Month: February 2024

What can I say? I made a mistake in my last post when I said that I’ve ordered the e-bike that I want for 938€. When I looked more closely at the order I’d placed I realised that what I’d ordered was a single motor 1000W model rather than the twin motor 2000W that I wanted.

It was an easy mistake to make because the Chinese sellers’ ads show a range of models of different specs and prices on the Aliexpress web site but all under the main heading and/or description of the highest spec one.

When you click on the model/colour combination that you are interested in only a sub-heading in small type actually changes, as shown in the following screen shot taken from the seller’s web site of the model that I’d placed an order for.

I realised soon afterwards when I had time to look at things more closely that I’d made a mistake and should have ordered the twin motor, 2000W model shown below, which was more expensive obviously.

One of the things to note is that the two bikes in the above images are not of the same brand – the cross-bar is a dead giveaway. I’ve found that the Chinese e-bike sellers on Aliexpress are very cavalier with the images that they post on their web pages but I don’t know if they or Aliexpress are responsible for just putting up any image that’s close to what they are selling because they know that under the skin they are all the same bikes and come out of the same factory.

As soon as I realised that I’d made a mistake I messaged the seller on the Aliexpress web site in order to ensure that the order was not progressed, let alone sent out. My initial message was sent yesterday and as a result I got into a live interchange today on the Aliexpress messaging system. Here are the interchanges that I’ve copied and pasted directly from our conversation.

Me:
Hello, I think I have purchased a single motor bike. This is not what I want. Please do not send this order . I will have to cancel. I need a 2 motor 2000W bike. Thank you. Please confirm you are not sending this order.

Seller:
2000W bicycle with 2 Motors is more expensive

Me:
Yes, I know. I made a mistake when I placed the order. The bike I want I think is 1298€. Need to pay difference by Paypal.

Seller:
But the 2000W one is out of stock. The price of the other 2000W is very high. It requires 1488 euros.

Me:
No that’s beyond my budget. I reluctantly suggest that the order is therefore cancelled and I reorder when the 1298€ bike is back in stock.

Seller:
There is a 1398 euro bicycle, but it takes 45 days to wait

Me:
No, still too high.

Seller:
Do you need 1000W now?

Me:
No please cancel that order. It was my mistake. I want 2 motor 2000W

Seller:
I sent 1000W before, then you have to pay 140 euros for intercepting express delivery

Me:
No, I told you before you had a chance to send. Paypal will see the timing of the messages and will refund anyway. Please do not behave badly as I will still buy from you when you have the bike I want. Otherwise I will not. Aliexpress also allow free return if the bike I cancelled is delivered. Then I will receive the full refund. Please think carefully before you do the wrong thing.

Seller:
OK

Me:
OK, let us work this out sensibly. How long before the 1298€ 200W LaFly is available? I mean 2000W of course

Seller:
It takes 40-50 days, but it is an upgraded version

Me:
In what way?

Seller:
Lafly, which arrived at the European warehouse 50 days later, is an upgraded version. It will be upgraded to this

Seller:
Upgraded to double shoulder front fork and double suspension.

Me:
OK but the big question is the price…

Seller:
The price is already the lowest 1398 euros. Look, the price is 1598 (the next image is of the comparable current model on the seller’s web site)

Seller:
If you are willing to wait for Lafly’s upgraded bike, its price is 1398

Me:
I see what you are saying. Can we agree a price of 1350€??

Seller:
The price is 1378 euros, the lowest

Me:
Come on, you are pushing too much. 1360€ and we have a deal. Don’t forget you are asking me to wait for 50 days!!

Seller:
OK

Me:
OK let’s do it

Seller:
OK

The seller then posted a link on the Aliexpress web site for the difference between the 938€ that I’d paid against my original order and the cost of the new bike (1360€) with two 1000W motors, a 48V 23AH battery and front and rear suspension.

Me:
OK I’ve paid the difference. So we can confirm this is for the Lafly upgrade 2 motor 2000W with front and rear suspension, right?

