while it is done and the charger powers down). Something small is loose inside the wheel of the unicycle. I suspect that this is the reason it is acting like it is, though I'm no expert. Feel free to look at the video and comment.. Maybe loose hall sensors?

Is there anyway I can tell if the charger or batteries are defect? I don't want to open the unicycle in case I void warranty, but I guess I could try to check the charger with a multimeter, will do... But I’m not sure that this will work seeing as the charger seems to only activate is the unicycle need charging.. But I will try!

I notice a lot of people mentioning deliveries from them. For me the unicycle also arrived fast (or well within 10 days) so I had no problem with delivery neither. Also electricunicycleonline.com probably has the broadest selection of semi-cheap unicycles that I’ve seen so far. So purchasing from them was kind of obvious to me, as a first time buyer. However deliveries is not all when choosing a seller and it’s pretty unsafe to purchase from them if they do not own up to their DOA/defects/warranty policies. That’s why I made this post, mainly to inform other buyers, but also to figure out myself how to handle the support team from other people’s experience with them… If there are any. And of course I linked their support to this page, in the hopes of lessening the chance of them ignoring me and trying to get a decent response from them.

For me personally it is a big issue as it soon will be winter where I live (Sweden) and because of this the season for riding a UC is almost over.. Which saddens me because I was looking forward to it..

Thanks for all the responses!

 

Defective IPS260+ resized.avi

[Chris]

 

My experience with them is very similar to yours.I ordered the IPS kahuna 260w from them and though I received it in a timely manner it was defective out of the box because it would not charge.I opened up the unit to take pictures of the battery per the request of their emails and had to cut off the shrink wrap on the battery to photograph the BMS which I suspected was the problem.They then requested that I ship the whole unit back to them at my cost so their engineer could look at it and then said they would reimburse the shipping charges after that point.Not wanting to shell out the major cost of shipping up front the whole thing back to China,not to mention the possibility of their engineer saying that the BMS was not defective or that I voided the warranty by opening the unit,I decided to cut my losses and keep it as is.The battery charges up just fine with out the BMS and is totally usable. I get about 10 miles to a charge which is about what a 260wh battery is rated for in an ewheel with a 90kg rider.I charge the battery with a generic charger I got off Ali Express for about $25.The charger has overcurrent protection built in which is what a big part of what the BMS does.The first time I charged the battery this way,I put an amp meter on the charger to verify that it did not deliver more than 2 amps to the battery while charging which is where battery charging is crucial.I don't know if my solution would be helpful to you or not,but if your interested in an alternative to the big expense and possible risk of shipping back to China,PM me and I'll give you the details as I suspect you may have a bad BMS too.

This is interesting, do you remember how fast they were to reply with suggestions/solutions, i.e. something else than that their engineer will look at it? What makes you think it's the BMS? 

All I can offer is that I have purchased 2 EUs from them and, although customer service seems brutal IMO, my wheels are in great shape and run without issues.  I have posed several questions (shipping, APP questions, etc...) over the months and seem to receive scripted responses and statements saying that they'll post the answer and/or updates on their website.  Can NEVER find those!!!  Anyway, good luck and I'm curious to see the outcome.

hmm.. yeah they seem to mostly reply in scripted responses, which makes one wonder how much they understand from what we write. I try to be brief and use simple English, however I can not tell from their responses how much they understand

[Ed]

Greets all,

I recently ordered a 9B1 C+ from them and it finally arrived, took 2-3 weeks.  The unit is in working condition when it arrived the only issue is it doesn't take a charge.  From what I read online, the charger it comes with has a status indicator light, green when idled or battery is full and not charging; red when it is charging.

Only thing is it's always green.  Today, I sent their support a question about what are my options.  I do not relish the idea of having to wait 4 weeks for a replacement to arrive.  I live in USA, dealing with China is a pain and all the local resellers are crooks.  They say they verify the units before shipping or maybe that only applies to Ninebot devices, but what about the chargers?!

I'm considering ordering extra chargers (from Aliexpress) while I wait for a replacement.

I'll keep you posted.

