Impressions of Wurkkos ts25 and Wurkkos in general

Recently, I received this very famous lantern as part of a competition from the respected Terry. That is: it was a prize and I have no moral right to make claims. But I can express my impressions about the product itself and Wurkkos support service.
Let’s start with the fact that the flashlight came with a broken button, you can never guess what will happen when you press it. Governing Anduril was out of the question. In a simpler lamp (in terms of access) Lumintop HL3A, with a similar problem, I simply replaced the button. Here, of course, everything is more complicated.
The support service of the store on Ali was extremely polite and within a month assured me that everything would be sorted out. After a dozen descriptions and videos sent to various addresses, I realized that this was a road to nowhere. All my explanations that I only need the head part for replacement also did not find understanding.
In the end, I thank Wurkkos and personally Terry for the 21700 battery and good 4 diodes, which is also not bad as a win.
Well, I thought, let’s see what wurkkos says.

I had a similar experience with wurkkos oddly. Very similar.

Customer support is very nice, did offer solutions. Overall way better than you would expect. But, and maybe just because of a language barrier, there was confusion figuring out shipping and what exactly was being sent, delays of when it would be available etc. And the value of their offer shrank the longer we talked. It just got to the point where I ended up saying forget about the whole thing. Wasn’t worth the time. I don’t have a grudge or anything. If I had taken their initial offer I would have had to pay a few bucks shipping, but it would’ve been at a loss to them, and was worth more than the shipping to me.

I think the language barrier was an issue. I still use them. Next time I’d take their first offer lol

On the ts25. Awesome light. Stay away from full turbo. Mine is burning the gold off its gold plated tail spring and even the brass button is looking a little toasty. Needs some upgrades to handle the current it can pull. Still works tho

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I always evaluate a product not by breakdowns (everyone has them), but by the ability of the manufacturer to fix them. Right there, just outright ignorance, attempts to shirk, but in the end: “I don’t see a problem - reboot, goodbye”
A shame…

They arw all very nice just don’t ask for your money back.

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What money?! Who needs a refund? You are not reading carefully. As for “cute”, I myself am like that. I am the world champion in mercy, in the super heavyweight …

I’m in this camp as well. I understand occasional manufacturing defects. I also expect that the manufacturer will have the ability to fix the issue so that I have a working product. If I don’t have confidence they will be able to take care of the issue, I simply won’t purchase from them.

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I just purchased my first Wurkkos…the TS25. I’m not big into flashlights, and the fact that, to me, it is “stuck” with the colored LED’s on (when off) sucks. Why should I have to learn Anduril 2.0 just to be be able to turn off the colored LED’s? Plus, it arrived in Anduril’s advanced mode…not the simplified version, like the manual states it would arrive in.

The profit margin is very small and the way of thinking about warranty and responsibility is also different in China¹. So it’s pretty normal if you get asked to try something yourself or getting offered a discount for the item or for your next order. No questions asked refunds are mostly done for cheap items or by dealers selling huge quantities.

@nextcity Don’t buy a flashlight with a complex UI then?

¹ Not only China. Just compare consumer rights between US and EU.

Did you try reaching out here to either Terry or Carrie? Yes, language (and cultural) differences sometimes cause hiccups. I get the impression that Wurkkos is doing the “divided channel” thing where they have “teams” covering different areas of sale - direct vs. aliexpress vs. amazon markets - so sometimes going a different route gets you to someone who may take care of things better/understand more. Wurkkos seems to have a ton of positive energy and enthusiasm, but yeah, they need to maybe slow down just a little before releasing models, do some thorough product testing, etc. Thus far everything I’ve gotten from them (all thee sources) has been great and my communications with them have been conversational rather than warranty/after-sales.

Lots of our lights are a lot more difficult to repair or mod these days…consequences of fancier features and more compact designs.

