Negative experience with NealsGadgets

I haven’t had any issues with Neal to date. Whenever I purchase a product from any Chinese seller, whether it be from NG or AE or BG (etc) I always accept the risk that I may not be able to get any customer support if I have a problem with the order or the item. If I am purchasing something that is vital to my needs, I’ll pay five time the price to a local retailer that I am confident I will receive support from.

If I buy a $30 light from China and it catastrophically fails and I have to buy a whole new light, I’m out $30. Still beats paying $200 for a Surefire (unless of course you really need or want a SF :stuck_out_tongue: ).

It’s not right that people keep posting in this thread that they haven’t had a problem with him ,this thread is for negative experiences ,
Maybe people should post their negative feedback in the positive feedback thread lol.
PLEASE DONT POST IN THIS THREAD ABOUT YOU HAVNT HAD A PROBLEM.
We get it ,a lot haven’t had problems but quite a few has & this is the place to say so.
Do you think we’re making it up?

Also, don’t give me the bs about him being busy and shit like that lol. That’s no excuse to ignore emails for months on end. He’s just a drop-shipper.

Jack from Fireflies and Hank from Emisar are also one-man shops. Except they actually make and design flashlights. They speak great English. They respond within the day of any issues I’ve had w/ a flashlight or the logistics of it.

I’ve never had a problem w/ Emisar so can’t speak about that but Hank is always responsive to my emails about his products.

Jack gives me a ton of flashlight advice, offers customization options, and even helped me with a FF light I bought from Neal that had a problem. All of this on top of operating not only a flashlight store, but also the actual process of making flashlights.

My suspicion is that all items are dropshipped and there is no maintained inventory. If you combine this with poor upstream communication, it would mean he sells a lot of “in stock” items that are months away from being shippable. Obviously this will lead to unhappy customers.

Yeah, if he’s a one-man operation, I don’t see how he would keep any stock. I’m presuming it’s a pure Internet business, and drop-ship everything. That’s probably how most small Chinese operations work. Even the big guys, like Bangood and Gearbest, seem to drop-ship quite a bit. Though, they must have their own stock of a lot of items, too. And, at least they mostly keep their website inventory up to date (not always, though).

OTOH, everything I order from Zebralight always seems to show back-ordered. Yet, it always ships out within a week or so. They seem to have the opposite approach to their website… just tell everybody that nothing is in stock. :open_mouth:

I guess NG doesn’t ship loose cells to the US anymore. Would have been nice to cancel the order or let me know instead of just keeping the money for a month and a half with zero communication until I requested a refund. :person_facepalming:

Feels a bit shady too. I wonder how many orders are charged, ignored by NG, and then forgotten by the customer.

I certainly don’t think anyone is making anything up, and my intention was to helpfully provide an alternate way of looking at things in order to diminish your stress level. However, I was unaware this thread was created solely for the purpose of confirmation bias. I sincerely apologize. Please carry on with your brooding.

Would you accept it if you paid for your order, received half of that order, then almost three months later, have to dispute the missing half order with your CC company, because NG would NOT even respond to almost a dozen emails, in 6 weeks?

I apologize for my “brooding”, but I was just posting relevant comments for this thread. By posting about my Negative experience with Neals Gadgets, and not trying to belittle those who do.

Try it some time.

I’ll even point to the thread where your comments might even be more relevant. Positive NG Experiences

I’m glad your ordering experiences went well with NG.
But 1 of 2 orders of mine with NG didn’t. I can understand mistakes happen. But poor communication with customers, isn’t an accident or a mistake. It’s just poor communication skills.

That’s not uncommon with Chinese sellers. It’s a risk you take, because eventually all Chinese sellers will mess up an order and make dealing with them extremely annoying. So, your choices are either accept the occasional hassle, or never deal with that seller again (which will eventually mean you don’t order anything from China).

Even local Internet sellers can be annoying to deal with. I recently ordered something from Amazon (sold and shipped by Amazon), and only got half my order. Have you ever tried to contact a real person to sort out a problem? Impossible! The only thing I could do was send back my entire order for a refund. I would rather have just received a reshipment of the missing items, or a partial refund, but Amazon is just not set up to do that. It’s frustrating, but I accept that risk.

It’s not much different dealing with Chinese retailers. You just file a Paypal dispute, if they don’t respond.

1 order with Neal and my last no matter how good the deal is.

I had a similar situation with Amazon. You can eventually find a real person but they probably aren’t in your country. Better off just shipping the whole thing back.

Never had a problem with Amazon just go straight to Amazon chat and it’s usually sorted there and then.

Chat much better than live person.

Thank you for that. I’ve never tried it, always assuming a live person was better, but will, the next time something goes South with Amazon

You are welcome. Amazon usually is very efficient but sometimes things go bonkers if the problem doesn’t fit neatly inside one of their boxes. Incomplete orders can be one of them. I once ordered 5 x 5 quart containers of motor oil. Typical poor boxing method threw all 5 into a box loosely with one piece of tape sealing the box. Box opened up at UPS, one fell out and UPS retaped the box close, minus the damaged container. I was told this by my local driver who saw the oil stain at the loading center. After 1 hour on the phone trying to explain the situation to Amazon CS, I was sent a replacement for the missing container. Problem was they wanted me to send back another container as if they were replacing a damaged product. This after a hour long conversation. This time around I used Chat and it worked out fine. Thanks UPS, real classy. And thanks Amazon for hiring someone as your phone rep that doesn’t understand English.

Maybe Neal will see this and come to the conclusion that his communication failures are costing him customers and therefore money.

I will say it’s just par for course when dealing with Chinese sellers. I recently partook in a groupbuy where the 1st 100 lights were supposedly ready to be shipped. I was within the first 10 buyers and yet my light just recently shipped after a month.

I have a suspicion they say they are ready when they aren’t, and they wait till they sell them to actually buy parts and manufacture them. I could be wrong but it sure feels that way.

Not defending Neal or any China dealers but isn’t his how the Kickstarter works?
And with Kickstarter they can just take your money, never make the product and say “My Bad” :slight_smile:

Hm? I’ve had quite a few occasions to do exactly that, and all of them were resolved pretty easily. Pick the online chat, and even at the end you can get the chat-log emailed to you for your records.

Granted, it’s a pain in the ass to find, but it’s doable.

Yeah, I've had to do online chat with Amazon a few times before, and they were very reasonable.

I wish all online stores had their quality of customer service.

Plus, for many items, returns are a breeze, though you don't want to abuse that feature as you can get blacklisted.

Well i waited some weeks for the N140 st90.2 to ship, I emailed got a reply almost straight away, please wait another 14 days, 21 days later I emailed again , another instant reply please wait another 10 days…

I asked this time for a refund , Refund was issued immediately, I don’t think hes a crook i think he just has some supplier issues probably beyond his control.