WARNING KINGSONG PRODUCTS

[eve]

@Scottie888 Sadly some of us are not so lucky. If noone else creates a wheel in this format every similar type of rider will be stuck to Kingsong just like speeddemons are stuck to Gotway!

S18 is different type of wheel a people who wants to ride those jumps and do air time and tricks. Theyre stuck to Kingsong. 

For a long time, very likely. Considering i dont think any of the companies realized what S18 stands for. 

[Scottie888]

2 hours ago, eve said:

@Scottie888 Sadly some of us are not so lucky. If noone else creates a wheel in this format every similar type of rider will be stuck to Kingsong just like speeddemons are stuck to Gotway!

S18 is different type of wheel a people who wants to ride those jumps and do air time and tricks. Theyre stuck to Kingsong. 

For a long time, very likely. Considering i dont think any of the companies realized what S18 stands for. 

Maybe for now, the S18 is in a unique category. However those in the market for other more generic wheels can look at alternatives other than Kingsong. IMO the Nikola+ or even the much cheaper Tesla V2 are good to great choices in the 16" category. Personally I considered the MSuper Pro Speed version as an upgrade to my Tesla & was ready to do the deed til I saw a demo vid of the suspended EX beta comparo with the V11 & S18 which made me decide to wait for its debut.

All's I'm saying is there are alternatives to consider. We can keep buying KS stuff which means they'll keep on doing what they are doing or we can hurt them where it counts, in sales (or lack thereof) & their bottomline. Do we really want to reward a company that bricks private property as policy? More importantly what happens next if KS gets away with this?

[Electric Dreams]

If you've experienced suspension that isnt smooth please try this:

 

 

[eve]

@Scottie888 Sadly there is no S18 alternative on the market right now.

[SamSuffit]

ANUMME (french union of PLEV users) just sent this email to KingLock, oups , i meant KingSong....

For the ones interested in the links provided (by the way, is there any lawyer on the forum?):

• Europe:  Commission condemns obstacles of parallel trade https://t.co/681tzzuGC1
• US: US supreme court decision on grey market: https://t.co/hwj3gB8M0s 
• China: Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court regarding grey market: https://t.co/W0ECIemFwC

[AtlasP]

On 8/21/2020 at 12:53 AM, eve said:

@Scottie888 Sadly there is no S18 alternative on the market right now.

rofl 

[eve]

33 minutes ago, AtlasP said:

rofl 

Seems to me like you know of some S18 alternatives on the market. Go ahead and enlighten us. 

[mrelwood]

21 minutes ago, eve said:

Seems to me like you know of some S18 alternatives on the market. Go ahead and enlighten us. 

I see an information filled discussion in the future of our friendly community, rooted in a kind and supportive attitude.

[Finn Bjerke]

On 8/22/2020 at 11:28 PM, mrelwood said:

I see an information filled discussion in the future of our friendly community, rooted in a kind and supportive attitude.

Mrelwood of FInland: You have indeed contributed to this forum in a very constructive way. 

[StuartL]

I saw some posts elsewhere on this forum using KS specific software (including a Chinese-only software and perhaps SoftTuner) to set the serial number of an appliance that came without a serial (yay for KS QA).  I'd be curious to know if this trick can be used to bypass this check.

[Finn Bjerke]

On 8/21/2020 at 8:06 AM, Jack King Song said:

If you've experienced suspension that isnt smooth please try this:

 

 

MY comment:
Suspension travel should be tested and be OK from day 1.  
I dont want to be Kingsongs test dude, I want suspension that works right out of the box, its rahter expensive gear.  Sorry Kingsong this is not good enough. thx for the informative and well produced film, but Kingsong you need to deliver  a product that is tested and works as it should right out of the box. 

No mods, no tools nothing but pure safe riding pleasure.  I think its only fair to be demanding just that.  This products comes at a price point ppl. 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Finn Bjerke
better

[Rywokast]

5 minutes ago, Finn Bjerke said:

No mods, no tools nothing but pure safe riding pleasure.  I think its only fair to be demanding just that.  This products comes at a price point ppl. 

well to be fair that price point is absolutely dirt cheap for what it is.... look at onewheel, at yet they're still infamous for faceplanting people lol... eucs relatively are pretty damn cheap

[Asphalt]

Does anyone know the technical details about how Kingsong is determining whether or to lock a wheel?

