Recent weeks yielded two PayPal disputes (DinoDirect and led-dna, both for items not received), looks like next week I'll file three more (DealExtreme for items not received, Lightake for not shipping my order in time and not refunding in time after cancelling the order and kenjinana at eBay for not shipping in time... let's hope I'm wrong for all three) .
This is just a small percentage of my orders, and I guess this has to do with CNY, but still, it's frustrating. :/
It's not that I'll stop buying or anything, just had to rant a little. :)
I think that all the problems with your orders are the chinese postal service, they are going slow and slow lately, I would recomend you that if you buy from china do it with a lot of patience...
With all respect to Changchung, I think a lot of the Chinese dealers are also getting a little arrogant. They do not communicate with the customer in what I would call a satisfactory manner. In most cases they don't bother sending the goods until week 3, and of course no emails get sent from them to explain the delay and when the customer sends an email asking where their stuff is, they don't bother replying.
I am having the same problem with DX right now. No order conformation no reply to emails or tickets. Paypal dispute has been opened,
This is why my personal list of vendors continues to shrink. This also may be why my Solarforce purchases have grown - Solarforce-sales still rocks! **fingers crossed**
I think there are some inflationary pressures at work in China that are forcing cutbacks from the dealers, suppliers, and the post office in order to keep prices low. It doesn't help that a lot of destination countries are having their own budget problems. My last tracked package spent over a week getting from New York to my door, which usually just takes 2-3 days.
I think that's one of the main problems there. Customer service (or the lack of one).
DinoDirect just told me to wait past PayPal's dispute date (and afterwards to drop the dispute for refund), led-dna didn't answer until I filed a dispute, DX is currently processing CS tickets of at least two weeks ago (and will probably also need a dispute just to answer), Lightake took two weeks before they admitted they can't ship the order because they can't get the items in stock and all the while it took 3-4 days for them to answer each mail, and kenjinana simply doesn't answer my mails.
Arggh. Anyway, I'm off to order another thing from some obscure eBay seller, wish me luck. :)
The lack of support is because of the competition and the pressure we generally put on them. Rarely someone talks in the forums about anything else than how good the price is or was. That directly is assimilated by the sellers and they just try to keep the prices down and have less QC, less employs, and of course less care.
Having lower and lower prices due to competition has to have it's reverse.
I concur. I'm shifting my sales to US Sellers. I like receiving goods from 2-4 days in most cases. Plus less headaches etc, if I have to send something back. Sometimes the funky grammar and sentence construction from some customer service emails are hard to understand. And once a year, I won't have to be concerned with waiting a few weeks for an item to ship after they're done celebrating their New Year. And if I want to place a phone call, it's nice to speak to someone on US Soil!
I actually asked Bryan at Shiningbeam about a week ago if he plans on beefing up his selection. This is directly related to my shift towards purchasing from local vendors when possible. And I know this sounds cliche here in the USA, but I'm also really trying to become less dependent on Chinese manufacturing. We just need more local OEM factories on a large scale that are able to churn out new flashlight designs quickly and efficiently. Of course, they wouldn't just manufacture flashlights, but they'd certainly be geared for it.
When President Obama challenged Steve Jobs to build the iPhone in the US like Apple used to do with their computers, Jobs responded "Those jobs aren't coming back." It's as simple as that. You can still get Made in USA, but often only with a great price premium. China has all the components, all the materials, all the equipment, and all the people they need to crank out just about anything very quickly for a low price at the quality level that you are willing to pay for. And it is all in a small enough area that if a manufacturer needs something, he won't have to wait long for it to be delivered. Unfortunately, Made in USA means paying $120 for a Surefire instead of $12 for a Ultrafire. It's not worth it to me.
You know what drives me crazy? Cree makes LED's a few hours drive from me in North Carolina, but if I want a Cree LED, I have to order it from overseas. The only places I've bought LED's from are Australia and China. I think Cree makes some LED's in China now as well because the manufacturers didn't want to have to wait for stuff to arrive from the US.
