IMHO this is a combination of beginners (bad)luck and a bit too much good fait on your side.
I’m afraid I cannot offer you a handy solution for your situation.
The only thing I can offer is a set of rules I work with (so far, so good).
a/ there are two parties involved in a sale. The buyer (you) and the seller.
Do not agree on hints of the seller to take things up with a third party, like an importer or a manufacturer.
b/ keep polite, but don’t let go. If they stop answering your mails, continue on the review page of the seller.
c/ whatever the conditions of the seller, keep referring to national or EU law. That is (almost) always prevailing.
d/ try to pull the PayPal card (or the Visa card). At first as a (implicit) threat. If things go bad, for real.
e/ the sender is always responsible for the parcel until it reaches its destination (not: he/she asked me to do).
f/ that’s why I send my parcels (from a certain value up) with T&T. In NL sometimes insurance is included.
g/ when buying something, go for the cheapest shipping solution. Seller is sender, so he/she is responsible.
h/ ask for a low value on the package. If it is lost, you don’t want to receive that lower amount but a new item.
Or a refund of the actual amount you have payed for it.
i/ avoid insurance, because the (higher) amount of the insurance alerts customs (maybe that has happened).
“This is not the kind of service I expect on an high quality flashlight.”
High quality, that is relative. I personally don’t spend much money at all on a Chinese made light just for those reasons. (Quality, and if I have a problem, sending it back).
Unless it is an Olight. They have USA customer service in Georgia and I have used it once. I got a tailcap for my X7 sent to me in 2 days with stickers and a morale patch. I did not have to pay a cent.
That is the exact service I got from Surefire for their replacement tailcap.
I am sorry you are out a decent amount of money, I hope it gets resolved.
shame… rule nr.1 never send untracked stuff to china, its really hopeless atleast with a tracking number u have something to track otherwise yea u never know where package went or who stole it… its shame acebeam couldnt help u better
thats really sad, i thought acebeam had better customer service… after all they dont have exactly cheap lights in the higher lumens range… not ok :person_facepalming:
he bought it from amazon, isnt that authorized enough ? he shouldnt have to send a light defective back to china, only to amazon since he bought it from there…
Amazon probably would have make things right. I bought a jogging arm light from an Amazon vendor last year and it never shipped. I emailed Amazon about it and they contacted the vendor for me. After an unsatisfactory response from the vendor Amazon refunded the $3.99 cost for the light and in addition gave me a $10 credit
I’m not even a Prime member but I have spent several thousand dollars over the past 5 years so perhaps that helped out.
Acebeam is a top quality manufacturer that doesn’t allow their products to be discounted by their distributors and charges more than any other Chinese manufacturer for their products. There is absolutely no excuse for the lack of customer service they’ve displayed throughout this situation.
Amazon may use many “sellers” but Amazon is the worlds largest company and has absolutely excellent customer service.
#1- you need to immediately call or use live chat and review the entire situation with Amazon customer service (not the seller, Amazon). Have ready any documentation available including your receipt for the head shipped to china. #1- Advise Amazon the total amount of money you’ve now spent and advise them that you’ve started a thread outlining the details of this situation on BLF (advise them it’s a 28 000 member online community dedicated to lighting/flashlights that is very sympathetic to your situation and are behind you in it being resolved properly). Advise Amazon that you would like them to force the seller to help provide a solution to the problem. Ideally Amazon and the seller would both begin pressuring Acebeam to make this right.
#2- please give us the Amazon seller information here on BLF
#3- please advise the Amazon seller the same as above: “you’ve now spent and advise them that you’ve started a thread outlining the details of this situation on BLF (advise them it’s a 28 000 member online community dedicated to lighting/flashlights that is very sympathetic to your situation and are behind you in it being resolved properly)”
#4- please advise Acebeam the same as above: “you’ve now spent and advise them that you’ve started a thread outlining the details of this situation on BLF (advise them it’s a 28 000 member online community dedicated to lighting/flashlights that is very sympathetic to your situation and are behind you in it being resolved properly)”
It’s very easy for a big company to disregard the little guy and just ignore them. When they realize that a huge chunk of their market is not alright with how they’ve handled a particular situation you begin to achieve strength in numbers. Can even be more powerful than consumer affairs involvement
Keep this in mind: any issue creates an opportunity for a company - handle it well and this can become a source of praise for Amazon/the seller/Acebeam… Handle it poorly and this will become a public negative review which will be seen and heard by many. Give everyone involved the opportunity to make it right and hopefully a couple days from now you can thank the companies involved.
In the future, now that you’re a member and new to the flashlight game it’s very beneficial if you review potential purchases with members here before buying.
Amazon and Amazon Marketplace are 2 totally different things
its like Ebay or Aliexpress, no local support, and send to China claiming gurantee on the manufactory not the seller
if you bought from Amazon
you simply put it in a box
take the retoure label you got in the parcel when buying
download RMA label for broken light and fill out as best as you can
and get refund or new light
an authorized dealer for example Amazon without Marketplace has to take the support and send it to china for repair/replace not you
I got a reply from my contact at Acebeam. Apparently my e-mails got in their spam folder.
However, seems that Acebeam doesn’t want to reach out even a little bit. They just say that sometimes they also need to pay import tax when they receive items from overseas.
I’ve pretty much have had it with Acebeam by now.
Again the sum up what I’ve paid in total now:
–179 EUR initial purchase
–18 EUR return shipping of defective light
–107.22 EUR (115.90 USD) for the replacement light
–47.16 EUR import duties on the replacement light
351.38 EUR total for one Acebeam X45.
Their product breaks down within 2 months and it’s costing me a lot of extra money. Shame.
Just for future reference, your contract is with the seller, not the manufacturer. Its up to the seller to return the product to the manufacturer for warranty purposes.
Netherlands: