Negative experience with NealsGadgets

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.

Ordered a light last month. Took the money just fine, hasn’t responded to a single email since. No shipping info, updates, or responses in any way. If all a vendor can do is take money, and not ship anything, follow up, or respond to inquiries…well that is fraud. I can’t believe there are people here defending this seller.

The amount of time I have wasted ordering, emailing, looking for him to pm here, posting this, and now having to dispute the charge means that I will tell everyone who will listen how horrible this guy is. I have to hope and believe that with all the disputes through paypal and cc companies, this guy will eventually be booted off their platforms and be unable to continually defraud people and waste their time. Stop defending this guy, he needs to go away.

There is no Neal, but the site has treated me right

You are right that many local sellers on Amazon are no different than small China sellers. However, each time I have an issue where I can’t contact the seller or seller refuses to refund, I just chat with Amazon. Given my super good buying history on Amazon since 1999, they always side with me. My experience with Aliexpress is also the same, they usually side with the customer over the sellers so you get more protection buying from them in-lieu of buying from small sellers in China. With that said, I never failed to receive anything from Neal and I made so many orders. Also it was easy to ask him to send me replacement parts when I had issues. Maybe recently his communications went south since he has a newborn to take care of and he is a one man shop.

What is the address for mailing a wrong item back to Neilsgadgets, anyone know?

Apologies for replying too late, didn’t get notifications for some reason.

I see this user was disgusted by my post, because he ordered from Neal several times with NO issues at all.
I got to say that’s a fairly good point which turns my opinion at 180 degrees.
Surely if that user had NO issues at all, this MUST mean that no people have any issues with NG at all, correct?
By the same logic I had 3 meals today, therefore world hunger doesn’t exist.
Just opened the window and it’s about 0 degrees outside, which means global warming doesn’t exist either.
Good job, solved half the world problems with one post.

Now, about me calling him a scammer - I didn’t, if you read properly. I said “the guy is pretty much scamming people at this point”, which is based on multiple complaints I’ve read on BLF and Reddit about Neal not responding to emails, messenger and whatever type of communication you try. Multiple complaints from people that did not get their stuff for 2 months (this is too long even for the slow boat), and multiple users that had to dispute their transaction with either their bank or PayPal in order to get their money back.
But again, I did not call him a scammer. I called Neal “non-trustworthy” and I stand by my words. Because I don’t trust him and neither should anyone else.
I shopped from many Chinese stores before - BG, GB, FT, KD, DX, SF and a dozen others, some of which don’t exist anymore, and they were all treating me nicely. I got a lost package with DX, they refunded me without problem. I got a water damaged Klarus, BG gave me half the money back - not ideal, but whatever, flashlight was old anyway. I never had to dispute a transaction in all my ~15 years of online shopping and probably a thousand items bought. I never got my messages ignored as well. Well, until I bought the FW3A from Neal.

Whoever is excusing this type of behavior with babies and being busy is, how do I say it… a bit naive.

This post belong in the other thread.

I guess sour grapes DO make a good whine

Still waiting on a light from BG that I ordered on 11/11 :frowning:

Very fair complaint, but in addition to being a red herring, it’s also in the wrong complaint thread.

This one’s reserved for Neal and his (apparently shoddy) gadget enterprise.

Contacted Neal for a faulty order…

12th Dec BLF Message - no reply
12th Dec Facebook messenger - no reply
21st Dec Email - no reply

Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s a huge distinction. He’s not a scammer; he just scams people. Got it.

Taking payment for items you can’t/wont ship is a scam. NG needs to be banned.

That IS a huge distinction.
A scammer is somebody whose original idea is to scam you out of your money and nothing else. These people scam 100% of their customers. Maybe they even behaved nicely in the beginning in order to gain trust and then started their scams, but it was all planned.
A person whose original idea is to honestly sell you stuff, but then fulfills some orders and ignores others, is scamming people, present continuous tense means something that’s ongoing, if I remember my English classes correctly. Although the scammed people are not 100% of the customers, the scam is still going on. People are looking for help from their banks or from PayPal, how would you call this, pal?