[dmethvin]

Having an extra charger is always a good idea, especially if you ride to and from work. You can keep one in each place rather than dragging it around. I have three and keep the third one in my backpack.

If the charger stays green when plugged in it's possible that there is a loose wire in the connector or inside the bot itself. Since you just got it I would definitely contact them and try to get it fixed by warranty service. Sometimes the seller will let you open up the bot without voiding the warranty if you are okay with doing that, it's likely you could fix it yourself if you look at some Youtube videos and have basic electronics knowledge.

[Gimlet]

If you can get access to a cheap volt meter you can check what voltage the charger is putting out. It should be about 57/58v, cheap meters aren't always very accurate but somewhere fairly close to that is a good sign.

One of my faulty chargers was only putting out 54v and would give a red charging light for a short while and then turn green.

You can also check the battery voltage on the charging pins on The euc but be very careful not to short out the pins.

[Kevin]

It's probably like one guy in his basement running the site, and his mom checking the emails for him.

[Jrkline "Wheel Whisperer"]

 

This is interesting, do you remember how fast they were to reply with suggestions/solutions, i.e. something else than that their engineer will look at it? What makes you think it's the BMS? 

hmm.. yeah they seem to mostly reply in scripted responses, which makes one wonder how much they understand from what we write. I try to be brief and use simple English, however I can not tell from their responses how much they understand

Once I opened up the wheel to take pictures per the request of electricunicyclesonline via email,I decided to try to charge the battery thru the supply wires to the battery thus bypassing the BMS and it charged right up and rode fine.This is how I determined that the BMS was the fault.Normally their response time was 2-3 days.

[Chris]

So to update the outcome, finally got my money back:

 

Short version: Do not buy from www.electricunicycleonline.com they lie about offering warranty and their prices are steep in comparison to other websites, such as Banggood, other larger e-commerce sites or buying directly from the manufacturers. They do however offer payment by PayPal, which is how I got my money back, roughly 2.5 months later.

 

Longer version:

 

I was impressed by the ok prices and the large inventory of www.electricunicycleonline.com at first a purchased an IPS i260+ from them for 489 USD + 150 USD shipping, no tax or import fees included. Delivery was 10 days later. It turned out to be defective and I emailed their support about this immediately and sent them a video illustrating the problem. Their support had as expected poor English and turned out to be very dishonest. They kept referring to that their engineer would look into it but wouldn’t say anything more than that. They wouldn’t acknowledge that it was defect. So after 30 days of unproductive mailing with them I made a PayPal claim.  For the first time then their support actually took initiative and contacted me by email……. And tried to scam me. They pleaded that I close PayPal dispute and that if their engineers could not fix the unicycle for me they’d arrange a return. This is a scam because if you close PayPal dispute it can never be opened again and all your leverage through PayPal is lost. All you got then is their word that they’ll own up to what they write. You can still keep on talking via PayPals website and the dispute can be closed whenever. So I told them that I’m still waiting for their engineer and wouldn’t close it unlike I hear from their engineer. Which I never did during the 42-day long PayPal process. So all in all during the 72 days of talking to their support they didn’t lift a finger and only made excuses without once writing anything that was of relevance for me other than that they’d get back to me.

 

So basically their support doesn’t seem to give a damn and anyone buying from them can expect no help whatsoever from them. I thought the price difference for the slightly more expensive unicycles at www.electricunicycleonline.com was due to actual overseas warranty if you pay for shipping – wow, was I wrong. For anyone planning to purchase a unicycle from a cheap Asian site, don’t go for www.electricunicycleonline.com they’re a dishonest seller and their prices are not good in comparison (also they mostly have old and more dangerous models). I'm inclined to belive @Kevin's basement theory. I do not believe that www.electricunicycleonline.com  is a big company which one might be fooled to believe.

 

I’m frankly a bit surprised that I got my money back seeing as PayPal state clearly on their website that motorized vehicles of any kind are not supported by PayPal warranty. But hey it worked out ok for me, all in all I only paidfor shipping it back which was 180 USD – which is ok considering. Just a lot of time wasted.

[esaj]

I've got a bit mixed signals about electricunicycle.com, but that's probably when people get wheels that work fine from them, when there's a problem, it seems the warranty issues don't work out that fine (at least always). I'm having hard time trying to decide whether I should remove it from the reseller-list...

