Rating: Dealextreme.com

http://dealextreme.com

Pros:

  • Good selection
  • Good prices
  • Decent website organization and search function

Cons:

  • Woefully slow, incommunicative, and indifferent customer service
  • Dishonest, deceptive marketing
  • Dishonest, deceptive customer service when something goes wrong
  • Payments are received instantly, but refunds need many weeks to be issued
  • High rate of products that are defective or missing advertised features
  • Chaotic, disorganized shipping system and very high rate of errors
  • Usually extremely slow turnaround time from order to the postal system

I would give it 3 1/2 because of there good prices but snail mail slowness.......

DX has been decent so far. I have received 3 orders from them and have two more on the way. One of the orders took over 4 weeks. I filed a complaint with DX, which was ignored for a couple of weeks, then a dispute with PayPal and DX promised a refund (but didn't). Anyway, the light showed up before I had to request a refund from PayPal and DX did eventually respond to my original complaint (always file a dispute with PayPal before 45 days goes by from when you placed your order, otherwise PayPal won't do anything). This was in November when DX had a note on their site saying there was a shortage of air mail slots for them. I think my light came by surface. So they have poor customer service, but I think it would have worked if I waited long enough and had a problem that didn't resolve itself eventually. You can read more about the dispute on my blog.

Also I don't like that DX hasn't been publishing reviews lately. They are still posting comments, but I've submitted two reviews and they were both ignored (both were positive). [Well, just a day or so after writing this, they started publishing new reviews again and the review I wrote in November showed up!]

I'm not crazy about the search on DX. If you enter multiple terms, it will turn up anything with any part of either term. Plus they just have entirely too many flashlights and batteries that seem to be nearly the same thing with different brand names or slightly different features. I went shopping for a Trustfire 18650 battery and there were way too many choices, not even counting all the Ultrafire 18650's. They should sell a protected version and an unprotected version. That's really it.

DX doesn't seem to exaggerate lumens as much as KD. The only light I bought from them was the Trustfire XP-E F23 advertised as 150 lumens, which seems about right with a 10440 battery. But they also advertise the low as 80 lumens, and it is more like 10-15 lumens (which is a lot better low, so that was a nice surprise!). I ordered some li-ion batteries and the crazy universal charger and have been very happy with them. Those, as well as my second F23, both arrived in about 2 weeks.

Dont get me wrong if they have something that i like then i will put my order in......just not used to waiting 2wks for my stuff to get here.......waiting sucks and i tell my wife to keep a look out for the mailman.

DX gets three stars from me. They've always delivered, although painfully slowly at certain times. The best thing to do with DX is to order single items and the sit back and wait..............and wait.............

The website is better than most of their competitors, imo.

Just sat and worked through the DX website to see how much I've spent there since 2007. Decided I really, really didn't want to know when the total was over $1500 before I got far down the page. And no individual order has ever been as much as $100.

Think that says clearly what I think about DX. I've had 60 orders from them since 2008. While they are not close to perfect, they beat the competition for me.

How well do DX obey their returns policy? They say http://www.dealextreme.com/TermsAndPolicy.html depending on which part of the website you read they will reimburse return shipping up to 60% of the item cost or max $40 for DOA (5 days of arrival) and 35% within 90 days of shipment. Has anyone had their claim rejected? Or returns within the 90 day period refused? What about the 90-150 day period where they claim they will pay to ship any replacement back to you? Has anyone been successful with that or do they always say it can't be replaced/was your fault/whatever?

I know their customer service is slow an inefficient so you may spend 15 days and many emails or something before you convince them the item is indeed defective but I'm wondering whether they do usually deal with returns properly in the end.

Of course I believe they will often just either refund you the cost or send a replacement without your returning it when you can convince them it's defective (e.g. if you get a torch and the dropin is defective or you buy something to fix it or whatever they will refund that)

For some lights they will make you mail it back either to China or an address in the US (if you are in the US). You generally have to provide some photographic proof the item doesn't work (a picture or video). They seem to respond once per day, so you write in and the next day you get a response. For the number of lights they sell that fail, they do a decent job of offering returns and refunds.

