I didn’t order a haikelite because I decided for the L6 instead, but have been following this thread very closely… I’m shocked that haikelite hasn’t posted anything in more than two weeks, despite the fact that they have been constantly online almost on a daily basis.
I wonder if they have been addressing your issues via private messages?
No I mean products with known flaws sold for groupbuys.
Cheated? Well that will remain to be seen I guess as and that is a sort of individual thing I think, what were your expectations and what did you base your expectations on?
For me I’ve been judging my lights by the same means that convinced me to buy them in the first place, and it’s been by looking at what I saw and read in the reviews, the quality of the product I saw in those reviews and then what arrived at my house in those same boxes, and that is about where everything else changed as far as what I expected and what I got.
But then don’t forget that nice note that was sent to all of us in this GB that said something like, they are taking a loss selling these lights for the price they did and the only reason they were doing this for “US” is because they want more “Nice people” to know of HaikeLite, just re-read the GB message, ya I guess cheated is a good way to put it but more liked conned.
Hopefully you get a really good light or lights, I don’t think everyone is disappointed, but I obviously am very upset and do feel taken advantage of to put it nicely, and I do feel like I was sold lights that were definitely QA’d and failed miserably, so instead of sending them to BG or GB and taking a chance selling them there, they sold them to me.
I’m not speaking for the entire group, some folks are happy with their lights, I think, so now I have basically expensive hosts that I will have to rebuild.
Do the batteries make contact, no and yes, depends, I removed all those stupid black things around the positive connections and then I got perfect connections and realized also that I never had to buy the batteries they suggested, go back a few pages or so or last page and I posted some pictures of those rings that did nothing really but minimize the flat tops you can use as long as they were 10A cells.
I hate PayPal disputes and just wish I could have gotten what I saw in the reviews, so Alca asked me to give him a few days and that was yesterday so I’ll give him to the 1st and if nothing fixes these issues with my lights then I guess it’s on, I just hate disputes of any sort.
Boy, I'm getting 5,300 lumens, 140 kcd on my MT07 with a resistor mod on SANYO GA's. I would strongly recommend anyone who gets either one of these lights to remove the plastic guards around the battery + contact, on both sides, so total of 4. I also bypassed the springs. I've had even GA cells not make good contact with those plastic pieces there.
I actually mean this GB and not other, why would you ask that?
Heck ya, the most famous one to my recollection was the Cometa light, makes me sick to think of that light and I bought two of those things also, that one was bad, far worse than this could ever get.
Will34 was smart, the L6 is proven and solid, this was basically buying blind and by reviews from respected members but I can guarantee you the lights they reviewed weren’t just pulled off the shelf.
Edit: Not sure if I understood the “known flaws” question completely, the Cometa light was more of a con job with flaws, huge flaws and a lot of lies to go with it.
I don’t really know of a deliberate act of selling lights in a GB that was known by the company as being like their factory seconds or not good enough to sell any other way than a tricky group buy, that is something only the company would probably know, not us, but just looking at the lights I got and private conversations with Alva and some minimal admissions about QA issues is all I have to form my opinions, and they are only my opinions and not based on anything else, there has been no admission of deliberately selling bad lights here in this GB so I hope that is clear, just really sloppy work if anything and absolutely no QA.
I feel you, and that is my intention. I’m basing it on the reviewer’s review also since Alva base this GB on the reviewer’s review.
Well with groupon discounts, it turned out that some restaurants serve different quality of meat/fish depending on whether people pay full price or not. So I wonder if something similar can happen with discounts/groupbuys regarding flashlights, not necessarily with Haikelite.
Well maybe, go back and read the message Alva sent all of us for this group buy, that really gets under my skin now, but at the time I thought wow, how decent a guy this is but now I’m really second guessing a lot of issues.
Well, to me it seems that Haikelite simply has a production issue affecting almost each light. That’s a different situation. I’m talking about a possible situation where let’s say 10% of the products are rejected due to inferior anodisation or poor soldering: the lights do work, but are inferior, and maybe more likely to fail. Maybe this 10% is sold for less to be sold as a groupbuy…
Isn’t that not being honest? if HaikeLite mentioned that the factory rejected goods will be sold in this GB at a very special price, i’m sure there won’t be any unhappy people here since we are paying for what it’s stated. But the promise in this groupbuy was specification that match with the reviewer product. And the best part is after the GB was close HaikeLite did not even make the effort to answer any of the problem here despite being constantly online.
I’m talking about a different case here. Neither cases are of course good.
Microbluebear, or ‘acebeam’, did something to a lesser degree in a GB. I don’t recall if it was ever determined that they knew the products were essentially rejects. They sent out otherwise good lights except aesthetically the anodization colors didn’t match well for about $100.
I think this HaikeLite deal is a bit worse. I’d rather have mismatched colors than underperformance, poor mode spacing, short tubes, and damaged lights.
There is an application for smartphones called Luxometer, for windows phones, something similar exist for Android phones too. You can’t get exact lux numbers probably but you can compare two lights to check the difference. I got 850lux with mt03 pointed to ceiling and 77 with fake skyray king (latticebright t6, it’s bad still not too bad).
If you have flashlights with known output compare it to your Haikelite and let us know results.
Comparing my MT03 in both NW and CW.
My CW MT03 compares favorable with a known 9000 lumen light (3x26650) reviewed by a trusted member on this forum.
Although human observation and tint play a role.
My NW MT03 is even brighter, fluke maybe, but what a great light.
Something is up because this is a monster bright light in NW.
It is sad a few did not receive the same quality of product.
I purchased a CW MT03 before the groupbuy and also one during the groupbuy. Using a luxmeter I receive 1200 lux on the pre-groupbuy MT03. With the groupbuy CW MT03 I receive a reading of 600 - so approximately half of the first MT03. I tested using the supplied 18650GA’s in both lights. I also tested using 30Q’s with the same results. I cleaned all contacts in the Groupbuy MT03 and even tried removing the barely glued plastic battery guards in the tailcap and body to see if that would make a difference. Unfortunately, it did not. So not too happy here.
So if you have 2 “identical” lights it might be interesting to see the drivers. Are they the same, or are there different sense resistors?
Sorry, I don’t do modding or take apart my lights - I leave that to the experts!
just wondering has anyone in Australia receive the light yet?
i’m starting to get annoyed and thinking of lodging a paypal dispute.
Im still waiting !