Don't Buy from EASY (HARD!!!) LIGHT BUY.COM! My Service Nightmare

It doesn’t need stating, but I’ll go on and state it anyway: budget dealer experiences can be stressful and downright infuriating. Such was my experience with easylightbuy.com and I’d recommend in no uncertain terms that you stay away from them. The prices are great, sure, but the service…well, there were times when I had to restrain myself from using some very ugly WWII-era slurs about our usually-suspicious-and-sometimes-greedy friends in the cheap Chinese electronics business. But alas, the better me won out! :slight_smile:

Now this is a very long story and so I’ve had to condense it extremely and omit a great many of the emails because formatting would be a nightmare all by itself, and you’d spend a chunk of your life reading them. But it’s been since March that the HD2010 I bought from the affectionately named HARD LIGHT BUY, and as most will remember, mine came with a serious flicker. I tried and tried, but couldn’t solve it, so I’ve been negotiating to get a new tailcap. I finally got the tailcap, but the problem remained. And I couldn’t get a response after that. They got tired of me real fast.

To set the stage, I opened a Paypal dispute to get a hold of them. It was the only way since I couldn’t find them in the Paypal details. So a “Jacky” emailed me to close it (I cannot get any of the formatting to work, so Jacky is in quotes…

“Dear JH,
I am sorry to respond to you so late because of the Labor’s Day!
I have just heard that you have received the flashlight but there’s something wrong with the tailcap switch.
Now i just want to know that do you want us to send you a new tailcap or a new flashlight?
We have suitable tailcap for this flashlight.
Waiting for your reply.
Best regards,
Jacky”

MY REPLY…

How wonderful to hear from you, Jacky! Thanks for responding.

It appears just the tailcap is the problem. It doesn’t make good contact with the battery and causes flickering, and sometimes doesn’t cut on or goes off. It did this on the first time I activated it. I’ve been using an unprotected battery that is shorter and it works better, but still has some trouble.

So if you would just send a new tailcap, that would be fabulous.

(JH)

JACKY…

“Dear Joe,
We have sent out the suitable tailcap switch of the Ultrafire HD2010 XM-L FLASHLIGHT ,
now you can search the logistics information about your parcel online,
the tracking number and tracking number are in my last email.
So would you please unfreeze the payment?
Best regards,
Jacky”

So I agreed. Then, I was told they can’t send the tailcap because their supplier won’t agree. From them on, it was a different story. I express I may not be able to get the light apart or that the trouble may be from elsewhere and if that was the case, then can they still send a new light. They replied yes, but things got funny from here…

“Dear JH,
If you cannot get the switch to work and nobody can help,
we would be willing to replace the light with a new one.
But at least, please have a try!
And would you please close the PP claim now ?
Waiting for your good news!
Best regards,
Jacky”

So, I close the claim and they send two switches, which I get, but they didn’t include the tool to open the cap. I re-contact them and things started getting more difficult…

“Hello JH,
Under this situation, would you please take it to the maintenance point nearby to have them diagnosed and repaired,
if there’s some costs,we can bear some for you.
regards,Jacky
service”

MY REPLY…

Maintenance point? These lights cannot be repaired in Texas where I live. There is no place here.

Unless you can send me a tailcap or pay to have this sent back for you to fix, then send me another light. If you need proof that the light is broken, I can make a Youtube video and show you.

(JH)

I get no reply for a while, so I email them again…

So let me know what you’d like to do about the light.

Thanks,

(JH)

JACKY…

“Hello,JH,
how much is the cost to send it back to us for repairing?
JACKY”

MY REPLY…

Sending the light back would be a problem because it would cost me no less than $30 US or a lot more than that, which is almost what I paid for the light. It is expensive to ship to China from US, very expensive.

(JH)

JACKY…

“Hello JH,
Then how do you want us to deal with this case?
We have sent you two extra switch and we didn’t charge you even one cent!
how do you think if you sent it back to us for fixing and we both bear half of the freight?
Regards,Jacky
service”

MY REPLY…

Jacky, I appreciate you sending the switches, but remember, I asked for a new tailcap which you would not send. That may have solved the problem, but then I didn’t get the tool to remove the tailcap, so the switches didn’t help. This is Texas. Nearly all lights here come from China. And not only do we not have repair centers for lights, we don’t have the tool to remove light tailcaps, and so here we are with the same problem.

Try and view this from my perspective; I spent my money to have a working flashlight and now I’m going to have to pay MORE money to send back a light that doesn’t work. Better quality control could have prevented all of this. The easiest way is for you to send me a new light.

Remember, I am a customer from BudgetLightForum.com. If we can work this out, I will buy from you again and suggest that others do as well. But if I can’t get this made right, then I’ll be passing that along in the forums and you will lose business over a small matter. I sell things too and will happily offer refunds to my customers and will often even allow them to keep what they would normally have to return. I do this to earn future business.

This is not a big problem. Good customer service skills make this problem very easy to solve. Send a new light. As stated before, if you want me to email a video proving that the light is defective, I can do that.

Please, this has gone on for long enough. Let’s get this taken care of.

Regards,

(JH)

JACKY…

“Hello JH, We will send you a new tailcap ,OK ?
regards,Jacky”

So, the tailcap gets lost in the mail! Another is sent. More time passes. I can’t use my light. Then the tailcap arrives. I try it out and the problem isn’t the tailcap, but something internal. Taking apart the light, I could not find what it was. So, I let Jacky know as she asked…

Hi, Jacky…

I received the cap today and tried it out, but unfortunately, the problem is inside the light head somewhere. I tried with 18650 and 26650 batteries. No change.

If you want to give me new insides for the light, that is fine. If you want to give me a half-refund, that is fine, too, and I will sell this light to someone who can MOD it to make it useful.

Let me know.

(JH)

Hi, Jacky. I am waiting for a reply on where we go from here.

(JH)

More messages. No reply. No reply. No reply.

My last message…

I will wait three more days for a reply, but no longer. I have been patient and had hopes we could get to the bottom of this problem. If I have not heard from anyone in three days’ time, I will be posting this exchange on Budget Light Forum and you will lose a lot more business than just mine.

Looks like I should never have cancelled the Paypal dispute. I will know better next time.

(JH)

So, that wraps up the HD2010 and my last purchase from this bunch.

Huh, bought my Crelant 7g5 v2 from them around a month ago, came in like 3 weeks and came wrapped pretty good.

No problems there. Just be lucky nothing was wrong with it.

Wow! That sounds like a complete nightmare. You could probably send it to Erik and he could install a new driver. If not you could sell it here. :)

Yeah, I wasn’t happy buying from someone with so little rep. But everywhere else it was $90, but easylightbuy has it for $77.

I had a dumb experiance with them as well ..

If you have no problems with them good for you ..if you have a problem it's going to be somewhat painful .

I agree ..........avoid these guys...... they suck

easy ain't easy ......

BTW, the HD2010 is for sale. $15 ships CONUS.

Sorry to hear of your troubles. My transactions with them all went to my satisfaction. I just sent you a PM offer for the flakey HD2010… I’l gladly take it off your hands, should make a nice DIY mod host.

thanks!!

He already sold it.