You conclude this from few negative reports without knowing the number of units sold.
May I remind everyone on how Zebralight behaved when they sold lights with a wrong LED? Still, Zebralight seems to be the superhero among flashlight manufacturers.
Yes, Sofirn et al. might have a better service, but their lights are cheaply build. Not much loss to replace them. And not really reasonable to replace a Wizard with anything from them. You have an excellent chance to enjoy a superior AT light for many years. And if it stops working, send it back.
I initially had good experience with their C2 Prime. Much better UI than zebralight in my opinion. Other than the stiffer side switch, I love that light.
I decided to order their new Dobermann light after checking the website that I can turn off the blinkies. When the light arrived, first thing I did was try to turn off the blinkies. It doesn’t work no matter how many times I tired it. I then contact Armytek support and after giving them the serial number and stuff, they confirmed that the blinkies can not be turn off on my light. I told them being able to turn it off was the whole reason I even brought their light in the 1st place. Then they said the 1st few batch of their Dobermann light cannot program to turn off blinkies. I told them that is false advertising and asked if they can fix my light under warranty. But, they just said no and I can buy another Dobermann light that could be programmed. I basically told them to F### off and I’m never buying another of their lights again.
Their company is a joke, you can’t just say their product can do something, but the 1st few batch of them can’t. Imagine a car company said their car has a bunch of safety features, but the 1st few batch of their car doesn’t have it.
Armytek customer service is horrible. I ordered the Barracuda Pro but they sent me the Barracuda regular. They won’t own up to their mistake and so I have to eat the loss.
It really seems their philosophy is to take your money then tell you to screw off when their poor QC rears its ugly head.
Such a short sighted way of doing business, their reputation now speaks for itself.
Frankly their business plan has become to find new customers who don’t take the time to google reviews before buying or that get lucky and don’t get a defect or design screwup light.
Business by attrition in an essentially repeat business industry is ridiculous.
This company’s own web site clearly told me everything I needed to know about them (which I will not elaborate further on in this post), so they’ve never even gotten a sniff of any of my money. Several months ago when I stated they weren’t ‘on the up and up’ / acting in ‘good faith’, some reacted as if I was cussing their own Mother. Fine - I expected that.
I am NOT happy to hear that others have found out the hard way, but AM glad that the word is getting out now so others might heed the experience(s) of others (per preceding posts in this thread) and perhaps avoid problems. I’m aware that some have had products from them that worked OK and am not saying that every item they’ve ever shipped is junk. It is absolutely possible that some may have an OK experience even with a crummy company. I am, however saying that they / their products are not what they would have people believe, nor honestly represented in their marketing claims, and evidently from what I’m reading here, their product support is also consistent with that in many cases.
Again, I have no personal experience with them - but that is with good reason.
Funny you should mention that company. I actually feel the same way about ZL that I do about armytek. That’s exactly my point. I don’t think it actually matters to me how good a product is, if a company behaves those ways, when you’re paying those kinds of prices. I’m sure they are excellent products, as I’ve seen people whose opinion I trust talk about them. But it’s frankly a shameful way for businesses to conduct themselves. I’d be embarrassed if I was a business owner like them - but maybe that’s just me?
People always say this but I’ve taken apart many (most?) of my Sofirns as well as Fenix lights and to be honest there is not a huge difference in build quality. The Aesthetics of Fenix look a little classier, especially within the past couple years but construction isn’t any more robust. Now, are the actual driver board components possibly higher quality? Sure, I wouldn’t be able to tell there. But I am regularly impressed with the quality of light Sofirn produces for the price…
I’m not sure you could call me a Sofirn fan boy as I have many different brands and use most of them… Only occasionally grabbing a Sofirn.
Armytek policy on warranty stuff is no different than many other products. You have to send it in. Unfortunately in this case that means sending it to China and that is very expensive from probably most places in the world. I have three convoy S2+ and one is faulty. I have five different armytek headlights and one is faulty but I don’t want to pay $30 to mail a light to China. I have a lot of different headlights from many brands. If my wizard C2 pro was lost or damaged or faulty I would buy another one immediately. I think it’s the best headlight / multi-use light out there. I don’t really like the way the warranty works but in the end I understand it. I don’t want to try to put a percentage on it but I’m guessing there are a lot of complaints that they receive that are user error. Customer service personal are simply following the script that’s been in place for a lot of years. I don’t assume that they are allowed to go off script. The wurkkos hd15 is much cheaper and a pretty good light. I have no idea how long the warranty is or how it works. I would buy that one again also. I’m not buying any lights based on a warranty.
I have two sofirn lights and they are awesome. I hadn’t heard about their build quality being “cheap” while I was researching them, and I did a lot of research. Still cheap is relative; US $32.00 for the C8L and US $25 for the C8G both on sale. Armytek by comparison are much more expensive which could be justified by their 10 year warranty if it was real.
Getting negative feedback by supplied photos isn’t encouraging - who’s going to pay to send something back under those circumstances? This looks like an obvious way of avoiding warranty. Giving something a 10 year warranty alludes to a quality product and helps justify the price. However if the warranty isn’t real then such a warranty has cost them nothing - just words, no substance. It’s just giving the impression of added value.
I know this is generally different in the budget (but good quality) knife world. I live in Australia and have bought knives from the US. One had lock stick and another had a broken liner lock (both folders with liner locks). They requested video of the lock stick fault and photos of the broken liner lock. I was given my money back for both - one cjrb, one civivi. It has been similar with my mtb interests - I order a lot of stuff on line, some of it has been faulty on arrival. Sometimes they send me out a new item straight away and give me a return postage paid label that I print out and whack on the package, then put it in the nearest letter box. Otherwise it’s just a refund - this is common practice. I bought mtb tyres from the UK, when they arrived they had wire beads; I’d ordered folding beads. They sent out the correct tyres and told me to keep the tyres I already had (evans cycles). Those businesses have scale of economy when it comes to sending stuff - they know that we would have to pay a lot more to send something back.
In this era of online purchases warranty claims etc have to be easier - look at amazon. These businesses save money by not having a store front. I really doubt that they would get many warranty claims that are bogus given photographic or video evidence. Photographic or video evidence should be enough if it shows the problem - this seems to be the norm.
I’m new to the enthusiast light world, but I’d already heard about armytek customer service. I haven’t actually heard of a successful warranty claim; well that would make sense and seems kind of obvious given their reputation.
No, I made a demo in April with it, couldn’t review it properly because it had issues such as, flickering on Turbo 1 and charging termination at 4.04v (less 980mAh). I presumed it had a fault causing a low lumen reading, but thought maybe it was my lumen tube. It was a mystery when others tested a much higher result.
I used my runtime graphs and lumens when I compared it and used it in the Nichia model review. Now I know why it looked so underwhelming next to the C2 Nichia.
The purpose of wanting a replacement was only to use it in comparisons after recently pulling it out of the box and noticing the half lit LED
That’s past that model for reviewing purposes, I have a company to run, I don’t have time to re-review a model.
The contact who sent it to me left the company and I was left with a Rep who had no idea who I was or what the situation was, it all fell apart afterwards.
I’m not saying get another sample to review, i am saying review the defective one you have and what happened when you tried to use the warranty.
Reviews can be negative when the company screws up twice on one flashlight.
This way your viewers learn that this company sells incorrectly specced items and doesn’t honour its warranty.
Two very important pieces of information.