Kinda reluctant to bring this up, but it is relative as I was picked to receive a TS11 in the same GAW as Kos70. When the GAW ended the TS11 was “out of stock”. I am baffled as to why Wurkkos wouldn’t have set aside the committed units for distribution to the winners, but oh well. Terry kindly offered the TS25 as a substitute or the option to wait until production resumed in February with the promise it would ship as soon as stock was available. I chose to wait, as I was looking forward to the TS11 and not really interested in the TS25. Fast forward to several days ago when the TS11 showed back in stock on the website. I figured I’d give it some time to see if I received any update. After a few days I IM’d Terry as a reminder, and as of today have not gotten a response. Maybe he’s moved on?..?
That aside, in the interim I ordered/received a defective TS10. I contacted Wurkkos via email, explained the problem, and received an immediate response requesting a video of the light malfunction. After submitting the video, Wurkkos promptly sent me a replacement light (which works perfectly). So, I for one cannot fault Wurkkos CS, and in fact have every confidence they would be very accommodating providing they can verify and acknowledge a legitimate claim. YMMV.

Ya that’s probably it. I would get a response like ok well if you don’t want to pay shipping then what we can do is on your next order we’ll add it in for free just let us know. Oh that’s how it is…whatever. So I place an order the i wanna say within 2 or 3 days of that, msg them like ok can you add it in to this order now? And theyd be like, we could, if you pay for it…No but remember like 2 days ago?? I’d send screenshots but the screenshot is still in English so not too helpful.

I don’t mean this to sound like a negative review of the company, although it is probably coming off like that lol. They absolutely did offer solutions that would have worked, which on its own is already better than 99.9% of these stores. Negotiations just sort of broke down lol.

I didn’t bother escalating it because it wasn’t a huge issue, and i wasn’t getting anywhere anyways.

Ya, but I was the one that said forget it. They were for sure stalling or something but they were still in communication. They mightve eventually offered something. I just got tired of sending screenshots back and forth and i said just forget it.

On the plus side I was interesting to see their screenshots. To see what their screens look like when you’re talking to you on aliexpress. They don’t see what we see. When they pull up a convo with you they’ve got your buyer history and a lot of info on you they can scroll through on the screen, the chatbox is just a small part of the window. But I also saw how AliExpress was translating my messages for them and I totally get the confusion. Some of their replies made total sense when I saw the translation of my message that they received.

Certainly! We talked with a good one and a half months. “Reboot it”, “Send more videos”, “I’ll figure it out”, “I’ll figure it out soon”. As a result, he disappeared. Apparently - finally figured it out. :upside_down_face:
I’m not particularly worried. The lantern is structurally unsuccessful, and even with a large percentage of complaints. The button, even if it worked, would still be terrible… Well, the service is the same.

“…world champion of mercy…” - that got a good chuckle out of me. :slight_smile:

That’s unfortunate that they left you hanging…hopefully they’ll come through eventually but it’s not a good feeling when weeks and months go by. Terry seems to be active on reddit but kinda looks like he may have abandoned BLF. I sent him a PM some months back, which he read but did not bother to reply to. With luck maybe Wurkkos will uphold some of the good things and not turn out to be another mediocre vendor…may be some haggling there between the enthusiasm of Terry and their other designers vs. the raw numbers and managers of the business.

Jeff, that’s interesting about the screens that they see on their end. I’ve never thought about that although it’s been clear at times that a few of them don’t see the same website pages that I/we do. Is there any way you could share some of those screenshots, as blurred out as you want? j

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I buy a lot of stuff directly from China, and obviously bumped into some defects. At first when encountering stuff like this i felt the same way - “must be misunderstanding, cultural/language barrier, etc”.

But then… everyone does the same thing, regardless of specific item and issue. It can be a computer part, 3d printer part, a tool, clothing item, whatever. They’ll stall, require stupid and obviously useless videos, photos, whatever over and over again, etc. While being extremely polite and “helpful”.

After all the years and experiences… this is deliberate tactic to avoid having to ship new item or even parts, plain and simple. They are simply using “language barrier”, timezone difference, etc as a tool. Basically this is just their way of saying “sorry, we would like to help, but what is needed here is outside of what we are willing to spend on helping”.

And yes, i’ve had different experiences too. When their goal is not to avoid helping they do solve issues fast and without month long talks.

Not without blurring out most everything because it’s just literally like your convo on one side and then all your info and history and personal info on the other side lol. But I can PM you something if you want. It’s all in chinese but it’s a pretty basic UI like youd expect customer service to have. You can figure it out with google translate.