Seller:
yes

Me:
Thank you. I look forward very much to receiving it as soon as possible.

Seller:
I will contact you in 50 days

Me:
OK I guess I’ll just have to be patient

Seller:
yes, wish you a wonderful day

So how have things worked out? Apart from the delay in receiving my bike, I think pretty well. The bike that I wanted to change my order for (1298€) which the seller now says is out of stock is a mid-range model with non-lockable front suspension and no rear suspension. The upgraded model that I’ve now ordered for 1360€ has both and the Keteles factory web site (I think Keteles manufactures all these bikes under different brand names) is currently showing it for 1699€.

This is higher than other independent sellers are advertising it for but obviously Keteles would not be looking to undercut them as they are the ones bringing in the great majority of their sales. So I think that the price I’ve got (1360€) is pretty good.

In conclusion, today I found the same bike that I told the seller I’d pay 1298€ for (two motors, 2000W, 48V 23 AH battery but no rear suspension) on the CDiscount web site here in France – for 1278€, ie at a lower price if it includes delivery. So if I’d ordered from them, all of the above saga could probably have been avoided.

I was surprised to find the ad as I’ve been doing lots of internet searches, so I think that Cdiscount has only just put the bike on their web site in the last few hours if I’m correct.

But on the other hand, I’ll be getting a higher spec bike for only 82€ more rather than the 200€ or so that it usually costs for the ‘extras’ that I’ll be getting and I’m happy with that. That’s if in the meantime Cdiscount don’t start selling the upgraded model for a lower price than the 1360€ that I’ve agreed with the Chinese seller. You never know, do you 😕

I received my refund from Aliexpress today for my new e-bike that never materialised so have jumped straight in again. There are two ‘sellers’ with similar names who are offering the same bike as I ordered last time for 399,99€ and funnily enough their Aliexpress certificates show that they were both registered in Spain, one in late December 2023 and the other in late January 2024.

I already know from previous searches that the true prices of the bikes are in the range 1000€ – 1499€ so my conclusion is that both are working the same scam as my original seller. I think that anyone placing orders will be unlikely to get their money back if they use a non-guaranteed payment method, despite Aliexpress saying they will, and although the ‘sellers’ know that other monies they receive will be refunded, they can use the funds in their business for free in the meantime.

So this time I’ve gone for another supplier and another model bike, although it’s pretty apparent by now that all of these bikes of similar design are coming from the same factory and are just branded differently. Here’s what we’re talking about – very much the same as I originally ordered but this time I’ve gone for the bright green!

This time, though, I’ve paid quite a bit more, although still below the average price being demanded for the same/similar model by other suppliers – 938€.

I’ve done the same as before – paid using Paypal, although this time I’ve opted for 4 x payments over the next four months, meaning my initial outlay is roughly half what it was before. The bike is also due to be delivered a lot quicker – by March 7th – so if this one goes t*ts up as well, at least I’ll get my money back quicker than before 🙂

I can’t quite understand what’s going on. After contacting la Poste this morning to find out why I haven’t received a parcel that it said had been delivered into my mailbox, out of the blue I’ve just received an email from Aliexpress saying that my order has been cancelled and I’m being refunded the full purchase amount.

There can’t be any connection between the two events because there’s no reason why la Poste should have been in contact with Aliexpress so it would appear that Aliexpress has itself become involved independently behind the scenes with the seller.

When I checked my order status on the Aliexpress web site the information given is to the effect that the order was cancelled and refunded due to an incorrect order tracking number having been provided by the seller who will be sanctioned in accordance with the platform’s (Aliexpress’s) rules.

OK, that’s good as far as it goes, but although the original web page for the bike I ordered has now been taken down, there are still several in a similar style on Aliexpress, probably from the same ‘seller’, for similar bikes several of which are now even cheaper than the price of the one I ordered. If the ‘seller’ is a scammer, surely Aliexpress should have picked that up, closed them all down and booted the ‘seller’ off?

And there’s another thing. How come la Poste could provide tracking data for ‘my’ parcel right up to the point of delivery? There’s one explanation I can think of, which is that a legitimate label was created by this, or another legitimate, seller for a real bike being delivered to a buyer in France. The scam ‘seller’ then spoofed a copy of the label with my name and address on it and sent it to me.

Are you with me so far? The legitimate sale would then track properly through the system until it was delivered into its buyer’s mailbox – which wouldn’t have been mine, which is why it wasn’t in my mailbox even though I had been told that it had been delivered. It would also explain why my ‘delivery’ appeared to be early, as the label that had been spoofed was probably by then a few days old.

I don’t know how Aliexpress got onto this but fortunately I paid using Paypal so I’ll get my refund in a couple of days, although buyers who used other payment methods could have more difficulty. I’ll be able to relax once I’ve received it and then I’ll be able to decide whether to go for another new e-bike at the proper price, especially as I’ve already bought my safety helmet 🙂

It’ll also be interesting to hear what la Poste have to say when they come back to me as I think they’ll say yes, the parcel I queried was delivered correctly – just not to me 😕

Still no sign of my new e-bike but it appears that my assumption about the postman confusing the two parcels that were being delivered to me in the depot was incorrect. La Poste had applied its own postage label over the original Chinese one on the packaging that had contained the bike helmet that was delivered on Saturday and when I took a closer look at it I found another delivery reference. When I checked that I found that the system is confirming delivery of that parcel.

So according to la Poste, two parcels were dropped off into my mailbox on Saturday – the helmet and my new e-bike. This is total nonsense, of course, because the Chinese supplier of the bike had already sent me a copy of the label confirming despatch of the bike which showed a gross weight for the package of 38.6 kg and there’s no way that that would anything like fit into my mailbox.

So what’s going on? La Poste has a help line which I’ve tried using several times today but, surprise surprise, it doesn’t work properly. When you key in a number in the multi-choice menu it just keeps talking to you, which isn’t that surprising because such systems operated by public sector businesses in France rarely do function as intended. I think it’s a ploy to stop you contacting them with problems, but you must draw your own conclusions…

But luckily I’ve got a la Poste on line account and in it I can access a virtual assistant. Amazingly, on this occasion I do seem to have succeeded in making a claim for non-delivery of a parcel. La Poste has said that the delivery service will get back to me with a detailed response within 48 hours and have given me a claim reference. However, I’m used to playing this game with EDF and Enedis and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this will be enough to resolve the situation. I’ll have to wait and see.

So near but yet so far. Just when you think the system has excelled itself your hopes are dashed yet again.

When I checked the La Poste tracking site again a bit earlier, I was told that the parcel I’d been tracking had been delivered into my mailbox. I thought, bloody hell, the bike’s a damn sight smaller than I thought it’d be but when I went up to check, sure enough there was a package waiting for me.

But it didn’t contain my bike, or even a small part of it. It seems that La Poste has managed to get itself into a real muddle. I have two parcels in the system – my new e-bike and a safety helmet that I ordered from Amazon. The latter wasn’t supposed to be delivered until a week after the bike but it has arrived much sooner than expected and La Poste has confused the two.

The number I’ve been tracking has indeed been for the e-bike but that’s not what has been delivered this morning under that reference because as the following image shows, the item looks nothing like a bike – it is actually the helmet.

I’m hoping that the error wasn’t made several steps back in the delivery process, that my new bike is actually at the local depot and the postman has just grabbed the first parcel he saw with my name on it. If not I suspect that this could become very messy very quickly 🙁

It seems to be moving really quickly through the system. Delivery was scheduled for 1st March but it looks as though it’ll happen well before then as it’s ready to be sent out by the local depot.

Today? Surely not. Monday? A distinct possibility I reckon.

I’ve been working on my new cloaks cupboard. Progress has been quite a bit slower than usual because earlier this month I went down with a dose of ‘flu and even now I’m still getting over it. The cupboard will be permanently fitted into an alcove that I designed-in for it adjacent to the small separate toilet and close to the house’s front door. It will take up the full width of the alcove and have full height twin bi-fold doors to give easy access to its interior.

