Marketing aside (terms like grade A),
Cell grade is not a marketing term, but it is frequently used as one and watered down to the point that a
reseller (or a consumer) saying a cell is grade A is nearly meaningless in my eyes.
I think we all know at this price we are buying the old (previous model) cells that the EV manufacturers reject and the vendor does not want to put their brand and warranty on.
You would think, but the resellers, the Xuba megathread, and to a lesser extent the first month or two of the original group buy thread, gave a lot of people the impression they were buying Grade A cells, and many people assumed they were buying matched cells as well. A couple even believed Xuba was
the authorized reseller for EVE.
I see you joined in October, not sure how long you participated before joining, but you joined right around the time, more people started capacity testing and the awareness started to shift to a more reasonable place. If you had joined 3 or 6 months earlier you would see a lot of people repeating with confidence that they are A grade cells (some people still say this), and much less awareness that they are not matched cells.
If you spend any time answering questions in the beginner section, you will come across many people to this day that are under this impression. Sometimes making dangerous assumptions based on this misunderstanding "I have grade A matched cells can I get by without a BMS? "...do I need to balance if they were matched by Xuba?"
They have not been matched or balanced. I'm personally OK with one cell that achieves 99.6% of its rated capacity, while some of the cells have achieved slightly more. Sure, I would have liked them all to get to 285Ah but at the price I don't feel ripped off or mislead. Will see how they go with a capacity test once assembled.
I think this is the right mindset. Discount stuff (batteries and otherwise) is usually discounted for a reason. But if the discount is greater than reason (or the reason doesn't apply to your situation) the discounted second tier product can be a great value. And if you are skeptical and temper your expectations upfront there is a greater chance of having your expectations met or exceeded.
So while I think you can rightly feel not
'ripped off' if you get 99.5% or even 95% capacity, because you expected it was a possibility, and I think you can rightly feel you got a good deal even, I also think this is because you had realistic expectations up front. People are justified in feeling mislead (by the resellers, by other forum membes), particularly the early group buyers where the reseller's explicitly claimed that all cells had been capacity tested and matched, but outside of the group buy as well where resellers claimed the cells were Grade A (a cell by definition cannot be both Grade A and under rated capacity). People that bought under those assumptions, have a right to feel mislead. Though personally I would consider 1 or 2% within the margin of error for any single test (but the proof for me is in the repeatable <280Ah capacity tests by different people with different test equipment in different test conditions).
The upside is that I think the forum is slowly returning to a more reasonable and realistic place, I think we lost that skepticism and awareness of the tradeoffs and our uncertain and limited information for a while, but the pendulum is beginning to swing back towards the center.
Sorry this is more longwinded than I meant it to be (Who woulda thunk... Dzl writing way more than is necessary to convey a point that couldve been made in a few sentences... Surely that has never happened before ?)
Point was, I think your skepticism and measured expectations are a good approach, and I think you will likely be satisfied with your purchase (along with the majority of other buyers) B grade cells can be a good value despite the uncertainty of quality, if you are willing to accept the risk/tradeoffs and are aware of them when you make the purchase. But people also have a right to feel mislead if explicit claims made by the resellers (or others) are verifiably not true.
