In the past week, a few forum and Reddit threads have popped up, with people stating that JLCPCB has emailed them with a notice, saying their accounts are set up for terminations after an assessment by JLCPCB’s “Risk Control Team”. Reasons given are vague, the terminations are non-appealable, and if you’re planning a JLCPCB order sometime soon, it can certainly come as a surprise. From the looks of it, the accounts restricted do not appear to be tied to any specific country – and not even from the same “kind” of countries.
As quite a few people have observed, the JLCPCB reasoning resembles a compliance action way more than it resembles any sort of internal policy. A few days ago, JLCPCB has released a statement on their blog, claiming that a “history of risky IP addresses and risky activities” would be grounds for a termination, and mentioning “compliance” in ways that would hint at external legal pressures.
By now, quickly checking around Reddit and some other places, we’ve counted at least ten people affected so far – most of them have received emails about account closures, but at least one person has reported a denial when attempting to place an order, instead of getting an email ahead of time. The latter hints that there’s a number of people not yet notified about their account getting terminated, and the amount of people actually affected might very well be a fair bit larger than we can see.
Wading through the EEVbog forum thread, which is the most active place this issue has been discussed so far, people have a number of guesses, but none of them appear plausible. Some say that China’s recent rare earth material export restriction could conceivably be related to this issue, but it doesn’t quite make sense why that kind of restriction would cause account closures as opposed to the usual order denials, or why JLCPCB would mention “risky IP addresses”, given that the rare earth restriction applies worldwide.
Unless you’ve received an email, it appears there might be no surefire way to check for such a restriction until you attempt to place an order. JLCPCB says they will pay out the account balance, but aside from that, people report problems related to customer components purchased for PCBA reasons, with JLCPCB refusing to ship those components to a non-Chinese address in at least one case of a locked account, and asking for a 30% service fee while at it.
Until we get more clarity, this is yet another reason to try out a non-monopolistic PCB fab for one of your next orders – such as Aisler and OSHPark for EU and US areas respectively. Export restrictions are getting their tentacles into more and more facets of open-source tech development, so it pays to watch out. Of course, if you order from China a lot, you might already have rehearsed for such disruptions, due to the yearly event known as Chinese New Year.
Thanks for the German Aisler reference!
Ah I remember when I ordered a pcb from aisler and then received the pcbs by some-one else. Best part was that I had to wait a few weeks AGAIN. One would think you get priority when they mess up, but no.
It’s never a good idea to be dependant on only one source.
Aisler is 3x times expensive than JLCPCB! Not good for small boards, back to strip-board then..
It’s not as bad, since you don’t pay extra VAT on import the way you have to pay it for JLC orders, and from my experience, the boards you get are worth the price.
Not a shill post (though I have ordered from them in the past) but the boards are very reasonably priced and top notch quality. I guess we’re all (including me and my Aliexpress addiction lol) totally messed up regarding what things and labor “should” cost…
And I say this in the most self-critical way. We recently bought 3D printed stainless parts from JLC. 10 were like 250€ incl. shipping, taxes etc. Our manufacturer next door (we’re talking Germany) who built the rest of the machine for us couldn’t even make one part for that money including programming.
And those parts were quite simple, e.g. no contours one couldn’t do ón a regular CNC lathe/mill…
Maybe the locked accounts make too much use of subsidized offers.
Unlikely, my account would 100% be gone then ;-P (that said, I didn’t get an email, but I also didn’t try placing an order)
I received a similar letter imposing restrictions. However, over the past eighteen months, all orders have been within China and never left the country. Moreover, I have a couple of projects that JLC has sponsored, which makes the situation look even more absurd.
Looked at your (awesome!) projects and found… An NXP part in your Nema17 driver.
I’ve been in hospital the past 2 weeks. (and probably under a rock before then). NXP issues?
Thanks you sir!
Yes, I noticed that too. I also have prepaid components (10 unfortunate CAN transceivers from NXP). Maybe that’s the issue, but blocking an account just because you have some components (even considering that I haven’t ordered anything for six months) is complete chaos. They could have said something like “sir you can’t use these components” or something else. It also looks strange considering that for the past year and a half, all orders were WITHIN China to a CHINESE company.
I’m sure it would be more apparent if the blocked parties shared details of orders.
Risky IP makes me wonder if this is related to tainted VPN IPs?
Reading through reddit it seems much more like it has something to do with where you’re located and politics. Tarifs, “the Nexperia thing”, stuff like that. Why would they ban anyone if they’re not violating any terms of service. It’s China after all…
I don’t think that Nexperia is a good explanation either – same as with rare earths, that’d result in order cancellations, or parts becoming unavailable, I don’t see why it’d result in account terminations specifically.
Btw, some time ago (July 2024), my account was already restricted (NOT BLOCKED or DISABLED!!!) in terms of PCBA and Parts management. After communication, everything was unblocked. At that time they told me that in this case I could return the components without the 30% fee. I’m not sure if this rule applies to this situation, but it’s DEFINITELY clear that this option existed before
Could you have explained what JLCPCB was?