That Neal Zhang you posted lives in Shanghai. “Our” Neal Zhang lives in Guangzhou. There are a lot of Neal Zhangs on Facebook.
So you were just trying to make a joke?
No my problem is the lack of information and the fact that everyone (including me) are just making assumptions on stuff.
A simple message once a week would take 30seconds and would clear up so much confusion.
A very important part of project management is communication. Having the client not know what is going on is just as bad as doing nothing.
OK…. If you think it’s helping anything at all…. . Knock yourself out.
…
Edit:…. And in an effort to be crystal clear. I DOT NOT disagree that a simple message once a week would be nice… it would.
BUT … if that is not happening …… it is not the end of the world. I just assume things have not changed since the last report & there is nothing new to update
Other group buys have been much worse on communication. This is the nature of Group Buys.
In fact, with a lot of them you end up getting a “not so great” product. Like blemished finishes or parts dont fit properly, drivers that burn out, etc… some are defective right out of the box. Group buys are not for the faint of heart. I pass on many of them, myself.
You’ve been a member here since 2012. Is this your first group buy experience?
Information is there. But it is not up to your expectation.
This is not orders on Banggood or Gearbest, this is orders of a lot of flashlights in one go. Besides GT, I believe Neal has his own stuffs to take care of, Lumintop has also other flashlight orders to fulfil.
Many trust Neal and Lumintop are working on it, GT are shipping out with high quality. It’s important to understand this is groupbuy of high quantity of very big flashlight, it takes time and tight quality control.
Should I have received a shipping notification PM or was there some trouble with it?
I´m in first 555, shipping will be to FI via DHL.
When did you actually pay?
CheapThrills….
You are # 342 on the payment list.
You chose Registered shipping.
You “probably” will not get any shipping notification directly.
Had you chose DHL… you would already have it.
341 ………255 Abe87………… DHL
342 ………173 CheapThrills Registered
343 ………484 ilmatic………… DHL
- You had 1 GT & 1 set of batteries
Can you write here the phone number of the Neal? Or PM. I have a friend in Guangzhou and I will ask him to call Neal and find out information for everyone. And then here I’ll write what he said. Can I do this? I think 1.5 months is already enough time to ask questions.
Nope. ChrisC was #158 on the paid list with DHL and his has not shipped, either. So it’s a bit random.
JasonWW - No, this is not my first group buy here or elsewhere. It’s not the worst communication wise I’ll give it that but after each group buy on everysite people always give ways in which they hope to improve and one of the ways people always mention is in a better communication method. Think of all the problems before the team account was created and it was all on poor Miller!
DENGOH - Information here is from hear-say. Not fact. I could post anything and it’d have the same authority as something said by anyone else. There is a team account for a reason. I trust that stuff is being done but managing expectations is quite simple. Someone from the team provide an update once a week with what is going on, not a “we think this” an actual status update. Lumintop aren’t making this light because they are super kind. They are still running a business and they are making money on it or they wouldn’t do it. Sure, they’re taking less on it than they could but they are still running this as a business venture and there should be metrics to work towards. Whilst they dont need to explain their shipping strategy it would probably have made a lot less people complain about it if they had a rough understanding of what was going to happen. Informed people can make informed decisions. Heh, they dont even need to fufil all of the group buy orders before they start shipping them through amazon or similar if they don’t want to but you’d think it’d make sense.
I know Neal has other stuff going on and it seems that many people on his facebook group are getting cheesed off with delays and stuff of other products.
The team who are working on this are clearly clever guys dealing with a lot of stuff but the view from the “outside” is not always as clear as the view from “inside”.
What we really need is a place for someone to share information to the interested parties, maybe a forum 
… just saw Jason’s reply whilst I was writing and I laughed 
It shows how uninformed people actually are yet they are saying there is information.
Damn my mistake, ofcourse I did not take DHL because of what it did some time ago. Sorry, some brainfog here, was just several days on a trip with my friends onle, ehmm.
OK, so this clears things - wont wait for notification then 
Not sure what you are talking about Jason. I am answering ‘CheapThrills’.
Wait… maybe it is this……
Had you chose DHL… you would “MIGHT” already have it.
I should have said “MIGHT” instead of “would”.
Your right…….
Being fair he probably would have had it as I think a few people in Finland have received them via DHL. Saying that I think a few have landed in The Netherlands but not all so it’s clearly not a country by country basis (as in everyone in country X gets one).
Jason….
chrisc is in the UK…CheapThrills is in the USA.
FL = FinLand not FLorida so he’d have got one in the EU batch that doesn’t cover everyone in the EU.
That is because it seems that is how “poor Miller” wanted it.
He made it perfectly clear this was “His Group Buy”…. and it would be done His way.
Back early on he even withdrew because it was not going his way.
No blame… just saying.
Post #16000! (at the moment)
Oh… FL = FLORIDA in my world.
Suomi is in USA?