Sofirn Warning! *Shipping Now Take Many Moons*

When you order from Ali you wait for 1 month and if the product does not work or is damaged you are left to fight it out and rely on Paypal or credit card as leverage.

vs Amazon, 2 days to maybe 5 business days at most and if it is screwed up, el no problemo, instant authorization to return and credit back to you once the UPS tracking kicks in usually.

Also got the SP10S with the 351 emitter yesterday and can’t put it down.
Own all the other versions and this one is the sheet.

Later,
Keith

It’s an awesome light. Sofirns genius for putting in the 351 in a single AA/14500 light. Such a great emitter that doesnt get enough love. Even on the nimh laddaloop it’s really bright and the beam and high cri are amazing. Only thing that’s taken getting used to is locking it out (or it turns on in pocket) and the fact that moon isn’t the first mode.

With the 14500 memory works, so you could turn it off in moon and then when restarted you will be in moon.
As far as lockout, the 4 clicks is too much work/time, just twist tailcap 1/8 turn and get in habit of turning cap when pulling from pocket, comes natural quite quickly.

Am currently running a Eneloop and am kinda glad moon is not first mode because in daytime you will not realize you have it on.
Turbo doesn’t do much after Eneloop runs down some, but that is good reminder to me to recharge soon.
The strobe is quite the attention getter too, don’t normally use that but could come in handy if needed.

Things to consider:

1st) I bought a crapload of Sofirn lights a few days back when Sofirn came through and stepped up on the SP10S earlier (details upthread). It was great service. They are honorable and honest businessmen. They make great product as well. I then ordered @ 5 each of the D25 headlamp with micro USB charging and 5 of the D03 dive light as they are both awesome products and the price to performance is rock solid -like most Sofirn lights. Than ks fellow BLfers for the heads up on the sales. (fin in particular)

2nd) Banggood is saying USA shipping from China is 90 days now. For anything from China, anything, and from any Mfg. You will see it move to “being shipped” or some such in a week or so, and then your package will sit. That is nobodys fault. That’s the way shipping is currently. So relax and give us a shake to wake us up August 2nd if you are still jonesing or looking for your package:-) I’m referencing free or cheap shipping from China, not someone who paid $18 for prime shipping via USA Amazon.

3rd) Realize that there are multiple issues with China shipping currently. 1st) Less airplanes. Anyone still flying even within the US point to point will tell you that they had 3 planes cancelled and then when the 4th one wasn’t cancelled there was 12 people in the entire plane.

4th) There are other large issues at play globally. The US President had blocked all Chinese flights at the end of January due to Chinese government being underhanded, disingenuous and their intransigence over their virus lies. I’m not sure where that issue is currently as the President doesn’t communicate with me, but for Chinese Mfg, as I know of it the other issue is that USA paid free shipping to our country from China is ending in July. That is, assuming we get the planes working again (likely) and that instead of lies from both sides we start a mutually beneficial working relationship again. Commercially there is every reason we should work with the Chinese. We have lots of great things they need, and the reverse is most assuredly true as well.

In case anyone is not aware, EVERY package that flew in from China that weighed less than 4.4 lbs was paid for by the US taxpayer. It was not “FREE” shipping. It was free to the purchaser and the Chinese shipper, but your taxpaying neighbors all were forced to pay for it. When President Trump learned of it he decided that was (rightfully so) an insane thing and negotiations caused that to change. As I understand it currently, the free shipping that US taxpayers have been paying 100% of will be phasing out in the next 5 years starting in July. Change = uncertainty. That’s why you are not getting product like you use to. Don’t blame the Chinese company. There have been some strong Chinese firms come out of this who will undoubtedly find a way to make it all work flawlessly, but relax and give it some time. Chinese merchants tend to be honest, smart and hard working: you’ll get your stuff (or your money back). Eventually. But relax and let it work itself out. It’s all good. Pray our countries don’t clash, we’d do well to work together, and not at each other. If we choose war, and it is a choice that may be easily made by either side, forget about ever seeing your package ever again….and likely your loved ones and everything you prize and value as well. For the Chinese, sad to say but if we get that pain coming our way, say a conflict that appears minor over the Spratlys and we get dead sailors, expect your entire country to be flattened and nothing but glass. No buildings…no people,…no animals…just glass. Pray we can avoid that, together we can both prosper as long as neither side gets greedy and we both can remain reasonable.

Regardless, to BLF forum members: don’t blame Banggood, Aliexpress or Sofirn if that occurs. As a non-related a casual aside, I need to replace the NBC filters in my Israeli made gas masks if anyone has a budget source, please post it up.

Take care all:

Bottom lime, it’s complicated. It would be a bummer if China stuck taxes on US exports, since it would make it less appealing to buy stuff from there. Folks who have to pay VAT could say something about that as well maybe. I try to buy local (from within the US) as much as I can, but when I can get something that costs $20 stateside from China for like $8, and have cheap shipping (I seldom to never got the AE free shipping amd paid extra for tracking, etc), then I’d do it. But when it gets within like $5 difference with shipping, I’ll buy stateside. Like the Sofirn light from axon, shipped from the US. Total cost was $18, vs $16 buying from their AE store. However, their more expensive lights, like the Q8 or SP36 are considerably more expensive vs buying from China, like $20 or $30 more, amd there are other examples as well of other prpducts.

