[PART 1] Official BLF GT Group Buy thread. Group buy officially closed! Lights shipping.

BLF Special Edition Products
14733

I have contacted Neal.

You forget how many people have trouble following basic instructions. Having worked with people / sales / online marketplaces for over a decade, I am surprised with how many people on BLF got everything right, way more then I expected.

That said there was still a very high percentage of orders with incorrect info or no follow up contact information and it would be completely impractical to match up every single order to a valid user name on the list.

So we went with a much more manageable method of looking up the suspicious orders that came in bursts or with multiple lights.

We caught several people trying to sneak in this way (and banned them from future orders) but I am sure some slipped through as well.

The time to result ratio is simply not in favor of doing more then that.

I was doing some crude math earlier, which I now regret.

Combined the team has EASILY spent WELL over 3000 man hours on this project.

Most of our time is worth a fair amount but lets just say it was worth a mere $15/ hour.

That is $45,000 worth of work donated to this project.

At a more reasonable (but still less then what a lot of the team is used to) hourly wage it would be over $125,000 worth of time donated to this project already.

What do we have to show for it?

A few $115 flashlights.

Now don’t get me wrong, we are not complaining, we signed up for this but it does hopefully put things into perspective.

There is a limit to how much time we can put into this project though and when this starts taking time away from our families or real work that puts food on the table, then we have reached that limit.

Now we will keep this project going and see it through to the end, not to worry about that but hopefully you can understand why we simply can’t start adding massive amounts of extra work to this project.

Already the link spilling this time is adding a lot of extra work as it is.

The goal is to make it through the next payment PM without it leaking for ~2 weeks and then getting the rest of the 1500 lights shipped out.

14734

Well if this idiot moron causes me to not be able to receive my GT’s, I’d like to stick his GT head first up his Blankity Blank! :rage: :rage: :rage:

14735

Not to worry, all the orders from when he posted that will be canceled as soon as martin gets back online.

It will not effect those legitimately on the GB list. It just adds a lot of work to the team.

14736

Thanks for the detailed analysis, Jason!

14737

I personally thank you and all the team members for doing a fantastic job! :+1: I do understand what you are saying here and it is unfortunate what has happened! Hopefully Neil along with Lumintop will still be able to fill the orders for the BFL members that were put down on the list! I guess now all we can do is hope that all will work out for the best! :+1:

14738

I have been asked by Mr. Thomas King to attempt to offer an apology and also an explanation for his actions tonight regarding the giving away of the “NOT TO BE SHARED” info from the GT PMs. Please bear with me.

Ok, first off I’m only jumping in the middle of this because I’ve known Thomas from FB for a while and I’ve never known him to be anything other than a decent guy. I understand what happened here and everyone has every right to be extremely upset. However, (I’m no one of any importance in the flashlight world) but I will vouch for Thomas in that all he ever wanted to do was help out people who had contacted him asking how they might get a GT.

He remembered how he paid for his GT, BUT SOMEHOW FORGOT ABOUT THE WARNING ABOUT NOT SHARING THE INFO. I know that’s messed up, but I personally paid for mine and I didn’t even remember reading that message until it was brought up tonight. I’m sure I read it too and I certainly didn’t share it. Anyway, he shared it. OUCH!

But I contacted him through messenger because everyone was cursing him terribly and I knew he would never do anything like this on purpose. It took a while but I was finally able to explain to him what he had done… and he is mortified. Yes he insisted he had permission, but as I suspected, he was referring to permission he had gotten from an FB admin. (IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE FB ADMIN IS NOT TO BLAME… AS THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THAT THEY COULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD WHAT HE WAS ASKING PERMISSION TO SHARE…. I ASSUME THEY THOUGHT HE KNEW OF PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO SELL THEIR GT).

So I explained to him that by sharing he was allowing new buyers to jump in front of guys who were already on the list and waiting to pay. He DID NOT fully comprehend that until just a few moments ago, and like I said, he is embarrassed and very, very sorry. So please accept Thomas’s apology. He’s a good guy and his reputation among the flashlight community is very important to him. He goofed… he messed up. But I’d like to see everyone treat him with respect, because he didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Thanks for reading.

14739

Your missing the fact that there is only Neal to do all the order processing and to supervise quality control, packing and shipping. He does not have time for emails or PM. He is already swamped with them.

Ps, Lumintop employees do not speak English so they can’t help with emails or PM. It’s just Neal (who speaks both).

14740

Above and Beyond, Great Job GT Team! :beer:

14741

I been through organizing a few group buys, and didnt even get the light free out of the hours upon hours invested into the deals on the M6 and k40. Most, I wont say all, group buys are done by a member who wants to give back to the community. Could not imagine the extra time put in when you are actually developing the light also.

14742

His stupidity and all the extra work he created for the team should ban him from all BLF GB’s in the future, and I still want to know his BLF username :rage:

14743

I think everyone should chill. It’s a flashlight. A gloriously ridiculous one, nonetheless, mostly a toy.

Wimmer, did your friend remove the post?

14744

Could you please ask him if he shared that purchase info with anyone before he posted it on FB? If so, maybe Neal can find those orders and cancel them as well (assuming he shared it before that FB post).

Thanks

14745

Yes he deleted that hours ago.

14746

:+1:

14747

Do we know how many GTs were purchased with the leaked link? I honestly don’t think they were too many, given that the group isn’t very active. Maybe just a small inconvenience but nothing to worry about :+1:

14748

PM sent

JasonWW

14749

Time for mr. thomASS king to give power of attorney over to his kids, unless of course they are as stupid as he was. :person_facepalming:

14750

i’m not sure how to do it, but can the codes be a “one use only” code? that would eliminate sharing—-perhaps a more computer savvy person could do this… otherwise the team would have to put used codes in an excel file, sort (easy) and decline and duplicates

14751

Please tell him on behalf of the GT team that we accept his apology.

I kind of figured this might be the case (although admittedly I was still quite upset) and I always like to have both sides of a story before judging someone too harshly.

If you could have him PM me on here that would be great so I can see exactly how much damage was done. If he will stop sharing the link it is possible we can salvage this without having to completely start over, which would be great and save a lot of time.

I had figured something like this would happen at some point.

Everyone else, lay off him. I told you from the start to not go out on a witch hunt. I meant it!

Politely letting him know he made a mistake in a constructive way, that is fine. Cursing and abusing him IS NOT OK. EVER!! Even if he was doing this with malice intent.

So when I make a mistake, is this what I have to look forward to? Everyone going off their rockers? It is inevitable that I will make a mistake at some point.

I told ya’ll, we caught it early enough that while it would take a lot of extra time, no one would loose their light. There was no need for people to get personal about this.

This is why I won’t go near social media and had sworn off all online forums until I found BLF and the nice people here brought me back to the internet. Please don’t make me reconsider my choice.

14752

This is my hope as well, if it was only a few and the link is removed then we should be able to just cancel a few orders and continue as normal.