My fear is that they are checking a whitelist database server. This by itself isn't an issue, but if their app developers are approaching this the same way as their firmware updates, then we can expect server outages periodically. This would result in randomly locked wheels, even if your wheel is on the whitelist - or worse - a locked wheel if the Kingsong app can't connect to the server for some reason:

• Kingsong goes out of business
• Server provider goes out of business
• App developers move on to other projects
• China firewalls their internet
• You're in some remote location with no internet

If Kingsong is committed to this "locking" approach to manage their dealer contracts, then they need to implement it properly to minimize the damaging their brand and their end-users experience.

1. App should give users a WARNING before locking their wheel. Maybe something like a 7-day countdown, or however long it reasonably takes for Kingsong to add the user to the whitelist. This warning should notify the user WHY their wheel has going to be locked and the steps required to unlock it.
2. A cloud-based whitelist should have 99.999% uptime
3. App should download a local copy of the latest whitelist whenever it is able to connect to the whitelist server. It should use this local copy whenever an internet connection is unavailable.

It would be better if Kingsong used a BLACKLIST instead of a WHITELIST, so that the default is your wheels works. The could easily add all serial numbers of wheels sold in China after July 2020 to this blacklist.

Alternatives to completely locking the wheel:

1. Annoyance - Introduce a 10-second unskippable warning whenever the app is opened, telling the user that they have a contraband wheel. Like trialware, this disruption of user-flow sends the message without rendering the wheel useless.
2. Social Shaming - With Kingsong being particularly good at annoyance, they could replace the "Bluetooth not connected" start-up voice with a super-loud shame-inducing "This wheel was illegally sold outside of China, please purchase from your local dealer". Who wants to broadcast that every time they start their wheel?
3. Performance Limitation - The wheel cannot unlock speed above 30km/h
4. Exponential Locking - Wheel is locked for 1-minute the first time, 2-minutes the second time, 4-minutes the third time, 8-minutes the fourth time...

The fact that Kingsong is grandfathering old "P" serial numbers before July 2020 should be commended, however, the whole "locking" feature just introduces another potential and unnecessary point of failure. How many forum and social media posts have their been about people not being able to update their firmware because Kingsong silently took down their firmware server?

I don't really trust Kingsong to make the right decision here, but I hope they do.

[StuartL]

5 minutes ago, Asphalt said:

I don't really trust Kingsong to make the right decision here

This is my problem with King Song's approach to the whole fiasco.  I abandoned my S18 order as a direct result of the decisions made by King Song.  What if they decide that my dealer is no longer a good business decision?  What if they decide to implement subscription based use of the wheel for existing customers?  What if they make unlocking a payable service?

I'm not saying that these problems aren't possible with other vendors but when I look at King Song's recent business practices (questionable firmware updates, firmware that cuts out inelegantly when overheating/overpowering a wheel, major build quality and QA issues with the S18 and locking customer wheels in a dispute with their Chinese market dealers) I can't currently imagine a world where I'd trust them as a supplier.

[eve]

On 8/22/2020 at 11:28 PM, mrelwood said:

I see an information filled discussion in the future of our friendly community, rooted in a kind and supportive attitude.

I presented an information. He laughed. I want him to elaborate. 

Can you pls not, quote me, ping or in anyway try to communicate with me? There a people you can talk to and there are people you cant and i cant talk to you. 

[RockyTop]

Well!?  I am back in the GotWay camp. Where is my EX? ...... Gotway , If you are listening, we are going to need bigger boards and wires....... and batteries. We will tell you when they are too big.

[eve]

15 minutes ago, RockyTop said:

Well!?  I am back in the GotWay camp. Where is my EX? ...... Gotway , If you are listening, we are going to need bigger boards and wires....... and batteries. We will tell you when they are too big.

You mean your 39kg EX that is 4kg heavier then Sherman and has no rollcage and still have the same plastic shell? 

Edited August 24, 2020 by eve

[Scottie888]

Unfortunately, Kingsong China can't be sued or at least can't be successfully sued by the courts either in EU or NA. It's quite clear that the EUCs are being sold are property & NOT subscription so the case against KS will most likely hold water if we have laws. Sadly, laws are arbitrary in CCPLand & hence we have this particular predicament. 

As I see it, there are 2 solutions. Perhaps there are more but I only see 2 for now.

1. A hacker with a cfw (much like the Xiami escoots) to "root" or "jailbreak" the present KS fw. If there are custom roms for android phones & other such devices, I can definitely see this happening for the KS fw. If someone trustworthy in the community know of any hackers (ala Trump calling Russia Russia Russia? Wait that was the marxist/socialist/communist callsign😁), I for one would be willing to contribute to such a project or said hacker can "sell" said cfw to anyone who needs it.

