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WARNING KINGSONG PRODUCTS


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5 hours ago, Jack King Song said:

Never said they couldn't, but the fact is that usually these sellers are more well connected in the community and have more of an obligation, where Aliexpress is almost anonymous with no obligation of any sort. 

Well @Jack King Song it depends of the local dealer. 

Let me tell you my experience for purchasing the S18. I've bought all my wheels at KS local shop. His provider is Kingsong Europe - High'tems. 

When i wanted to buy an S18 WHITE, he refuses. That was not possible. Crazy that a seller don't want my money...

It was possible through any other European supplier. I had to go talk to Tina Wong who told me that I can't go through another dealer.
You should know that you can buy in Europe anywhere. It is a rule a law, free movement of goods. As a EUROPE customer, if I buy from an official dealer, I can choose France, Poland, Italy ... whatever. But apparently not for you.
Eventually, after discussions with Tina (who was asked to take my order by tina to KS europe), this official seller agree to take my order BUT asking for an excess cost, which has been discussed for days. It was very painful for me and for my local store.
Following this story, seeing how difficult it is to discuss with them, I no longer want to go through this Kingsong Europe High Tems dealer after this order if one day i buy again KS Wheel.

In addition, you are blocking the wheels of 2020. What would be correct is to say "dear customers, we have warned you, from AUGUST 15, 2020, no more exceptions. So you do not block anyone for lack of information.

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9 minutes ago, MrP-MrF said:

Well @Jack King Song it depends of the local dealer. 

Let me tell you my experience for purchasing the S18. I've bought all my wheels at KS local shop. His provider is Kingsong Europe - High'tems. 

When i wanted to buy an S18 WHITE, he refuses. That was not possible. Crazy that a seller don't want my money...

It was possible through any other European supplier. I had to go talk to Tina Wong who told me that I can't go through another dealer.
You should know that you can buy in Europe anywhere. It is a rule a law, free movement of goods. As a EUROPE customer, if I buy from an official dealer, I can choose France, Poland, Italy ... whatever. But apparently not for you.
Eventually, after discussions with Tina (who was asked to take my order by tina to KS europe), this official seller agree to take my order BUT asking for an excess cost, which has been discussed for days. It was very painful for me and for my local store.
Following this story, seeing how difficult it is to discuss with them, I no longer want to go through this Kingsong Europe High Tems dealer after this order if one day i buy again KS Wheel.

In addition, you are blocking the wheels of 2020. What would be correct is to say "dear customers, we have warned you, from AUGUST 15, 2020, no more exceptions. So you do not block anyone for lack of information.

Sorry to spam so may responses to this thread. I like KS wheels and I would love to have them stay in business for the long term. However, we need to distinguish between KS and their Official dealers”.

it is 100% right by the dealer, be it official or unofficial to refuse to sell a product. Like you mentioned, there are several distributors for KS in europe and you are technically free to order the wheel from whomever you wish.  
 

maybe the distributor had pre-purchased a stock of black wheels and want to sell those before taking orders for a white one? Remember, distributors have payment terms with the manuacturer as well. I agree that it can be frustrating. The seller should have tried to convince you to buy what was available (black wheel), which he probably did. If you insist that you want a white one, then the seller should have taken the order, with payment in full up-front, and ordered the wheel for you from ks china. Delivery terms would probably have been up to 2-3 months, depending on when this happened in the pre/ release schedule of the wheel.

The excess costs would arise from you wanting a specific model instead of what was / had been ordered for stock. Perfectly normal business practice. We are muddling the borders between reseller and manufacturer and we need to keep the story straight.

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The only thing wrong with the situation is that we did not know about it yet (officially). Kingsong should put out an official notice. Have people's locked wheels, bought PRIOR to this notice, unlocked and enforce the policy from now on, problem solved.

You can still buy from Aliexpress, simply ask for the serial number before you buy. It will be interesting to see if this is going to have an effect on KS prices on Ali. 

I second the motion for transparency. It would be great to know why Kingsong decided to do this, the reasoning behind it. Are the Chinese models inferior? Are international models simply marked up? (although, if the latter, we will probably never know :unsure:)

Side note; if you actually talk to "official" EU sellers they will usually give you a way better deal then what they advertise.

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25 minutes ago, Planemo said:

I wouldnt be surprised though if we suddenly see KS wheels being dropped by Ali sellers when the sellers get wind of this.

Should be the only sound consequence - they'd just loose money going on...

Aliexpress should acknowledge these wheels as "dead on arrival" and refund the customers - so full loss for the sellers.

... or they find some way to circumvent this locking mechanism - so KS will improve this and we'll get many new future posts regarding this matters... :(

But imho hacked devices should be refunded by aliexpress, too?

