Buyer Beware.

Buy / Sell Budget Dealer Experiences
1

Before the Father’s Day sale I never heard of Bright Lumen shop in Burbank, CA. I wish that was still the case.

This is my experience. What others experience good or bad is fine. But what happens a lot when people have a bad experience their experience is minimized and discounted by the people who’ve had good experiences.

I called him on the phone and told him that the light(FW21 Pro COPPER) was defective. It has Andural . He tells me I altered the light and damaged it and cannot get a refund.

I told him, are you kidding me? You’re selling me a light where the user gets to choose and customize his settings and that isn’t working properly? And because of that I damaged it?. Right!

He finally gave in and charged me a $27 restocking fee. I have heard of them before, but I Never had a restocking fee in my life. Especially when it’s defective. All in all I paid $105 for the light minus $27 restocking fee minus $11 shipping it back to him.

So I net $67 for a malfunctioning light that I paid $105 for.

He told me the light had two scratches on it and the Box had a scuff mark That’s why I was charged $25 restocking fee. He claims there was nothing wrong with the light. His word against mine.

That’s kind of ironic because when I told him the issues I was having he didn’t even know how Anduril worked. He said he had to contact someone from BLF!

Regarding the scratches, I had the light in my hands for 30 minutes, inside my condo with wall to wall carpeting.

The guy is a liar. He did everything he could just to get more money back.

When it is defective a restocking fee should not even apply. Again, if it’s not defective most places would give you 100% refund for that light. A lot of them will give you two weeks or so no matter what your reason for returning it is and give you a full refund.

I knew from the beginning when I talked to him on the phone that this was going to be like pulling teeth to get a refund. Saying that I damaged the light and altered it!

So some of you may know this place and have had good experience but just beware not everybody will.

It’s the worst experience I ever had with a dealer in the United States.

If you buy merchandise from him and need to return it for whatever reason, Good Luck.

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2

What kind of problem did you have with the light?

3

Did you pay with PayPal or a credit card?
If I receive something defective, I refuse to pay a restocking fee.
I’ll get all of my money back via PayPal or my credit card first.
That’s why I try to pay for everything with a credit card funded PayPal account.
I also try to avoid buying from places that charge a restocking fee, or charge for return shipping.

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4

Order lights from AX and BG, better and cheaper. That guy in CA orders it from China and marks it up. Then you come along and buy it. No reason for this.

Forget about all those resellers of Chinese lights. Go to the source.

Mine come in 10 to 20 days.

I had one problem with a Convoy and Simon send me a new one after sending him a video of the issue.

Forget about trashing them online, speak with your wallet and take your business elsewhere.

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5

Sorry to hear your trouble. But it happens sometimes when buying stuff on online shop. Thus I always taking a video when I unboxing packages, testing the product on arrival and even when I’m boxing it again before send it back. In case such things happen.
Buy a tripod with a smartphone holder, if you have to take such videos often.

6

I used my credit card. I forgot to mention I filed a claim with my bank.

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7

it would not let program the thermal configuration. They are simple steps I tried about 10 times and then tested the light and it kept stepping down in 20 seconds.

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The primary purpose of this thread is to make other people aware.

Ordering from China definitely has his drawbacks.

Had experience with a Haiklite from BG that was Dreadful. And of course that Neil Guy.

I started a thread, (with no responses!) About Wurkkos. I am very impressed with them I sent them a video of a defective light and they sent me another one. I did not have to send the defective one back.

Banggood would not do that. Shipping was $75 to China and I was supposed to pay for it. So there’s always different viewpoints. Some Chinese dealers are worth it others or not.

I will not hesitate to order from Wurkkos again

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9

I left out another key thing in my op. He had my light nine freaking days before he is issuing a refund, which is supposedly generated today. But I hope my bank can get all of it back I told them the story.

10

Nice! :+1:

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I have ordered from them twice. No problems and fast shipping.

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12

You sure it doesn’t have a purely timed step down? Or maybe hot enough (internally), fast enough to hit the 70 C Andruil max in that 20 seconds. I checked some reviews, but saw no specific mention of how the step down works.
I know the way you like to use your lights, (blast turbo for as long as possible and then cool down for short periods) but maybe this one just won’t do what you want. At least for as long as you want it to…

Still they should have a decent return policy, of that I agree. But maybe the light was truly not broken.

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I don’t doubt that.

You most certainly didn’t have any issues with the light and did not try to get a refund.

That is where my problems arose and I would suspect others would also have difficulty getting ALL their money back.

14

100 percent correct. Sorry to hear of your plight. Hopefully it gets resolved to your satisfaction.

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15

70c is a thermal step down. It does not have a Timed step down.

I could be wrong but I kind of doubt it, I’ve never heard of a light that has both a thermal and a Timed step down. That wouldn’t make any sense. It’s one or the other.

I can’t remember who reviewed it but it took about a minute to get to 70c.

16

Thx. If it doesn’t another lesson learned the hard way!

17

First off hope you get your money back if the product didn’t live up to the hype.

Here is pretty through review of the Aluminum version;

Looks like it steps down way before 20 seconds continuous and gets progressively worse with repeated turbo blasts, really have to wonder if it isn’t just the heat generated at the LED plate isn’t causing thermal “Valve Float” so to speak. Like just laying down saying “Set my thermal limit wherever you want, I’m not going to get there, I’m tapped out because of not enough surface area”

Everyone says Aluminum dissipates better than Copper so this version in theory should hold better.
It is a small head for that horsepower and I know you use the best hot rod/runtime batteries on the market.
Just think it is another flashlight that is WOW for the instant and then poof, reality of design.

18

I wonder if that was cut from the UI while modifying it to fit the T85.

Totally understandable to ask for a refund on it though because it’s not easily flashed like an Emisar, Wurkkos, or Sofirn.

19

The default limit is 45 °C, but you can raise it up to 70 °C manually. This only works when the temperature sensor is calibrated, though, and this must be done by hand with the t85.

I’ve seen many of such lights. Initially they’ll throttle down after a fixed time and then regulate to a specific temperature if it’s too warm. When you trigger turbo again it doesn’t wait for the timeout when it gets too hot and throttles back immediately.

But Anduril doesn’t have a timeout.

Nothing was cut from the firmware. The t85 was the original microcontroller used for Anduril and the FWxx flashlights were the first lights with Anduril. Years later so many features were added that they didn’t fit onto the flash memory anymore. But temperature regulation and its settings were never excluded.

@Cochise334ever
I’m pretty sure that light is so old that it’s still running Anduril 1 by default. The thermal configuration works different than with Anduril 2. Also you’ll get immediate feedback while configuring the current temperature and temperature limit. So I guess nothing was wrong with the light and it’s a user error. Either it doesn’t work at all or everything works as intended. There’s no way that only the temperature configuration was broken.

20

Yes. I know it runs on Anduril 1. I also know that you have to calibrate the temperature. I tried to do. That. That’s the first step before picking the thermal limit with all those clicks. 70c is 40 clicks because of the 30 default clicks.

. Okay then I was wrong about them not having both thermal and timed step down.

But I knew for certain that Andural only has a thermal step down. This is from hundreds and hundreds hours of experience using four of their lights on Max output for extended periods until I needed to take my hand off and dial it down… this has applied to Both Andural one and two

And yes I’m sure there was more wrong with the light but I never got to that point.