FAKE KLARUS FLASHLIGHTS WITHOUT WARRANTY

abartels, always bad news when you get fake items. I have had many times I bought on e bay in past and got fakes. Like CDR, DVR etc… So I understand your pain.

Personally I have bought things from other sellers than Convoy on AliExpress, and I would do so again. But when it comes to warranty, many brands hide (entrench) behind the “local dealer network”. Because shipping broken items to and from China is a financial nightmare. And IF your brand does have a local dealer, it is quite common that he checks the serialnumber to see if you have bought the item from him. They even go as far as refusing to repair the item if you did not buy it from him.
There is a slim chance that you get your pound of flesh: some sellers on AE also use PayPal. If you pay with PayPal you can explain your problems to them and you will get your money back if the seller refuses to help.

It can’t hurt to check for reviews before buying anything on the internet. And even then think of the old proverb: if it is too good to be true, it is probably not true. Don’t think the big sellers on internet are eager to comply in a warranty dispute, but most of them will do so (eventually).

Could still be yours is not a fake, especially since Klarus says you got it too cheap so you can't "enjoy their warranty"! I think I'll put Klarus along with Imalent and Haikelite on my no buy list.

@Henk4U2

Yeah, you probably are right, but I was very confident I did the right thing. I investigated on the G20 flashlight, and the brand Klarus seemed to be e very reliable one to me, according the reviews……

I paid €65 for this flashlight, while others sold it for about €80 Not thinking on their policy related to MAP pricing, which is not mentioned anywhere. Just checked, and G20 still sells for €65 to €95. For us as overseas customers, it always is a guess if a brand is reliable or not.

About Aliexpress, if sellers are reliable or not, I always read the reviews, and looking at how many items are sold. Until now I have very good experiences with Aliexpress. I think I bought for a few thousend euro’s in the past few years, and in a few cases I got different goods, bad quality, not as described, or not received, but in ALL cases I got compensated, sometimes by the sellers directly, and sometimes after intervention of Aliexpress itself. So no problems there at all.

This case is a little bit different because I ordered at September 2 2017 and received order at October 2 2017. So the time to open a dispute has ended by several months. This is the first warranty case I encounter on Aliexpress, very curious how they will handle this.

I will keep you guys posted on the outcome!

Cheers,
Alex

This is exactly why I won’t buy anything from Ali other than Convoy, Maxtoch, Sofirn, Thorfire, and a few others. But with those, you are purchasing direct from factory, and they will take care of you if problem arises.

Aliexpress is full of one man sellers, selling broken or fake items. This complaint board has hundreds of people who have gotten ripped off by Aliexpress sellers. Many just like your story. AliExpress: Reviews, Complaints, Customer Claims | ComplaintsBoard

I bought my Olight S1R in AliExpress and didn’t have any issue. However, some stores don’t seem to be very reliable on what they sell ! It’s really a matter of looking to several reviews of the different products and the store, before buying, to know if it is reliable or not!

BUT, it is not only in AliExpress, also in Gearbest or Bangood, or many other stores.

I hope you can solve that issue, though abartels!!

@klrman

Yes, I got the feeling too that it is not a fake product but an original one. And because of this I am writing this kind of report to avoid others getting same troubles as I am going thru.

I ordered a lot of small cheap flashlights, started with UltraFire low cost flashlights, and after investigation still don’t know for sure which website is the official one, hahaha. Since I am an audiophile and bought a lot of electronic components and devices in China the past 20 years or so, I am some sort of experienced buying in Asia, and know that there are a lot of manufacturers making and selling the same stuff under the same brand. Many brands are non existing and just used to sell goods under a name, not to provide for backup if something goes wrong.

For us, western orientated people, this is kind of strange. If we see a brand, we KNOW there is a company behind it, a company at which we can apply for warranty or help when something goes wrong, that doesn’t count for many Chinese products……
Not forgetting there are many diy people selling products made by themselves, badged with a brandname…. Sometimes a manufacturer is producing pcb’s, printed circuits, selling the boards in badges to whoever wants to buy them. This can result, or better saying, this RESULTS in completely different products, using different brands of components on pcb’s, using completely wrong values etc….
This makes it very difficult to buy those goods.

A very good example is a Chinese integrated amplifier I bought in Germany at a small company. The amplifier was a Korsun V8i, nowadays called Dussun V8i. It was a very heavy amplifier, weighing about 40kg, reviews were very good. A friend of mine bought one at the same time from another seller since my seller didn’t had any left at stock. My amp sounded horrible, uncontrolled bass, very harsh sounding mid and high. My friends one sounded very musical, good controlled bass etc. I never got mine sounding right and had to sell it with loss.
This amplifier btw was the one the Affirmation amplifier from the Red Rose (Mark Levinson) company was based on….