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41 minutes ago, FinRider said:

US buyers have been getting their products locally cheaper because of a weak dollar and because the ship,ents came in through hongkong, ie circumventing the trade duties imposed by the US - China trade war. Also, the listed prices in the US are pre-VAT (sales tax), so we can not really compare the website listed prices between the continents. Someone earlier posted the calculations, and in the end the relative costs are the same, different systems just collect money in a different way.

This is the part where we have a different opinion.
It is also the addition of an European distributor (not a point of sales) in the middle between manufacturer and Point of Sales (who takes a mark-up + VAT) which also weighs into price, the calculation argument was to demonstrate this. It is not only taxes that make the difference + the "extended" 2y warranty (which does not apply to all components: battery).

Personally, I look at the information and arguments of Influencers: like @Marty Backe, @Kuji Rolls, @Hsiang, @evX_Mick, ... and opinions expressed on throughout this forum.
A local kingsong roadshow / banner / hyped or margin driven commercial story or scented flyer [:roflmao:] does NOT contribute in my purchase decision.
[Yes, I am one of those people that bought a Tesla, without a dealership, without the can-I-touch-it, without knowing it's delivery date, ...]
And as there are not many channels (also early adopter / niche market), a lot of people chose an alternative path to the local reseller.

Have a look in the full thread here on what has been exchanged already, but in order to go beyond educated guesses and opinions [based on own knowledge applied to this discussion], we should have open book on the buying process / difference [that is wishful thinking ;)].
What would be the difference between the acquisition ppu (price-per-unit) of my local dealer and ecodrift for example, and what would be the breakdown that lead to that price.

To be clear [and apparently I need to repeat it], I am in for a value added - compensated by margin for those in the sales channel, and I am not convinced this is the case throughout.
Hence my statement: "... personally from a purchase perspective I can't help but feeling cheated (in the EU). ...", not the eluded tax evasion.

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31 minutes ago, Chriull said:

Should be the only sound consequence - they'd just loose money going on...

Aliexpress should acknowledge these wheels as "dead on arrival" and refund the customers - so full loss for the sellers.

They will, but the question is whether will be a momentum, now that the news is out (directly noticeable in sales), or a long term effect, more sales to the competitors (and less noticeable, also other factor weigh in).

31 minutes ago, Chriull said:

... or they find some way to circumvent this locking mechanism - so KS will improve this and we'll get many new future posts regarding this matters...

Indeed, flashback to the Ninebot Z stories, hack in order to replace your blown-out mainboard (or speed settings).

 

But apparently we all agree this GeoLocking is a bad thing :-)

(the principle alone,  or Tesla locking all cars because of ... )

Edited by Meulebeest
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I do not know the ins and outs of the forum and who sponsors what

but when will the Admin of this forum have a serious word with Kingsong Rep on here and the future of the promoting the brand on this forum?

We should not allow this malpratice to continue.

maybe as a collective we can get them to remove this nonsense policy, they don't quite realise how many sales they are going to lose after this.

 

Edited by Antec
typo
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1 minute ago, Jack King Song said:

I'm in constant communication with admins. 
 

I appreciate everyones passionate response and I've shared these with my upper level management. 

Thank you, this is a step in the right direction.

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1 hour ago, Meulebeest said:

It is also the addition of an European distributor (not a point of sales) in the middle between manufacturer and Point of Sales (who takes a mark-up + VAT) which also weighs into price, the calculation argument was to demonstrate this. It is not only taxes that make the difference + the "extended" 2y warranty (which does not apply to all components: battery).

Please look at the calculations above. I don't know why you try to prove a middle man in the EU but the math is just not there. The prices the resellers in US and EU are getting is generally very similar. And Ali sellers skip the VAT unless something's changed recently. A two year warranty + VAT explain the price differences pretty well. And it's always up to the seller to decide how to price the items. There's no point in selling for anything less than you can. It's up to the consumer to find and ask for better deals. 

And I happen to know a little about a few European resellers and I'm pretty sure they are dealing directly with Kingsong in China, there's no European middle man. 

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5 minutes ago, FinRider said:

The Distributor needs to make money so a 30% margin is probably to be expected for them to cover the warranty, support and service costs.

Thanks for the math, I like posts like this. :-) One note, though. I don't see anywhere the warranty difference: in the USA, the warranty is 1 year. In the EU, it is 2 years. So if we include the double warranty as another 5-10% to the margin, we get even closer to the actual price (with 10% more, it would be 2120€ which is about the actual price).

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At the risk of going off-topic... where are people finding KingSong wheels on AliExpress (or equivalent) at such high discounts?  Even wheels that aren't being region locked (e.g. the V11) don't seem to be *that* much cheaper on AliExpress and if you factor in the chance of 20% duty being charged on import I can't find an AliExpress deal that's worth risking for other vendors and I can't find any modern King Song wheels on AE at all...?

