No - from Xtar themselves. And very nice they are too. The reviews ought to be up soon
A few days ago got the package from DD. I ordered 3x Q5 on 14mm stars for 9usd. Got 2x Q5 on 16mm star. :S
Sent a rma complaint. 12h later i could not login to my account anymore. WeirdFoy. SoapFoy? Sent a paypal dispute (with picture showing the emitter and caliper) asking to either resend the 3 proper ones on 14mm or refund me 5 usd since the 16mm stars are not completely useless... but i really needed a 14mm!
A day later i got the 5 usd. Tried to log on DD but could not. Hit the forgot password and changed to a new one. It does work with a new password althrough i knew the right and only password before. Don't know what to think.
UDO however apparently got his 14mm ones. Im happy for him.
Waaaaaaaaaaa!
I hate those random events that are attracted like a magnet to me!
Off to shop for a 14mm at Kai's...
deludedFoy
Today i received my first DD order.This is what i order:
UltraFire CREE Q5 200 Lumens 1-Mode LED Drop-in Module Flashlight Bulb Replacement
UltraFire WF-502B Flashlight Torch Body Tube Host
I pay about 9 dollar for both.
The item were shipped on 28 March. 31 day are not a bad result (especially for italian postal service). Both item are well wrapped up, in perfect condition and work great.
Maybe i was just lucky but, referring to this experience, i have nothing to complain about DD.
I'm still waiting for Q5 emitter from DD... cross the fingers!
I got my two Q5s yesterday, one is 14mm the other 20mm. Both were individually packaged in what seems like antistatic wrapping. Both arrived with no visible defects and work well.
I got 2 on 16mm. I agree on the packaging. My little antistatic bags showed some slight bumps of course made by pressure on them. The dome looks like a bit flattened perhaps but i can't see any other defects since i do not own a microscope. Pretty clean and flat stars however. That i do like. Actually there is no fault at all to speak for these emitters at the price asked.
Just made a dropin with one along with a empty p60 pill+ reflector i got yesterday and a linear 1 mode 3x amc7139 driver from kd. Works quite nicely. 16mm proved to be not useless afterall. With the smooth reflector with stars effect from scratches (couretesy of PA supplier who forgot to put the refelctor in a bag) makes a Q5 XP-E distinctive ringy beam with a well defined hotspot. The spill shows the anomalies of the scratched reflector enough to notice. By replacing it with a flawless one the beam gets more uniform but som minor rings can be seen as expected. I anticipated worse. I tought it would be not that evident (the scratches are not easy).
DinoDirect is labelled as "Avoid" because of their unscrupulous business practices. They are a legitimate seller, and they seem to usually ship their orders, but they are just too dishonest and tricky with their prices and marketing. Really filthy business.
That i do know. They have foolish promotional practices. Why they choose to do it that way i would never understand. For them we might be the walking dumb credit cards but anyone with half a brain can see what's going on.
Good selection? Yes,
Good page design? Yes,
Competitive prices? Rarely often very overpriced with ridicolous discounts! (On a side note, they declare the full value of the merchandise (without the 50,60,70,80% discount) you order in the invoice! So if you order lets say a 20usd item you get a invoice stating 70+usd value. This is just what customs are waiting for to rape me with taxes! This is the dumbest thing they ever did. It serves no purpose other than potentially causing many problems with customs.)
Ontopic.
Shipping? Yes, very fast actually
Packaging? Below average.
Commercial and promotional practices? An insult to anyone intelligence
Rma? Worked for me. Boaz however got a life time supply of soap waiting to be picked up (i feel for you Boaz. You deserve better, no matter what they say for you i'm always by your side, not behind. :) )
This sum it up i guess.
The stealing of others work it was shamefull. I do not like that at all but many HK sellers (not all) steal each other product descriptions (and doing a bad job in the process) along with pictures just because they do not know better. Not to defend them but judging by the replies i got from some in Engrish (google translated from Chinese to german, from german to Italian and from Italian to Cyrilic Russian and finally back to english with a dedicated fake but subtle Cambridge Universtiy grade accent almost unnoticeable.) i was amazed and curious if he even tried to understand me.
Dino, Dino, Dino... get out the cave! Don't act like we are neandertals and start doing normal business practices! If not, there is no shiny coins for you from BLF members and from many who read it. At least not much.
Ooh dear that could be terrible, you could end up paying the amount the items cost in taxes with them doing that.
Well summed up Budgeteer.
Obviously, if you know what sort of animal you are dealing with and you are fully informed about the risks, I obviously don't want to tell anyone what to do. But if you can find the product anywhere else, or if you've never bought from them before, you'll probably want to give them a wide berth.
UPDATE:
The emitters arrived after 44 days. After 40 days i send an e-mail to DD customer service. I had no answer.
The conclusion is: not so bad shop if you are lucky enough to avoid problem with shipping or the item you receive. Otherwise you have to pray your flashlight-god because DD doesn't have a (working) customer service.
The reviews at Dinodirect are all pretty much fake. They are so generic that they can apply them to any flashlight at all.
after 40 days they ignored you 4 days later your stuff arrived giving you exactly one day to make a paypal claim … this isn’t christmas or chinese new year … thats rotten … it means before you get your item you have to open a dispute with them or you’ll never have any paypal protection…i’m off my soapbox on these guys …
This is pretty much the approach you should use with any seller. Italy is notorious for customs delays. Also when some store tell you it has shipped an item im sure often the package is put in a bin and might need a week for someone to come pick them up and provide to really send them.
I agree with this. Virtually all torch descriptions say the same thing, so it is meaningless. The weird thing is the prices change ALL the time. You can refresh a page 10 time and get 5 different prices come up. It is kind of a lottery. I guess you could refresh 50 times, and try to get the lowest price!
I bought an Ultrafire 501B 900 lumen torch. It was really hard getting a fixed price (as mentioned above), but finally placed an order. And no problems- pretty quick delivery. Good product - and seems like what I ordered. I don't believe the 900 lumen thing for one moment, but it seems pretty good quality for the price. Still, the site does seem shady - especially the way the prices vary so much.
I don't think I would buy anything of value from them - but the Ultrafire was around $25, so no big risk.
They are way overpriced, however, if you spend some time searching, and then use a coupon code, you can find some decent priced items. My last order:
I ordered 4 times and everything is ok.
On the last order, they send me a charger and unprotected Trustfire flame 16340, I ordered the protected. I contacted the service and after 6 days (not very fast, but they answer) they offer me a giftcard with the value of protected. That's ok, so I will order items of DD in the future, too.
Which coupon code do you use?
I used cabin10 for 10% off. For customers with more than 1 order placed, use Dino2011RC (10 USD off for purchase over 60 USD)
i am confuse about the site right now, more than 1million webpages were indexed by google, buy the strange thing is that we can not find the root domain in the first search result page, i assume that it would be punished by google, we will not meet the trouble to purchase the budgets lights there, but i really have something really unoptimistic.OGM~
I'm confused about Dinodirect as well. The thread title in this sticky was to AVOID Dinodirect and yet there is a group buy being organized in another thread.
I looked at this site briefly and it looks pretty shady to me. There is the ITP single AAA leadlamp for sale in the $50 range and it says that it is normally something like $150? What the heck? That light has never been any more than in the $50 range.
The light that they group buy is involved with says it is normally in the $70 range? Even the Zebralight that it is a poor copy of it's that expensive.
I realize the price that they are offering for the group buy is $17 but isn't this whole approach kind of shady? What gives?
It's something that's been discussed here before. The term is called "price anchoring", and it's a fairly common practice, but DinoDirect tends to take it to an extreme. The problem is that it's very easy to search through different Chinese vendors and see what the common street price is for any particular item. As such, there's very little point for most savvy buyers. DinoDirect tends to have slightly higher pricing than most.
As for group buys, who knows how it'll turn out? If it works out, great. If not, there's a reason why everyone pays with Paypal.
As it stands, they are at least to be commended for trying to reach out to a group of buyers and try and mend relations.