I am an electronics guy, I investigated the inside of this amp, and couldn’t find any differences between my friends one and mine.
A few years later I came to the conclusion that mine probably had FAKE Sanken power transistors in it, since I read an article about those used by many Chinese manufacturers, and that they sounded awful.

Back to flashlights, the UltraFire flashlights I own, they are all very cheap made, quality is not very high. But, I DO have one UltraFire
flashlight which is a real beauty, the UF-T50 which is an XML-T6 U2 flashlight, stepless dimmable, with a magnetic tailcap. This is one of the best quality flashlights I’ve encountered, ever, it’s a beauty. Probably all the other UltraFire flashlights were from different manufacturers, fake ones. The UF-T50 was rather expensive, paid €40 for it.

UPDATE FROM KLARUS:

Mail from Jenifer Liu from Klarus servicedesk:

“Hi Alex,
We well understand your situation, and we are sorry for any inconvenience, here we also thank you very much for your kindly suggestion, we will share it to our company and try to do best to improve it in future.

For your flashlight, after several checking, we still cannot find the series number on our system, so we cannot make sure if it is from our factory. Anyway, we will specially apply to our company to send you a head part as you are Klarus fans and we really understand your situation.

We will you keep you updated once the parcel has shipped out to your following address:”

GOOD NEWS, so I got warranty and getting a head replacement for my Klarus G20!

Also good news that Klarus probably will take notice of my suggestions and edit their website with the specified info.

I usually assume any product I get from China will be an as-is product with no warranty service.

As for the issue you’re having, how old are your cells? Just because they’re fully charged to 4.2 V doesn’t necessarily mean they’re healthy and can handle the high current draw on turbo. Are they protected cells?

Products from China, low cost products, yes, I agree, I wont apply for warranty and accept my loss.
But not for a rather expensive product. This flashlight was $75 which isn’t rather cheap or low cost, at least for me it isn’t.

The cells, 5 of them, are half a year old, 4 new ones, one in the Klarus. They are unprotected, and can deliver 20 amps or more

Vappower IMR26650 is one of the best cells available.

Well, they offered to send you the ram. Chances are high the rama lama ding-dong will function again.
(who says only Jay Z can write great lyrics)

“If you’re having flashlight problems I feel bad for you son
I got ninety nine problems but a light ain’t one.“

Classic.

Hahaha, yes :slight_smile:

Maybe you should apply for songwriter? :slight_smile:

Somebody beat me to it, that song is called: “Who put the bomp…”

What did she mean by this? I couldn’t find a list of ‘authorized distributors’ on their website.

And why don’t they allow us to check the flashlight serial code on their website.

And so it goes.

Service and support is worth paying for. If I can’t find it on amazon I buy direct from the manufacturer, or from a factory authorized vendor. Whatever I purchase is going to cost me more than rock-bottom, and I m fine with that. Every now and then (although it’s been years) I have a warranty (or whatever) issue, the resolution of which has never been a problem.

Paying a rock-bottom price and then complaining about lack of manufacturer support seems wrong. We’re all vigilant about the batteries we buy, why shouldn’t that same vigilance apply to everything else we buy?

For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry you got shafted.

Cheers

It’s no discussion anymore since I wil get a replacement part. But, I got it only because I posted my findings on this forum, which shouldn’t be necessary to do to claim warranty.

I always promote good reliable sellers, reading revieuws and so on. And no, I am not the person who buys at the most expensive store, only if there’s a substantial difference between them. I suppose if you want to buy a pair of Nikes, and you have the option to buy the same shoes for half the price, you buy the full monty?

Gor as far as I know, manufacturer warranty is worldwide, only thing is that you can’t claim at a local dealer if you bought abrought.

Until now I hadn’t troubles claiming warranty if needed in my 52 years. And yes, sometimes it takes a little more effort to claim, this case is an example of very bad aftersales. They could have avoid this since I wasn’t aware of their policies. Hope Klarus will clarify this soon on their website.

Cheers,
Alex

@agent80

I pointed to the fact that there’s no list of authorized dealers on their website, and no MAP pricing, and no warning for fakes etc. I hope they learn feom this case because I am sure many of you now would hesitate to buy their goods.

Hope they learn from this case.

Cheers,
Alex

My first thought too. They see this thread and decide it's better to do some damage control.

Yes, that is how it is