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2 minutes ago, StuartL said:

At the risk of going off-topic... where are people finding KingSong wheels on AliExpress (or equivalent) at such high discounts?  Even wheels that aren't being region locked (e.g. the V11) don't seem to be *that* much cheaper on AliExpress and if you factor in the chance of 20% duty being charged on import I can't find an AliExpress deal that's worth risking for other vendors and I can't find any modern King Song wheels on AE at all...?

https://www.chicway.shop/c/kingsong_0119

I know its not Ali, as the products on Ali come and go. Point is, directly from china without a local middleman.

 

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8 minutes ago, StuartL said:

At the risk of going off-topic... where are people finding KingSong wheels on AliExpress (or equivalent) at such high discounts?  Even wheels that aren't being region locked (e.g. the V11) don't seem to be *that* much cheaper on AliExpress and if you factor in the chance of 20% duty being charged on import I can't find an AliExpress deal that's worth risking for other vendors and I can't find any modern King Song wheels on AE at all...?

depends on the shop and stock, as most will take your order and order a fresh EUC from the factory. adds a few days on to the order time.

Most will send on a train to Poland and then gets picked up by UPS so anyone in the EU will not get any duty.

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On 8/11/2020 at 1:32 AM, mrelwood said:

I reached out to @Jack King Song, who asked for the serial number for my remotely locked 16S and he was able to remotely unlock (whitelist?) the wheel in 33 hours. He did read my question about why it got locked in the first place, but decided not to reply.

For a spare wheel like mine, 33h may be tolerable, but I would never ever take a risk like that for my main wheel.

KS is shooting themselves in the leg, big time.

He was the one replying you on kingsong international in the first place :)

so you reached to the same person both times just firsts time they act like kingsong and second time like kingsong that being slapped by community. 

Im so glad they got scared off and step back and you have your wheel again 

but imagine we didn’t have this forum or other platform and this issue just stayed between you and kingsong - it would never being solved :( 

 

Edited by meriwald
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48 minutes ago, Zopper said:

But even then I have a right to say that I refuse this and move such companies down in my list

Lol, they haven't so much 'moved down' my list, they have fallen well off the bottom of the page.

48 minutes ago, Zopper said:

But as far as I know, this public acknowledging came AFTER the affected wheels have been sold.

They did, which is why I said 'I think the warning should have come earlier'.

48 minutes ago, Zopper said:

and if KS was in my country and not China, it would be likely breach some laws.

It would breach laws in a lot of countries. I wont lose any sleep over it. I jusy wont buy KS. A lot of shit happens differently in different countries, its the way the world is.

48 minutes ago, Zopper said:

No. Once you buy it, you own it and can do whatever you can with it.

If one chooses to buy something over the internet 1000's of miles away from an Ali or backstreet seller in China then all risks are on them IMO. If the wheel is DOA or bricked remotely, thats an issue between the seller and buyer. It shouldnt have been sold in the first place in the case of the latter. Thats the sellers issue, not KS, and a refund in full inc all shipping fees should be issued.

(FYI, I have bought all my wheels from Ali and have accepted the associated risks).

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5 minutes ago, Planemo said:

If one chooses to buy something over the internet 1000's of miles away from an Ali or backstreet seller in China then all risks are on them IMO. If the wheel is DOA or bricked remotely, thats an issue between the seller and buyer. It shouldnt have been sold in the first place in the case of the latter. Thats the sellers issue, not KS, and a refund in full inc all shipping fees should be issued.

(FYI, I have bought all my wheels from Ali and have accepted the associated risks).

This is all true. If one can live with the risk buying from Ali / other China seller in order to save a couple hundred, then by all means, you have the right to do this. KS locking wheels remotely is not really an issue in this case, as an experienced & knowledgeable rider will avoid the offical KS app to mitigate the risk of having their EUC locked. 

The problem is more for the non-educated buyers who pick up their wheels 2nd hand. If the seller is not 100% forthcoming on the origins of the wheel... heck, the buyer might not even understand to ask this question, then the risk of him getting his wheel locked when he goes and installs the official KS app. Consumer laws in Europe would in this case protect the seller, as the wheel was fully functional at the time of sale and not DOA.

My math (with certain assumptions) proves that KS makes the same amount of money regardless whom the consumer buys the product from. I sum this up to piss-poor channel management, where the KS reps need to have the customers (end user) back instead of protecting their distribution network. In the end, if I want to buy a KS wheel, then it is because of the quality, features and specs of the wheel, not because I might have a relationship with a certain reseller.

KingSong just needs to man up, apologize to the community (& unlock all affected wheels ASAP), implement a better more long lasting policy (no more wheel locking) and tell their distributors to suck it up.

To me, the few hundreds I could save (yeah I know, up to 25% can be saved) is not worth the hassle if I ever would need warranty service. To each their own I guess.

 

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