George, I propose a future pattern — I’m not talking about anyone in this thread or this buy, because I don’t know anything about almost any of them.
I’ve heard repeatedly that on the seller end is, they get claims of problems from people asking for replacement lights, and they don’t know who’s telling the truth.
So everyone goes through a very difficult period trying to prove they have a real problem, and the organizers can’t help because many people just buy, but don’t comment or help fix problems.
Again, that’s not about anyone here who participates. It’s an attempt to say we could be doing a better job — in a future group buy — of doing the QC work the sellers need, to identify problems.
As TK pointed out the payment for working on group buys is having a growing collection of nonworking or broken lights — that’s the reward we get for doing QC.
My suggestion is that — in a future buy — arranging that anyone participating accept we are a formal quality test group, identified, known, and committed to work with the seller to figure out problems.
The seller would not have to deal with unknown people who buy over the counter — this would happen before they sell to the general public.
Ideally — we’d find problems and identify fixes, and they’d get them fixed.
My suggestion is for a future group buy — so for that group buy time anyone participating is also participating in solving the problem.
That way reports of problems are useful for the seller and verified by the group — and they don’t need to be so suspicious and demanding each person prove every problem every time.
Once a problem is understood — it might be fixable.
Just saying — it seems the sellers need more reassurance they can trust the buyers to be telling the truth. Not us who participate here and show pictures etc.
But whoever it is — the ones we hear they have trouble with — who claim trouble without participating in solutionsl
Enough, or too much.
(placed the order on 2-25-16, had it in hand on 3-5-16)