The one side of their screen is just all the the info they have on you. Nothing scary tho lol. Just whats in your profile. Name, country etc. We have star ratings too just like sellers do, they can see that.

(Did you know WE have star ratings too? I didn’t. Was even more surprised to see I had 5 stars. You can check the feedback sellers left for you on desktop. Seems like sellers just all give 5 stars all the time. Even where i left a negative review I got 5 stars. Go figure)

Below that they can see if you’re following their store and then there’s a few custom things they can add to your profile. They can put notes under your profile that would, I assume, show up whenever you msg them again like “this guy’s a jerk don’t help him” or w/e. I had no notes on mine. Then there’s a section where they can assign you into a group. I wasn’t grouped, so idk what the options are. I assume different for every seller. One group is probably “jerks, do not help”.

And then there’s your current order and order history. Only your history with that seller I think. They can search through all your orders by whatever they want, see the dates, the prices, leave comments on each one, so there really shouldn’t be confusion. They can search thru your orders easier than we can look through our own. And they have room to leave notes if there’s something unique about your order. That’s wouldve been a good place to put “hey send this guy “xyz” with his next order” in my case, but that wasn’t there. But there was a note attached that looked like it was trying to convey ‘dont mess it up this time’ on my order lol. I think. Again, it’s all in chinese.

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I think that excellent description works well enough, thanks! Now I totally want to see my star ratings and comments…

Go on desktop. It’s in your profile somewhere. “Feedback” or something. I could not believe I had 5 stars. Even if my review was trashing them like “1 star, garbage seller, wrong item, unsafe, burned down my house, kicked my dog” and I tried to return it - 5 stars lol

You must have to really piss them off to get 4 stars.

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I’ve always loved the crazy talk from customer service at these Chinese companies . They must search the roster of employees to see who speaks the worst English and then select them for the job.

On product feedback I always see that…actually over the last year or a bit more I’ve noticed that some sellers aren’t leaving feedback where it used to be almost instant. I thought that was an important aspect of the matrix of rankings they get on the platform. The whole “five stars” thing is so ridiculously important and blown out of proportion on aliexpress…it’s a punishing system for the sellers, hence the persuasion and badgering and pleading for the best ratings and trying to sweep complaints into the safety of a private closet before a “bad” review is given. Some of them are getting the concept now of “honest reviews” like what amazon generally still is…which is good, because now on aliexpress we’re seeing a lot of dumbassery where people are rating products and sellers poorly for things that are either irrelevant or something that couldn’t be controlled.

But anyway. I want my secret notes and to know if I’m a jerk. One hardware seller probably put a black star by my name after he forgot to put half the order (like forty separate items) in the box and ali sided with me on a refund. :slight_smile:

I guess bad stars must stick around on their overall store feedback rating or something, because the reviews always drop off after six months or so, never to be seen again. It’s a system that favors the smile-and-a-handshake when the sale is completed and not one for actual product experience or after-sales interactions.

Ya the stars are life. Maybe that’s why the all just give 5 stars even if they hate you. Not worth the risk of you seeing it and making your review even worse, you have a few months to respond to seller feedback.

Annoying to see negative reviews for no reason tho the reviews are there for us too. Like go look at any of the blue/green/red/yellow CSLNM1 lights on the convoy store and like every single one has meh reviews but you look at them and theyre all “I didn’t know it was going to be blue…2 stars”… Thanks that’s real helpful…

Better than the what amazon does though. Their “Fufilled by Amazon” service is so unethical.
If youre a seller you pay to ship your product to Amazon’s warehouse, then you pay amazon storage fees to hold on to it, when it’s sold amazon takes their ~13% off the top (FbA or not), and then you pay them again to deliver it for you, another $10 or so. But the tradeoff is if anybody leaves a bad review for you, for any issue, amazon doesn’t include it in your reviews they just say “this item was fulfilled by us and we take full responsibility”. So you can have 1000 negative reviews but only the positive ones go into your star rating, if youre paying for FbA. It’s a damn mafia protection racket for crappy sellers to continue selling crappy fake stuff as long as they keep giving amazon their cut.