I've only had one light that failed and it was cheap ($14) so they just gave me a store credit (which eventually became a refund).

Yes, sometimes if the light is cheap enough they will just send you a new one. It's a good idea to send them pictures or send them a short video (in a ZIP file, as their system doesn't allow video attachments).

One annoyance with DealExtreme is they follow the PayPal e-mail for the order and if it's different there's no way it seems to connect an order with your account even if it's made while logged in etc. You have to create a new account to get proper access. There isn't even a way to change e-mail for an account, apparently even their customer service team can't! However since the tipping points thing is free I guess the only annoyance is the need for two accounts, you can transfer points from one to the other so don't lose points.

Lightake have an option to input your PayPal e-mail into your account. Kaidomain just connect the order to your account (if made from the account) rather then the PayPal e-mail, ditto for buyincoins.

Never had much of a problem with DX. They sent me the wrong charger, so they sent me another (after a long dialogue). Recently, they sent defective batteries, so they have sent a replacement (afer a shorter dialogue). I've bought around 7-8 lights from them and have only had flickering issues with one of them. Also, my tickets are answered quite quickly. However, keep in mind that I've spent over $250 on DX since late May this year. Maybe they're using statistical software to model buyer habits, etc.

Did anybody else noticed that DX is pretty fast recently? My last few orders arrived in 10-15 days :)

Hrvoje

Look at this post http://www.budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/379

Can't say I have noticed any difference. My last order from 4 days ago still says "waiting for supplier", the previous order from 3 weeks ago is still waiting for one item. This is pretty normal DX stuff. I don't mind much that it takes a while but I wish they would admit to stuff not being in stock and give some idea of when they will actually be able to ship it. Or if they will be able to ship it. If they were to say something like "Shipping takes 1-3 weeks" rather than "in stock" I'd be a lot happier.

I suspect it varies by season depending on the load on HK Post. I don't order from DX from the end of October until into January as that will take forever to get the stuff and ship it - then the post will take forever.

The best measure is probably time to ship rather than time to arrive. HK Bulk Mail is almost always slower than regular mail, but that costs less which is reflected in lower prices for us which is a fair compromise.

Lately KD has turned over a new leaf - they used to take approximately forever but my last few orders from KD have all been faster than DX.

None of the stuff I've ordered last couple weeks have been shipping. Now it'll be at least after the chinese holiday. The neutral drop-in from like a month back now says "temporary stock shortage, contact us if necessary". Well I wrote them a week ago, and....nothing.

Goddamn DX.

It's taking DX forever to issue me a refund. I ordered the Eastward thinking it has an R5 but thanks to the knowledgeable folks here who said it doesn't have an R5, I canceled my order immediately. This was back on 9/6. Without any refund issued, I emailed customer support on 9/21 and they said they would cancel it in 1-7 days. The status shows Pending Refund Authorization and I still haven't received my refund.

Same thing for a 504b here. I cancelled it right away to order a Skyray xp-g instead. Now after a month I've order the 504b again (LOL), and still haven't gotten the refund for the original. Sent them a notice a week ago and .... nothing.

I see in posts above that some rightly so complains for DX´s seemingly non existing will to answer

mails and not make a refund when requested to do so.

Like agenthex I had ordered a warm white dropin and got the same message: temporary stock shortage,

contact us if necessary. I knew what that meant, I´ll never get it, so I requested a refund. I also knew

that if I ever got an answer, it would take a long time, so at the same time started a dispute at PayPal.

I also knew that I´ll probably still not hear anything from DX, so after 2-3 days I changed the dispute to a

claim. An hour or so later my mailbox showed a mail from DX: Order cancelled and I have been refunded.

Thats the way to do it. Dont wait for DX to answer, they dont, go to Papa (they need him!) and get your

money back at once.

I tried to wait and send 2 mails. Took them 32 days.

My wrong driver will be replaced, complained 25th and got the promise of replacing it on 30th, I got the impression that a citation of DX forum entries (with people who had the same problem) and sending many pictures helps, because they won't ask so many times for different things ... with each answer taking a week to respond. Now waiting for supplier... gotta' love DX for testing my patience.