Rating: Focalprice.com

http://focalprice.com

Pros:

  • Live chat support, speaks decent english, honestly mentioned that shipping would be delayed for the Chinese New Year holiday (Not available recently. 18-MAY-2012)
  • Good pre-sales customer support
  • Decent selection, some unique products
  • Good prices
  • Nice website

Cons:

  • Reports of fake deals with the intent of phishing
  • Disorganized, chaotic, slow shipping
  • Inaccurate or mixed-up product descriptions
  • Occasional problems with orders and poor shipping practices
  • Occasional poor handling of post-order customer service
  • Poor packaging of products
  • Some reports of unethical business practices

Ok, my first Focalprice purchase appears to be shipped. I'll give FocalPrice three stars if the flashlight arrives in good condition. There was a bit of a hangup because of a billing address / shipping address difference, mainly PayPal's fault, so there was some manual intervention involved on Focalprice's part to clear the transaction. But most customers probably won't have this issue. After the PayPal payment was processed it took a bit more that 48 hours for them to notify me that it was shipped, which is much better than DX but still not fast enough for my liking. Seems like a pretty nice company though, with very prompt, helpful customer service.

I'll second the "with very prompt, helpful customer service".

FP is much 'smaller' than DX so you tend to get better customer service.

Replies/responses to tickets, item availability & new product requests are quite good.

Prices are always lower than DX.

My first choice for online HK shopping.

If the keyword is "always" you are wrong there!

Generalizations are ALWAYS wrong

Including that one ;-)

Well, here's a nice surprise. I just placed an order with Focalprice at 10:39 PM yesterday, and today at 4:52 AM they sent me an "order shipped" email confirmation. So approximately 6 hours to ship out an order. Pretty impressive. I wonder if Focalprice actually has a warehouse with some items truly in stock and ready to be shipped. DealExtreme's concept of "In stock" appears to be "Somebody has the item in a warehouse somewhere on the face of the planet or they can manufacture it sometime this year, and if we have time we might get around to calling them to see if they would mind sending us the product, and then if we have time we'll try to ship it to you at some point in the future." So cheers to Focalprice if they have truly shipped out my order in 6 hours. It could still take a month to reach my post office, but that is now the postal system's problem and not Focalprice's.

Yes, my first order was shipped in less than 9 hours.

But my second and my last, arrived home defective. They never sent a replacement.

Buying at FP is good while the items arrive in good shape/working conditions

That's not too good. Did you try their live chat support when it's available? You can tell them that you are waiting for RMA ticket #XXXXXX and they might attend to it right there. I wonder if they send free replacements of cheaper broken items like Dealextreme does without requiring you to return the broken item. That is one of Dealextreme's better points.

I wait from 2th June until today (more than 2 months, while packages arrive to my home in 15 days...).

They told me to wait a week more in 4 ocasions....

I checked my postal office and HKP, no signs of that package.........

I dont trust in them

Thanks fran82, I updated the Focalprice profile with a few good and bad points.

Thanks, now I am waiting for daniel of Lightake for resolving some troubles I have.

It seems that lightake personnel have dissapeared from Earth.... or they lack customer support

No response from yesterday morning. I tried email, the form of support, the forums.... No signs of life. What happens? I have lost my money?

Yes, these quirks are very irritating aren't they. To tell you the truth, I've had the best customer support via eBay. On eBay, the sellers absolutely depend on their seller rating. Anything below 99% positive ratings can seriously hurt a seller's reputation. So they bend over backwards to be communicative, even sending free replacements if anything goes wrong. And FAST! The downside is that they usually cost more on eBay. But for those of us who are impatient and unamused by "little white lies" from the sellers, eBay is probably the best option.

The worry I have, is that is my first order at LT, and I am thinking that I will loose the 20.03 USD I have paid.


For me, the best experiences have been DealExtreme in first, and ebay sellers in second (specially the HK based ones)

And, at this moment, in my Country is 15:19 PM while in Hong Kong is 22:19, so they can not answer until tomorrow..... (if they answer....)

I HOPE that the problems not began here for me.........

At LT, no signs of life in the forums, no response after more than 24 hours by the support, nor the email... etc...

I am worried

Hi fran82,

I got my refund within a day (see MC05 3-mode thread). If Lightake wanted to screw you over, they wouldn't send Daniel to community websites. As far as I can tell LT has been the most responsive HK-based seller I dealt with. So Daniel is not the man with the most knowledge about flashlights, but he tries the best he can and is always nice and helpful. I have emailed with him 9 times within 2 days. Try to not judge him after a day of no response, maybe he has his day off ... who knows (he also told me they have sometimes power outage due to bad weather).

If everything goes wrong.. you can always use Paypal buyer protection ( I think up to 60 days after purchase). I'm used to wait 1-2 weeks to hear from HK-based dealers (Kai, Dealextreme...)

Best regards,

Vectrex

Did you try the different ways to reach LT? (daniel@lightake.com ), service@lightake.com or skype (jjj19880922)

OK vectrex, perhaps I am too "precipitado".... (sorry for my English)

However, as I said is the first time I order at LT and I was "accostumed" to DX system, which keeps you perfectly known the proccess of the orders and of course excellent CSE.

I will wait until tomorrow and yes, I tried those other contact options

"Hurried" or "Too quick to act".

No worries, it is frustrating when an order doesn't work out smoothly. But then again, patience is a virtue. And Daniel from Lightake is trying hard to please the customers.

OK, will post tomorrow is there are notices of LT personnel.

Oh yes!

More than 24 hour later I received response and they resolved the trouble!

Now the order continues "collecting products"..... hope they will ship the only item soon

When FP could not fulfill one of my orders this is what they offered in return :

We regret that due to the huge demand (over 10,000pcs) and limited available stock (below 1000pcs) for item LF367W, we are unable to fulfill your order despite we tried all possible means. Since this item will be end of production those days, I am afraid we have no choice but to cancel LF367W from your recent order. For other items in your same order, we will arrange to ship to you as early as possible.However, to compensate your loss (of time & energy) and show our sincerity, we have to send you LF367W 2pcs free of charge after April 6th, 2010. As for the cancelled LF367W, we will refund you within three working days. We sincerely apologize for all these inconvenience. Your understanding will be highly appreciated.

Edit : This was for 10pcs of Mini Cow LED Keychain Light (White) for $2.