Negative experience with NealsGadgets

My experience with Neals Gadgets has been generally positive.

However, I have noticed that if he has a delay in his supply, that causes the ship date of your order to slip, he will not notify you. This results in uncomfortably large delays, like the 1 month delay in shipping my bare aluminum FW3A.

If you do experience an unanticipated delay send him a PM on this forum. I’ve found Neal to be fairly responsive to PMs. He’ll respond within a couple days and explain what the problem is as well as giving you options.

I have received several emails back and forth.
The only issue has been tracking numbers that do not track until the package arrives in the US.
However, to date every single order has arrived.
No complaints.

Sorry my experience is also negative.

Mine as well.

I don’t know. I have only ordered a few things from NealsGadgets. I do know that I have had less problems with him than I always have with Amazon. That is another story I won’t bore you with. I guess my point is, I would buy from Neals again before I ever ordered from Amazon again.

i thought everyone loved amazon.
fast shipping, instant returns, customer service.
i expect problems from china, for the low price, amazon should be different…
i would be curious what happened, you can PM me if you want.
they offer a lot of stuff now that is actually chinese merchants with the low prices and slow shipping, was it that?

wle

The guy is just overloaded (his own fault).
He is a good guy however and if it goes wel we are happy customers with great lights. If something goes wrong in the process, good luck with the communication it is going to take a while. My experiences are mixed.

Would be wise to take a pause on launching new lights and giveaways and resolve some long going issues with some orders first.

Taking a month to ship is not the fault of DHL.

Seeing that a package arrived to a completely wrong address than the one the customer provided means that should be the sellers responsibility to contact the delivery company or issue a refund/replacement.

My experience with Neal is negative as well. At the end he managed to make things right, but not without dozens of emails, Reddit posts, BLF posts, facebook messages, probably missing something.
He would only reply to me when I post publicly.
Yes, this user created a new account just so he can post his problem, but that doesn’t mean it’s fake or anything. There are countless posts on Reddit complaining about Neal.
Right now I want to order the FW1A but I won’t, due to my previous bad experience.

I changed my mind and sent him a request to cancel my order. He refunded my money without any hassle in less than 1 hour. With AE, and if you lucky with BG, it takes at least one week.

Having a hard time with Neal’s as well. Getting close to a month now since I purchased an FW3A from him. Slow shipping, I can deal with that, shipping info on the package incomplete because of SurePost printout problem so it gets sent back to Neal’s store (or maybe China, I don’t know), I get it, stuff happens, 2 emails and no response, well that’s getting close to three strikes.

At this point I don’t know if he’s tried to re-ship my light or what. Guess I’ll just hang on for a little longer.

I was not impressed with the trit optics I ordered from Neal. They are not drilled on center, nor glued. One optic was completely missing a trit, and the other had traits fall out multiple times during installation as a result of not being glued.

I’m done with trits in general though because my eyes have to be dark-adapted to even see the light from them.

I contacted Neal about my E01 SST20 he replied next day told me the was a delay, and shipped it two days later.

He has always got back to me via email.

I have received 4 orders from him
All shipped right away, all received in good order.

I recently received the wrong light from him. I sent an email referencing the order number. I explained what I ordered and what I had received, and said that I would await his instructions. No instructions came but about a week and a half later I received the correct light. Previous orders had no issues. Things happen.

For me, they at least responded to a question. Delivery was the proverbial slow boat. They are better than Kaidomain which I can’t get a reply from.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice. I purchased some tritium optics from Neal a good while ago. He shipped them within a week and I was provided a e commerce DHL tracking number. The number reads as invalid when placed in the DHL tracking system on thier website. All my attempts to reach Neal have been unsuccessful for the last month. When I click on the “tracking” email it just says picked up by shipping partners and otw to California.
What is the longest you guys orders remained in this status? Also have you guys been able to communicate with Neal?

Thank you

That particular type of DHL shipping is quirky that way… there is only like one DHL website where you can track it, and using the tracking number on the USPS site shows nothing pretty much all the way until it gets to the PO in my town.

Try this website for tracking:

I had a REALLY long wait for one of my orders to arrive (felt like MONTHS), but I think it was mostly just the excitement coupled with a slightly longer than normal shipping wait time. If it shipped, there is nothing more Neal can really do unless it was shipped to the wrong address or some other mistake on his end.

Amazon packages get to my house next day in most cases… they even deliver on Sundays, so I can get almost anything to my house in 1-3 days. Any Chinese company/shipper will look terrible when compared to Amazon Fulfillment.

First try 17 track to track your item.

The listed tracking number and who is shipping is sometimes wrong, the tracking number for me has always been right, just who is shipping nhas been wrong. Are you contacting via email? always had an answer from him.

I’d like to start by saying that many here have had great experiences with NealsGadgets. And, I don’t think Neal intentionally tried to rip off anyone. I believe Neal just got inundated with FWXX orders and got disorganized for a while.

However, after weeks of multiple attempts trying multiple ways to contact Neal and resolve the issues with my last order, I was finally forced to use my last resource. I reluctantly started a PayPal case. Good or bad, I will update the group with results.