When I designed-in the alcove I had no idea what the dimensions of the doors would be and after much searching on the internet I was fortunate to find a supplier of just what I was looking for that would extend perfectly for the full height of the alcove from floor to ceiling and four panels of which would be just a tad narrower than its width. Because of the latter, I’m having to make up two wall extension ‘wings’ on either side to completely fill the gap with the doors in place.

Here’s a shot showing one set of bi-fold doors leaning against the wall and the frameworks for the two ‘wing’ extensions now permanently in place.

I’ve had to notch the bottoms of each extension to accept the floor plinths that were installed when the floor was tiled. I told the tiler that because I didn’t then know what form the cupboard would take just to fit plinth all around the walls, but that will be a good thing as the plinth will protect the lower edges of the cupboard’s internal walls.

The next step will be to attach plasterboard panels to the fronts, backs and exposed edges of the wall extensions. I’ve tried to measure dimensions as accurately as I could and I’m aiming to get the front panel of the cloaks cupboard to line up exactly with the wall of the alcove so when I eventually fit coving it runs across from one side to the other in a straight line. For that, the plasterboard on the right-hand wall extension will need to line up exactly with the edge of the alcove wall and I hope that I’ve got it just about right.

I’ll be cutting and fitting the plasterboard surfaces to the wall extensions tomorrow. Then I’ll have to fit metal plasterboard corner pieces to the exposed edges to protect the exposed corners and plaster them in. If all goes as planned I should end up with a cloaks cupboard that will fit exactly in the space provided for it and perfectly match the existing wall colours. That’s what I hope anyway.

Then I’ll be building in an internal shelving arrangement for general storage and a hanging rail for cloaks and when that’s done, all of the main construction work on and in my house will be complete. At that point I’ll at last be able to think about getting all my stuff out of storage and bringing it into the house. It’s been languishing in there since June/July 2021 and I can’t wait for that moment to arrive.

Well, I don’t know what yet, but something sure is on its way to me. I’ve been tracking the delivery of what I hope is my new e-bike for several days now, on its way to me from China. According to China Post, it arrived in French customs yesterday.

It showed up on the French postal service tracking site for the first time yesterday evening and it’s delivery status is trackable there this morning.

I’m still somewhat mesmerised by the whole thing. Bearing in mind that I only paid 373,93€ for it including delivery from China (by airfreight no less) this is what I found when I located and checked the manufacturer’s (Keteles) web site.

According to the web site, the price of my new bike is 1499,99€ and I’m not even sure if that includes the cost of delivery. All very bizarre. And there are also a couple of reviews on Youtube of the specific model I’ve ordered which also refer to the same sort of price level.

I have noticed one thing though. The manufacturer’s web site shown above doesn’t seem to work properly – links seem to be either broken or just ineffective. I’m wondering therefore if the company might have gone bust and its stock is just being sold off? I have no idea and this could be the completely wrong conclusion, but on the basis of the above it looks as though I can certainly expect something to be delivered to my doorstep in the next few days.

A couple of days ago a tasty-looking chicken caught my eye in Intermarché. Just under 1 1/2kg for 7,60€ so I bought it. It’s been in my fridge since then and I was thinking this morning that I’d better either think about cooking it or put it in my freezer for later. I decided on the former and I came up with the brainwave of popping it into my air fryer to see how it would come out.

My air fryer has a capacity of 5 litres and it just fitted in nicely, so I then gave it a good spray with virgin olive oil, a dousing with salt and ‘Herbes de Provence’ and set it going for 60 minutes at 190 degrees C while I was doing other things. I thought it would need about 1 1/2 hours but could adjust the time if necessary as it went along when I went back in from time to time to spray the bird with more olive oil.

And it went just great! Here’s the result after the 1 1/2 hours and after I’d given it a slathering of butter for the last 15 minutes or so.

