That is true I know Lumintop did sell a lot to a person in South Africa. He selling it now for $700 plus with batteries included. Convert back to rand will give you around R8900.
How do you know he has a lot? Maybe he has a few in stock and high order quantity will need to be shipped from Lumintop directly.
Let’s have a conspiracy theory. If he can get big customer for example military to buy 100 GT at USD650 per piece, Lumintop should serve that order first. I personally will look down Lumintop if they don’t serve that order first. I hope Lumintop earn more money outside this GB or any future GB, so that Lumintop becomes long term GB partner producing high quality flashlight. Smart partner is better than stupid partner.
Just so you know, in my years shipping internationally I have been surprised more time then you would think when a package would take 60 days or more to clear customs. I also had a few cases where the package just disappeared for over 3-4 months and then suddenly turned up on my doorstep one day.
They ran out of the AR glass lenses, they have not been able to ship any lights due to this. They are supposed to get 1000 lenses late next week. So shipments should start again after that.
For the record, lumintop has been very clear that they will be completing the GB, even though they would make a lot more money selling the light publicly.
I had a long conversation with several people about the profit / loss on the GB so far and I am now quite sure I am getting the truth.
They have actually lost money at this point on the GB, a fair amount actually. And if all goes well by the time the GB is over the best they are hoping for is to just break even.
The costs on everything have been much higher then they expected. They never guessed how much more a large light like this would cost.
So the reason they have been selling some publicly is to try to make a profit on the GT before the competing lights that are being made go to market.
Now like I said before, I can understand why they are doing this, I also want them to turn a profit on the light. If they loose money that is not good for anyone. I do not approve in any way how they were doing it though, the underhanded messages have to stop.
We are discussing options moving forward and I will update ya’ll as I know more but rest assured that lumintop has every intention of completing this GB.
To be clear, officially the GB just guaranteed a cheaper price, when we started this it was not guaranteed first access. It was just assumed.
Which brings up another point, the retail price will be $325 after the GB with coupons possibly bringing it down to around $250 is what I am hearing. So that makes the $157 for the remaining GB buyers an even better deal.
I almost wished they would skip out on the rest of the GB, this entire ordeal has been a drain on my life for the last 6 months, I am so ready for it to be over. Not to worry, I am not going to leave but it sure is tempting sometimes.