If only it didn’t bury moon mode so deeply it would be almost ideal.

I just got this in email:

No, I think I’ll wait for the mail carrier to bring it to my house. WTF?

Deliveries to your door aren’t the standard everywhere.

Just received a light from Banggood that I ordered 25 days ago from a CN warehouse.
Remarkable: I did not arrive in a dark-grey bag but in an orange bag with “Banggood” on it…
And there were no Chinese tags or labels, just Dutch ones.

I placed a bunch of Banggood orders for all sorts of products on May 7. All of them have arrived over the past few days (May 29-June 2). So, 20-25 days, which is normal as far as I’m concerned. However, the same can’t be said for Sofirn, where I have orders placed but haven’t even been handed off to a shipper in 8 days. Once a package is handed off to a shipper, there isn’t much a seller can do. However, what happens within their facilities is entirely under their control. Somewhat similarly, sellers DO have choices in who they use for shippers and class of service used. In the USA, I think most people would be willing to say that FedEx Express beats USPS any day of the week.

I’m posting the stats on my orders as a spin-off of threads I’ve seen on other forums, where members were posting how long certain applications were taking to be processed, so we all could get a feel for what’s normal vs. when it was time to be concerned and reach out to resolve it.

I’m getting a lot of mixed messages from AE. My Convoy orders arrived yesterday, after going to San Fransisco, then Portland, OR, then Phoenix, AZ, then back to Portland amd finally to my mailbox yesterday. I have 3 other orders, one from Shockli, two from random stores on AE that are all over the place! Says in customs in Portland this morning then delivered today. We’ll see though. I opened a dispute for the other order that AE denied saying the item is still in transit…

Movement. Order delivered to Pitney Bowes Newgistics today in SoCal. Tracking says delivery on Monday. Once I have it in my hands I’ll breathe a sign of relief and be happy to take a break from China shipping. I guess I’m just not patient enough for it.

Yeh, I held off on a few goodies, too, ’til things shake out.

From Sofirnlight I’m waiting for:

1x Sofirn Q8
1x Sofirn Q8 host
1x C8F 21700 host
2x SP32A V2 host
3x Q8 anduril drivers
1x Q8 diffuser

$40 for a Q8, $11.99 for the host, $5.49 for an SP32 host …

I just got one of my long-delayed orders. The one from March, I think.

No changes.

Parts from Intl-Outdoor:
2020-04-29 12:24USJFK / Despatched to overseas
2020-04-20 23:30HK / Hand over to airline.
2020-04-20 18:01Information Received
2020-04-20 17:15Shenzhen,China / Depart from facility to service provider.
2020-04-16 14:40Hongqiao,Shanghai,China / Shipment arrived at facility and measured.

Flashing kit from Intl-Outdoor:
2020-05-16 00:35Information Received
2020-05-15 23:59Shenzhen,China / Depart from facility to service provider.
2020-05-15 23:30HK / Hand over to airline.
2020-05-12 17:49Hongqiao,Shanghai,China / Shipment arrived at facility and measured.
2020-05-12 17:49Hongqiao,Shanghai,China / 4PX picked up shipment

LT1- no batteries (Sofirn Amazon):
2020-04-09 09:37Nanning City, delivered to air transport
2020-04-09 08:20Nanning City, arriving at Nanning International Exchange Station
2020-04-08 16:18Nanning City, leaving Nanning International Parcel Processing Center, the next stop , Nanning International Exchange Station
2020-04-08 14:17Nanning City, Nanning International Parcel Processing Center has been exported directly sealed
2020-04-08 14:15Nanning City, Export Customs/Security Release
2020-04-07 18:14Nanning City, Export Customs/Security Retention Pending Inspection
2020-04-06 19:22Nanning City, leaving the East China Collection and Investment Department, the next stop , Nanning International Parcel Processing Center
2020-04-06 16:20Nanning City, “East China Solicitors” has received, agent: Wu Shiyi, Tel: 1777777777777777

Buying from China is very problematic at present. I think I will stop & wait for things to improve, it just too hard.
Actually I have lost a parcel ordered from the USA to me in Australia so its not just China.
If there is anything I need I will buy locally, it will be more expensive but I will get order in a few days rather that a few months - maybe.

Shutdown has killed postage everywhere. Locally it took a customer of mine 6 weeks to receive their order.

Mail within the USA has been quite rapid during all of this, faster than normal. My local carrier said he only had 300 pieces of mail to deliver for our area on a day last week. That’s 10% of what he’s used to delivering.

That’s what happened here in NZ. Just wait until it goes back to normal and there’ll be a flood of packages clogging up the system. In NZ, one courier company received 3.5 million packages over 2 weeks once level 4 lifted.