It’s absolutely delicious! It’s perfectly cooked and the flesh is just falling off the bones and because it sat on a rack in the air fryer the grease has separated and fallen into the bottom of the pan leaving the meat perfectly moist. I couldn’t resist a leg and a wing while it was cooling and have just had a few slices in a portion of freshly baked baguette for my lunch. What a treat! I can’t recommend my air fryer enough 🙂

I’ve added more information to my posts about this on Facebook so here’s the same for My Trike. First, the original Aliexpress ad.

Aliexpress ad

Now here’s the review for the almost identical bike that I saw on Youtube.

?

I’ve just received notification from the Chinese seller that it’s been despatched for it’s March 1st delivery date and I can’t see how I can lose.

If it’s a scam Aliexpress should deal with it and in any case, I paid using Paypal so would be reimbursed by it. I’m just going to sit tight and patiently wait… 🙂

Or, loosely translated, just got to go for it!

I was idly watching videos on Youtube yesterday evening, as you do, and I came across a couple of e-bike reviews. One was by a rather conventional young man in Bristol (UK) who was a cycling devotee and evidently keen on following all the rules who thought that riding down some steps was very risqué and cavalier, and another by a long-haired bloke in California who had put together the bike he reviewed in his living room and was, ahem… quite the opposite.

Not only was the bloke in California going all-out for fun but he’d done so by finding a monster of a bike with dual electric motors, one in each wheel hub, a claimed range of over 60 km without even pedalling (!!) and a top speed of… wait for it… over 35mph (56kmh). And he was almost bursting with excitement throughout his whole video as he rode up and downhill, on the beach, over big heaps of earth at the side of the road and just about anywhere else he could take it. That said it all to me.

I’ve already got an e-bike, but it’s a sit-up-and-beg, old style one that’s maybe not quite first generation but probably not long after.

It still works as it should but unlike later models you have to pedal to make the motor cut in. That’s fine when you’re a sprightly young thing as I was about forty years ago but not now. What I want is to have the option of pedalling a bit and getting the old circulation moving on the flat but having some proper assistance available for the hills because then you can confidently ride out over longer distances and know that you won’t be defeated by the terrain.

So where’s this going, you might ask? The bike that the Californian guy was reviewing had cost something over $1000 just a few months ago and I wasn’t surprised given its specification because all of the single motor, high power models I’ve looked at recently on sites like Aliexpress have been in the 700-800€ price range or higher. This one with dual motors would have had to cost more.

I had a model book-marked in my browser from last week that up to then I hadn’t paid much attention to but having seen the Californian review I thought that I’d take another look at it and when I did I was surprised to see that it also was dual-motor and almost identical to the one in the review.

So it was worth a second look. Yes, 21 gears, a 48 volt rather than a puny 35 volt system and also hydraulic disk brakes rather then the mechanical, cable operated ones that the Californian guy had looked down his nose at. But the biggest surprise came when I looked at the price… only 393,96€ including delivery!

OK, I thought, the usual Aliexpress ploy. They show the price of the lowest cost part of the item – in this case the battery – and when you click on it you find that the complete bike, including the battery, is two or three times that figure. But no! The price really was only 393,96€!

And the surprises didn’t end there. Maybe because I’ve bought a few items from the Aliexpress web site recently, I was also offered a voucher for a further 20€ off, making my price an astounding 373,96€. So what could I do? Yes, you’ve guessed it. I bought one. I mean, after all, what can possibly go wrong at that price… 😕

The bike comes in a range of fluorescent colours including yellow, red and blue. I was sorely tempted – after all, why not go the whole hog.

However, I thought that possibly discretion might be the better part of valour as a grandad flying about on a bright red or yellow e-bike might attract a bit too much attention and to be honest, although lots of kids and young people are dashing about using e-scooters as personal transport, I’m not sure how legal an e-bike like this is in France. So I’ve gone for one in black and white that won’t catch the eye of any passing ‘flic’ and cause my collar to be felt.

It’s due to be delivered by 1st March and quite honestly, I can hardly wait. I must put my old bike onto Leboncoin in the meantime to make room for the new steed 😉