On the Cree thing, I concur. Pisses me off that there's no U.S. seller that has a really good selection of tints and star selections. Mouser and Digikey, yes, but only bare emitters. I have no desire to reflow solder.
Great Britain, (For anyone wondering where that is, look under Britain or UK, it's no longer 'Great'). Great Britain was one of the greatest engineering countries in the world, in fact I would say the greatest, but as we slowly closed it all down we sent the work and most importantly the machinery, to China, leaving us with nothing.
My best friend went to get a small jig made not so long back and it involved some reasonably simple machining. He went to an 'engineering firm' the guy there said he couldn't do it, He had the skills but he said you would have to do some running around just to find the machine. 'they are all in China now' He said.
The fact is they make very good stuff in China, if you have the budget, they can build you anything as good as anywhere. It's just the damn vendors!
I understand everything Bryan sells comes from China. That wasn't directly tied to my proclamation to depend less on Chinese manufacturing. I'm still not against the concept of Chinese goods, since they deserve to produce like the rest of us. It's more of the concept that we convince ourselves it has to be China because their costs are lower, period.
Apple makes their products in China just like their competitors yet their price tags are much higher along with their profit margins. Surefire could be cheaper but they chose a business model that essentially categorizes them as the Apple of flashlights. Maglite builds their product in the USA, just like Surefire, yet the pricing between these companies is drastically different. Maglite is like Dell and and Surefire is more like Apple. Maglite is proof an American made flashlight doesn't need to be outrageously expensive. They could also still afford to put more advanced emitters in their lights but their business model and their market doesn't call for it.
If we forget the idea of OEM and simply ask for a branded flashlight company, you could have a Maglite/Surefire combination and just about meet our requests for a quality, locally built flashlight that is cutting edge or at least close to it (I know Surefire isn't quite cutting edge anymore). The thing is, they each cut out their own niche in the flashlight market and they essentially have no competition. That's when we convince ourselves it's China or nothing.
DISCLAIMER: I know this rambling needs more supporting facts and information, such as the Apple vs competition and Surefire/Maglite > Apple/Dell analogy.
That's a pretty apt comparison. I think Maglite's problem is that most people don't want 20 flashlights at home (I don't know what's wrong with those people) so they can't innovate too much without cutting into their own core market. People aren't going to buy additional flashlights, they will just buy one instead of another one. Most people just want a Maglite, not the XL200 or whatever that they won't understand. Plus there is the whole liability issue of producing lights for li-ion batteries. If Maglites start blowing up or burning people's houses down, how long do you think Maglites will be around?
I'm looking forward to the Mini Maglite Pro Plus, but I read at CPF that it may never hit bricks and mortar stores so you will only be able to get the 1-mode Minimag Pro. Ugh.
You definitely hit that nail on the head! That's another very important factor to consider. A company like Maglite has a lot at stake, whether it's brand value or liability issues. This is a very litigious nation and lithium-ion just doesn't bode well for mass consumption in products that aren't fool proof (i.e. laptop). Of course, even Surefire has had flashlights explode with their very own batteries inside. Then again, Surefire is still a niche brand compared to Maglite. We would need a company entirely dedicated to lithium-ion powered lights so they can actually build their reputation around this technology. Then you can more easily attract the appropriate consumer and therefore cut down on liability.
The only way you will get a U.S. made li-ion flashlight is if it’s sealed with the proper electronics to monitor it.
Since you can’t even buy the batteries locally no company would use it even if you disregard the dangers.
Manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back to the U.S. to any large degree in any industry. Just like the cotton mills aren’t going to make a big come back in the U.S.
Farming isn’t going to support a large portion of the U.S. workforce either. Times change.
U.S. companies aren’t stupid. They are making prudent decisions. Individual people can be stupid inlcuding individual CEO’s but all companies as a whole aren’t making ill advised decisions…especially Apple for instance.
Remember, China's economy is growing steadily and thus wages are increasing. Some manufacturing will be returning. This will likely happen with medium to smaller sized companies that can't or won't cope with the risk (e.g. logistics) correlated to the shrink in cost savings.