So is a refund the way to go or makes it sense to wait a bit for the new light?
What is going on right now is that I do not believe that Tinywind is going to do a dual emitter custom light any time soon. I did not hear back what became of the Trustfire contact, and the other suggestions that were done involved lights from suppliers that Tinywind has not have relations with sofar. I suggested to at least list the dual Small Sun light in the regular collection (no group buy, no customisation), I hope they do so because it may be an interesting host.
There will however be a group buy on the Jaxman U1. That was my idea and it is a light that involves a new supplier as well, and according to Tinywind that implies that no bottom prices can be had. I tried my best to get a good deal out of it and the deal that we get is the best one I got. And I think the price is good. It will sell at TW for 29.99, the group buy price will be 21.99, and people who missed out on the first group buy will get an extra 2 dollar discount, so 19.99. Tomorrow I will start a group buy thread about it.
Someone who knows something about UV lights should do a review on this Rominsen.
I do not have a profession in which I use them, but my collection 365nm is getting quite extensive and have done some tests comparing them.
Hank has very kindly offered me one of his lights :-), so when it arrives I will spend a few words on the quality of the light.
I’ve gone for the refund as there is no clear direction from TW.
I’m very frustrated with the way this is going from Tinywind standpoint. It should have been easy enough to discuss with Romisen to rorder another 160pcs, or just damm create a new order with 200 MOQ, send the promised 160 and sell the other 40 for 20bucks (they’re already planning to sell some this way anyway).
But no, they have to go the silent / hanky panky way, and I can’t help but smell dishonesty. I can really wait if there is a real problem and there is open communication. But this is not the case here unfortunately.
There will be one done by mhanlen. It will be a good one. Check out one of his memorable reviews. :bigsmile:
Review: Thorfire HL02 LED Lantern Plus Chainsaw Murder.
Does this mean that with our $19.99 credit from not receiving the original light, we can get the new light? ($21.99 less $2.00 is $19.99, correct)? If so, that would be how I would do it, though missing the original light.
I'm pretty sure no: TW's coupons are clearly for undiscounted items and not usable for group buys. Of course that makes economic sense for them.
In my conversation with Tinywind it became clear that 22 dollar was the minimum acceptable price for the Jaxman, and believe me, I tried to get it lower. The 2 dollar extra for the disappointed people of this group buy was all that I could achieve.
Thanks djozz for the hard work. The Jaxman looks ok to me.
Anyone know which UV emitter it will have ????
After the unexpected thing that has happened, 50 lights delivered out of 200, I do not blame TW for not having a clear direction, and what direction they went (first trying to get the lights made elsewhere with the option for refund, together with discount coupons, however limited they are for our needs) to me sounds sensible and like good intentions to make things right. But there's only so much that a small company can afford.
From what information there is, I see no dishonesty whatsoever, and only clear communication. But they are a company too and I do not blame them for keeping an eye on how much they can afford to loose on this.
You do not know how the Romisen company relates to TW, or how communication between them went in this incident (I do not know either) so you can not judge how 'easy' or logical a re-order would be. TW mentioned a lost trust in Romisen, and again I see no clues of dishonesty here.
If there would be present reason to distrust Tinywind I would immediately stop working on group buys with them, but what I hear here are blind assumptions.
( :tired:)
So djozz, the way you see it, Romisen cheated TW by claiming to send 210 pcs of the item, but only 50 is in there?
If this were the case, I would understand the lack of trust between the two.
But this further enforce my point, there is no clear communications to us. The only thing we know is that 160pcs is “lost”, why is unknown, from whose endpoint we don’t know, and for unknown reason re-order is not being done (no reason stated for this), and furthermore no timeline for further action.
I’m not placing any blame game here, just this is the way I see it. Perhaps having a business myself, maybe I project my own experience here too much but this is just not the way I would do business.
Any way I do appreciate your hard work very much, thanks for that. Cheers. 
Maybe RoMiSen found more profitable work. The price and complexity of the group buy light suggest that they might have accepted the order only because of a shortage of work to keep the factory paying the rent. They lose Tiny Wind and BLF as costumers, but that is not so important to them if they weren’t making a profit on us anyway.
Being in Amsterdam, and doing the group buy entirely via the internet, I have of course no way to physically check anything that has been going on. I have to rely on what people say and how they say it, and interpret that (I think that I'm not bad in that though). So in the end I can be entirely wrong about who did what wrong and when. That said, in my vision, Tinywind may have been clumpsy at things (still are), and works from a different cultural context that does not come across sincere at all times, but I think they were genuinely upset about not receiving all the lights from Romisen and have good intentions setting things straight to us within what they think they can afford to do.
It also could be related to the Chinese stock market crash which happened during the middle of this group buy.
I really don’t know, I’m just speculating, but the crash might have interrupted a wide variety of things.
My guess is someone realized these lights feel, and look, like they cost far far more than we’re paying for them, and grabbed them to give away as bribes or sell for much more somewhere.
This is what i thought also.
^
It's the time lag from when they said they received and were inspecting the lights to when we were notified of them only receiving about a quarter of the order that makes this all smell funny. Everywhere I have worked, the first thing done when an order is received is to count the number of units actually received and to inspect for obvious damage. It doesn't help that they were proactively hands on (individual PM's, etc) and now they seem hands off from my perspective. TinyWind should have been more proactive and got in front of this situation. At this point, they sound be doing damage control and honestly communicating directly with us. Best thing to do when you are holding other people's money in your hands.
Blinky1 wrote:
ImA4Wheelr wrote:How are you all requesting your refunds?
I don’t see any way to do it on their website. I emailed them (maybe a week ago) using the customer service email address on their website and have not receive a reply yet.
I got an email from sapphire few days ago, offering refund or change to other items. Have you checked that you are not getting one of those 50 lights?
Thanks for the info and input. Yes, checked and double checked the list when it was posted. I haven't received any communications from TinyWind yet.
brad wrote:
Gmail had sent some of my Tinywind emails into my spam file.
Thanks for the idea. I did check that several times.
cbrake10 wrote:
I sent mine to the orders email address and included my order number.
Thank you. I had emailed TinyWind's cs@tinywind account. I just now sent an email to orders@tinywind now and alsow sent a PM to TinyWinds BLF account here. It's the weekend in China right now. So I probably won't hear anything until Sunday night (My time) earliest.
What does not help is that Saphire is on a leave right now (marriage), and her replacement who will answer PM's is away until tuesday.
The issue that Tinywind (Saphire) was not aware of the 160 missing lights may have something to do with the warehouse being in a totally different location (1000+kilometers) than her office. That is just not handy for a company. And I certainly do not exclude that something fishy went on in the warehouse. But if the lights had gone missing in their own warehouse it was certainly not known by the staff, it is just not in the interest of the Tinywind company.
I opted to use the coupon towards a Solarforce Z1. I looked through hundreds of lights under $25, and this is the only one that even piqued my interest. I thought that I would have to pay the $2.55 difference, but Saphire sent the light as a replacement for the missed GB.
I am over my disappointment with the failed GB, but would be really happy to see another GB for a double emitter light like the last one.