End of the e-bike drama?

Or the start of a new chapter? Hopefully both. After playing hard-ball with the Chinese supplier on Aliexpress and a wait of 48 hours, I was today informed that the money I’d paid is to be refunded and will arrive back in my bank account in the next 2-3 days. So that has allowed me to do a further search for a suitable model, hopefully with more certainty that it will actually be delivered this time.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’d found another ‘Keteles K800 clone’ (who seem to be the Chinese manufacturer of all these similar single and dual motor e-bikes) on the French Cdiscount web site, called a Dakeya DA06, at a much lower price – 1099€ – and if I could have placed an order at the time I’d have also been eligible for a 45€ ‘loyalty discount’ and delivery for only 20€.

At the time, however, due to the debacle involving the Chinese supplier, I didn’t think that would be a wise thing to do. So I left things in abeyance and lo and behold, when I searched again today I found a second German supplier of the same model but with a twist when it came to the price.

The Dakeya comes in three colours – black, green and blue. The French supplier on Cdiscount offers all three at 1099€ with a delivery charge as of today of 60€. The German supplier, on the other hand, offers free delivery but demands premiums for green and blue.

So the black version is on offer from the German supplier for 1099€ with free delivery, so although I’d tried to order a green bike from Aliexpress, how could I resist the German supplier’s offer? The answer is, I couldn’t, so today I’ve gone ahead and placed an order for a black Dakeya DA06 which is due for delivery some time between 11th and 20th March.

My order has now been validated so hopefully this will be the end of this particular saga and the start of a new chapter as I enjoy my new e-bike. My experiences tell me that scammers are swarming around these popular, high value, fast selling items on Aliexpress like wasps around a honey pot just waiting to sting you. I found a comment left by another buyer on the web site of the seller from whom I’m awaiting my refund as follows (using Google translate).

“Some scammers… I bought a bike and he started telling me that this model is not in stock and then he tells me I am sending you this bike. Different… I told him to return the money and he tells me that’s not possible, then it is listed as delivered and nothing ever came.”

So it appears that my experiences of this seller’s behaviour was typical, but luckily I proved yet again the value of using Paypal as it looks as though the other buyer was not so lucky and may have ended up with no bike and no refund.