"Hall of Shame" discussion thread

I disagree. This is not how it works.

If you are here long enough, you would notice that I (or even Max) do not publish all our exclusive codes publicly (searchable from the net). I have been providing countless hours of free consultation for vendors for years for improving products, in exchange to secure better deals for my readers. These despicable people simply take advantage of us by pretending as potential buyers. If you guys support my work, please do not visit their site.

I recognize that you do a lot of work. And I value this work highly.
I don’t want to encourage people to use coupons copied from you.

But all of the few shops that I know to rely on affiliate marketers like you permit such code copying. To be honest I don’t know why but they do. And I can’t think of any reason other than that they think it’s beneficial for them. In this light I can’t agree with the notion of “stealing” codes. They are just copied.
And BTW I find it interesting how the written rules differ so much from unwritten ones. And how it creates a lot of friction in the community.

I still remember a special BLF exclusive discount at Banggood a couple of years ago…
(Martin / M4DM4X arranged it at the time, it used to be HERE )
people did the exact same thing right then, they used all of the available codes, copied them, made them public on the internet, bought expensive lights as where BG ended up to deny those codes within no-time, so the BLF users were not able to use the code

In Dutch we have a saying that goes like: A donkey usually does not hurt himself to the same stone twice

I pretty much done with Sofirnlight.com I placed 3 orders from them , the first one had the wrong tracking number and was for a different customers living in a different state.

Another order has a tracking number indicating it is in China waiting to ship for the last 4 weeks. Lan Lee says it is on a plane near my house .

I placed another order recently which I now have asked to cancel

I don’t believe low prices should be an excuse for poor business practices.

Sorry, I didn’t get this. What written rules are you referring to?

That copying codes is bad.

If it works it aint stupid

I was wondering if Imalent.com would ever get in trouble...

Now I know!

Yeah, frankly they’ve been out of line for quite a while now, looks like they got somebody new working for them since about the last half of 2019 that shows no regard whatsoever. I just never noticed it until recently. I encourage BLF members to mark improperly placed commercial posts as spam, and PM me to report repeat offenders.

Can someone please explain the intricacies of the byzantine world of Deals/Codes/Affiliate links/how to/what to not do, for complete neonatal newbs who have zero clue as to what these things are and who have zero clue as to what this terminology means, in an extremely super basic, introductory way?

I keep up with recent advances in neuroscience, but I would not know an affiliate link if a ton of them landed on my ventromedial geniculate body in such a way as to cause my rubrospinal thalamic tract to get out of whack, or my interpeduncular nucleus to become loose, thus causing massive endogenous dihydroxyphenolmethylaminoethanol release.

Btw, everytime Imalent posts advert content in Discussion forums, it reminds me to brush my teeth.

BBtw, it is nice to see the little green dot on sb's post! :)

Sure: Guidelines for Commercial Liaisons and Affiliate Linkers

Thanks! Good to have you here as well!

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What is wrong with Manker ?
I did not know it was bad, I picked a light from the Old Lumens contest from Manker. Please let me know what is wrong.
Thanks :beer:

Thanks for noticing that. It’s been several years, and it looks like they haven’t had any rules violations recently. I just took them off the list.

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You guys have the experience here, I’m just a greenhorn. I did not mean to stir the pot. :wink:
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Thank you SB for the information and the friendly greeting!

Toss some habaneros and tofu and oatmeal in the pot and we got a deal!

Would it be appropriate to list companies who recently started selling UV-C flashlights marketed to look like they’re killing viruses? Those are highly unlikely to help anyone, and can instead be pretty dangerous. It seems like a pretty shameful business practice to prey on fear to sell things which are likely to hurt people.

Sure, go ahead. Thanks for asking.

I’d actually be extremely curious to see if they’re actually UV-C. The last time I researched it, there was only some very expensive medical-field stuff for UV-C LED.

UVC LEDs in disinfection cases pretty much are sold in any Chinese shop, most use like 2-8x 2mW LEDs
More expensive ones like Xiaomi operate only when the case is closed and can be considered safe

[quote=Bwana]

I made THE first order from the new Sofirnlight store when it launched back in January. That order is STILL not here. Although I’m not happy about it, Barry DID write me a very sincere explanation and promised to get it sorted.

I’d rather get an honest and heartfelt effort from THE guy, than ignored. Barry explained the growing pains with his division (which doesn’t run the AliExpress biz BTW), and he made good on some problems I encountered WITH the “Ali” group in the past (which I’ll just say, dropped the ball on some past orders).

I’ve seen Barry active on the site recently, and I see he cares about BLF and he’s working to get the new site sorted out while honing up to ALL issues I brought to his attention- in my case. I feel he and Lan are sincerely doing what they can to get their division up and running while working through recent issues out of their control.

I appreciate them and also the fact they are NOT charging TAX to my state (Kansas, which currently does NOT require inter-state sales taxes to be collected!!!) which AliExpress IS charging that rate (illegally) right now… WHO in China is remitting an 8% tax levy (in any state) back to the USA?

This AliExpress tax (to ANY US State) is a scam I can do without and I appreciate Barry isn’t running things like the AliExpress crew (who I won’t buy from due to this tax BS and past problems not resolved… until Barry stepped up here I was not bringing in any Sofirn for a while).

BTW: several LATER orders from the new sorfirn.com site HAVE arrived in good order.

I, for one, am confident this new site will be a go-to for we BLFers in the near future for most Sofirn products as the prices are fair without TAX “games” and other problems I have had with Qidong and co. the last year.

I’ll take a straight shooter Vs. passive aggressive time wasters EVERY time! Barry IS a straight shooter I look forward to continuing to work with.

One guys opinion here anyway (after buying about $1k in Sofirn alone the last few years).