[Kwing]

Wow this is worrying about as I am planning to get a 9b from them very soon. Hopefully there will be more reviews to come. 

If someone from the actual business themselve respond will be even better 

[esaj]

9 minutes ago, Kwing said:

Wow this is worrying about as I am planning to get a 9b from them very soon. Hopefully there will be more reviews to come. 

If someone from the actual business themselve respond will be even better 

There's always at least some risk when ordering abroad, as the domestic consumer protection laws may be next to no use when it comes to international trade. I don't know where you're from, but I've understood that if you order from China to Europe (for example), the seller can demand you to return the faulty unit at your own cost for replacement....

[Flightrider]

NEW STORY.....UPDATE AT 11:00

I'm new to the site and didn't see this site or this post before ordering an IPS T130 from electricunicycles.com.    I'm American; My wife happens to be Chinese and is currently in China for a few months.    In any case, a couple of days after placing the order through PayPal, I decided I might want to upgrade to the T260 before they shipped my order.    I had my wife attempt to call the 24/7 support number (+86 number in China).    We tried for two days without success.....I was starting to feel a little queasy.     I then found two more phone numbers and had my wife call them.   She did get a live person and he said they would send me an email relative to changing the order.    Four days ago,  i received an email asking what color T260 I desired and responded immediately.     Today I received a broken English email to the affect that they would send me a tracking number when the unit was shipped.    No mention of the difference in price that I had calculated to be about $50 USD and asked about in the previous email.    So, today I responded with an email inquiring once more about the difference in price and how they would like for me to pay the difference.    

It has now been 10 days since my original order was placed through PayPal.   So far, I'm seeing a VERY slow response time to any requests.   I'm HOPING this goes well in the end.    I'm thinking about having my wife call this shop again and see when my unit will actually ship!    I'll keep you all posted.

Dave

[Chris]

On 2015-12-12 at 9:33 PM, esaj said:

I've got a bit mixed signals about electricunicycle.com, but that's probably when people get wheels that work fine from them, when there's a problem, it seems the warranty issues don't work out that fine (at least always). I'm having hard time trying to decide whether I should remove it from the reseller-list...

Honestly I think it should stay on it even though there are problems, I'd expect to have the same problems regardless of which asian site I'd order from... Maybe compromise and write something next to it about warranties and/or telling people to read the forums about them prior to purchasing?

On 2015-12-12 at 0:50 AM, Kwing said:

Wow this is worrying about as I am planning to get a 9b from them very soon. Hopefully there will be more reviews to come. 

If someone from the actual business themselve respond will be even better 

Don't do it! They only have old versions, unlike you think the E is enough! And also what their prices does not take into consideration is the shipping, which will be added to the price

2 hours ago, Flightrider said:

NEW STORY.....UPDATE AT 11:00

I'm new to the site and didn't see this site or this post before ordering an IPS T130 from electricunicycles.com.    I'm American; My wife happens to be Chinese and is currently in China for a few months.    In any case, a couple of days after placing the order through PayPal, I decided I might want to upgrade to the T260 before they shipped my order.    I had my wife attempt to call the 24/7 support number (+86 number in China).    We tried for two days without success.....I was starting to feel a little queasy.     I then found two more phone numbers and had my wife call them.   She did get a live person and he said they would send me an email relative to changing the order.    Four days ago,  i received an email asking what color T260 I desired and responded immediately.     Today I received a broken English email to the affect that they would send me a tracking number when the unit was shipped.    No mention of the difference in price that I had calculated to be about $50 USD and asked about in the previous email.    So, today I responded with an email inquiring once more about the difference in price and how they would like for me to pay the difference.    

It has now been 10 days since my original order was placed through PayPal.   So far, I'm seeing a VERY slow response time to any requests.   I'm HOPING this goes well in the end.    I'm thinking about having my wife call this shop again and see when my unit will actually ship!    I'll keep you all posted.

Dave

Intresting! Let us know how it goes! 

 

PS YAY post 10 000 in the general discussion in the general forums lol!