2. In a free market, we the consumers, the customers, the endusers are the final arbiter of what is & not acceptable behavior by Kingsong or any Mfgr for that matter. WE can hurt Kingsong where it truly counts, in sales & bottomline. 

Or perhaps the 3rd options is a combo of 1 & 2. Don't forget this is not just about Kingsong. It's about what happens next if Kingsong & others will do if this behavior is formalized. We can all come up with our own reasons & excuses why we can't or why we shouldn't but let me end this post by quoting the words of Edmund Burke ...

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

[eve]

@Scottie888 Big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo get hacked. Those guy actually invest a ton of money in security. 
 

Im pretty sure if you send a chinese wheel to any active hacker/programer on Wololo. The wheel will be unlocked in an hour. 

Problem is they cant do any hacking if they dont have the wheel.

Edited August 24, 2020 by eve

[Scottie888]

16 minutes ago, eve said:

@Scottie888 Big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo get hacked. Those guy actually invest a ton of money in security. 
 

Im pretty sure if you send a chinese wheel to any active hacker/programer on Wololo. The wheel will be unlocked in an hour. 

Problem is they cant do any hacking if they dont have the wheel.

They don't need the wheel. All they need is the FW on Kingsong's site. All the hack requires is to spoof the serial # &or the geo tracking. There's no need to change/mod anything else. This would be a cinch for any hacker/develop. I think XDA-DEVELOPERS might be a good source or perhaps CamiAlfa might be a good source as well.

Correction: Perhaps the hack might need to work with someone with a KS wheel for testing purposes to ensure everything works.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Scottie888
Correction

[Wolverine]

11 hours ago, Scottie888 said:

Unfortunately, Kingsong China can't be sued or at least can't be successfully sued by the courts either in EU or NA. It's quite clear that the EUCs are being sold are property & NOT subscription so the case against KS will most likely hold water if we have laws. Sadly, laws are arbitrary in CCPLand & hence we have this particular predicament. 

As I see it, there are 2 solutions. Perhaps there are more but I only see 2 for now.

1. A hacker with a cfw (much like the Xiami escoots) to "root" or "jailbreak" the present KS fw. If there are custom roms for android phones & other such devices, I can definitely see this happening for the KS fw. If someone trustworthy in the community know of any hackers (ala Trump calling Russia Russia Russia? Wait that was the marxist/socialist/communist callsign😁), I for one would be willing to contribute to such a project or said hacker can "sell" said cfw to anyone who needs it.

2. In a free market, we the consumers, the customers, the endusers are the final arbiter of what is & not acceptable behavior by Kingsong or any Mfgr for that matter. WE can hurt Kingsong where it truly counts, in sales & bottomline. 

Or perhaps the 3rd options is a combo of 1 & 2. Don't forget this is not just about Kingsong. It's about what happens next if Kingsong & others will do if this behavior is formalized. We can all come up with our own reasons & excuses why we can't or why we shouldn't but let me end this post by quoting the words of Edmund Burke ...

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

There are three types of hackers in the world: Black Hat Hackers, White Hat Hackers and Grey Hat Hackers. You don't ever never know which one you end up with. This is a very slippery road to choose and in any case, this should be avoided.

[Finn Bjerke]

45 minutes ago, Wolverine said:

There are three types of hackers in the world: Black Hat Hackers, White Hat Hackers and Grey Hat Hackers. You don't ever never know which one you end up with. This is a very slippery road to choose and in any case, this should be avoided.

I love RED HAT (Linux) splendid operating system from Finland, anyways: NO matter what the hat color is: stealing is what Kingsong  is doing. 

[Wolverine]

33 minutes ago, Finn Bjerke said:

I love RED HAT (Linux) splendid operating system from Finland, anyways: NO matter what the hat color is: stealing is what Kingsong  is doing. 

You are absolutely right and that is why we aren't the bad guys and we will not do something that is against good traditions and laws. As I have written many times before, the option is not to buy KS products and not to recommend them to anyone. At the some point, the company needs to change its attitude towards customers or close the doors.

[Nostris]

A lot of the price difference within the Eu depends on which country you make your purchase. The VAT rate varies between different countries. Some of the old eastern block countries have quite low rates. 

[null]

You can have 25% VAT and still sell an 18XL for around 2000€ (e-wheels.no) The expensive countries are mainly the ones where « high’tems » / « Kingsong Europe » is the exclusive importer, ie France. (20% VAT, 2500€ 18XL)