Yeah, I guess I shouldn't complain, they ship at least some good products at good prices for FREE to remote corners of the world.... Still, it's quite odd. My very first order took something like 8 or 12 days just to leave DX. Maybe these ones will actually beat the Chinese New Year shutdown. It's just that I wanted the SmallSun ZY-C41 to go with another order so that I get the $0.01 order tracking. Now this C3 will probably get shipped without tracking because the SmallSun didnt get added to it to bump up the value. And whenever I finally order the SmallSun I'll either have to ship it without tracking, pay $1.70 for tracking, or buy something else with it to get tracking.
You emailed them with what was wrong, they fixed it. Quickly. The web based stuff is a bit of a mess. And how does one attach photos of what has not arrived. They have quite a few pics of my carpet now.
Well... I spoke too soon. Now, according to their invoice/order tracking page AND according to Hong Kong Post, my order was shipped out containing... a (free) replacement Powerlight that is worth $4.28. Meanwhile the Trustfire F20 somehow seems to have escaped from the package and headed back home to its cozy warehouse, because they are "Contacting Suppliers" again on a shipped order.... Why? And the order status- this is a beauty: Waiting for Supplier via Tracked Air Mail
And now they're up to something with my other order that contains the Ultrafire. The status was "packaging", but now it changed to: Processing - Awaiting Stock If I'm not mistaken, this means "Awaiting more orders from this guy before we spend money on shipping."
And yes, I have never seen anything so ridiculous as their required pictures of things that don't exist. For example, I complained that they sent me a one mode light that was supposed to have three modes. They finally replied that they require a picture of the defect. What am I supposed to do, disassemble it and show pictures of the one mode circuit? Or send them a picture of a mode?
I would just send them a pic of the pcb and be done with it....more then likely they would not be able to tell anyway.
That time I sent a very blurry picture of the flashlight. The customer service rep didn't care, she was just obeying their protocol.
This happens all the time. Stuff bounces back and forth. usually for me they break the order down into parts, but sometimes they don't. I've an order from November where they didn't split it and send the LR44 batteries I needed nearly three months ago. they still don't say when, or if, they are going to stock the light I ordered. One time it did say ETA 22nd January 2010 but that vanished. And it isn't as if the item had sold out - I ordered it the day they announced it. http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30683. Some people got theirs, I didn't. I suspect they got about 5 of them then the factory decided it couldn't make a profit on them so declined to make any more of them.
The vast majority of my orders arrive in multiple parts, sometimes weeks after the order. I doubt postage is the factor, it seems to cost them half of nothing.
Hmmm so who knows what will happen with this order now. I was worried about having two order separated by only a day, figured they might get them confused. Combine that with two RMA requests being added to those orders.
I hope I get my order with no problems... I ordered a uniquefire L2 5 mode with batteries and a charger... I really hope they don't screw my order up and ship it out a month from now... that seems pretty ridiculous if that's the way they run there business. sure there prices are incredibly cheap, but so is everything in China... I'll be pissed if they send me a 1 mode light and don't receive the order within a month... but what is one supposed to do if it takes that long... if you ask to cancel the order I wonder how long that takes?
Well with Dx and some of the other sites out there its all about waiting, calling the wife to see if your package arrived and bugging her to check the mailbox. lol
I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I am currently trying to BUY something via customer service, because I want to buy it with a store credit. And even though their quickly attending my request would mean sale, I've been like 10 days without an answer, and I don't expect one until after the holidays over there. This is par for the course I think when buying from China. You're right that everything is cheap in China, but remember that it is very hard to buy stuff at the cheapest prices unless you are a retailer and you want to buy hundreds or thousands of pieces. For me it's amazing that they will even deal with Joe FlashlightBuyer and ship us some rather nice products with free shipping to the other side of the world. Meanwhile, we wait.
Tends to get slow and flaky in December with the Christmas rush as well. You get far more errors from them at those times. Once the New Year madness dies down they are mostly as reliable as they get.
Transport is the inadequacy of DX, but this deficiency is free, DX has a good lot of advantages, such as: the cheapest place, best quality guaranteed places, most varieties of the most comprehensive local, and many other advantages. .....
Could you take a brief movie with your digital camera or webcam of you clicking through the "settings"? Do they have a limit to their upload? Most people today at least have a video capability even in their phones.. Would they take that?
To Don: you probably know this, but for the benefit of others, I've read that DX (and other large sellers can) pay a "flat rate" for postage each month, which covers unlimited shipments. Kind of like we have unlimited internet service for a flat fee. Except delivering physical goods would seem to carry much more tangible costs. Methinks it's subsidised by the government to help exports (and undermining manufacturing of other countries. We do similar weird things here, like paying farmers to 'not' grow certain crops. That's how you can get a plastic keychain pig, with light bulbs for its nostrils, delivered to you for $1 total. Someone's paying the cost of that shipping, just not you, and not dealextreme.
I also wonder: does the US postal service get paid by China to deliver the package from port to door, or do they have some kind of reciprocal agreement, thinking that somehow it will balance out? Because I gotta think it costs the USPS about a buck just to get that pig keychain flashlight to your mailbox.
took more than 2 months for my last order from dx. Manafont and KD are much better.
In the end I think that's what I did. But their RMA reps don't really even understand what a mode is. They're not specialized in flashlights, and they often don't understand English very well. I don't find fault with them for not speaking English, after all I don't speak Chinese at all. But I do expect them to have some sort of knowledge of their products.
Today i was reading this post and "magically" a similar thing happen to me.
I order some stuff almost three months ago but the package gone lost somewhere, so i contact customer service and i say i have to make another order. So they suggest they can add the lost item to this new order, i only have to communicate the order number. So i make the order and i write to customer service. In few hours the new order goes to "packaging", obviously without the item lost in the previous order. Is quite strange considering that usually they need at least a couple of day to arrive at "packaging"...
I hope i't only a coincidence...
They do, the Universal Postal Union is old, founded in 1874. It is now a UN body as is the ITU for telecoms where there are similar issues.
There are settlement payments going back and forth, depending on weight posted in and out.
What it really ment is that a number of items arrived from the supplier but there wasn't enough of them to fulfill all orders, so they have to wait for more stock to arrive.
I made four orders with DX recently, two shipped on 3/2/2011, one on 3/7/2011 and one on 3/11/2011. Of these the one from March 7 arrived yesterday but no sign of the others... I avoided tracked mail beause the items weren't that valuable and they changed the place where I have to go to sign for them, so it takes much more time for me to go there (but it would have been a better alternative to waiting forever).
I tried DX again after a bad experience last year. The order arrived with the correct items in the box with no damage and everything was functional.
However, the package took 97 days to arrive. Customer service was completely silent - no one responded to my ticket requests. I can't recommend that anyone shop at DX. Maybe I'll try again next year.
Yes，it takes so long to get your package....
sometimes ,I dont have the patience to wait for the parcels