Wellp, the rare occasion when I had an issue with a Thorfire and Sofirn light, they both took care of it immediately, either offering me a 99%-off coupon to buy another one or just get a free replacement. I imagine Simon/Convoy would probably do the same, but I never had an issue with a Convoy light yet.
No shipping back the light for probably 10× the cost of the light itself, no major grief, nothing. That’s what I call great customer service.
Now, I don’t have any Klarus lights, so I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I don’t like Klarus. I don’t dislike Klarus. They simply exist. But I gotta say, if you want people to feel “safe” buying a light, then you gotta do right by ’em as far as warranty service.
It’s also why I rarely (if ever) buy a light pricey enough to consider “warranty service”, vs trying to fix it myself, or just tossing it if I can’t (well, scavenging it for parts most likely).
At the moment I can’t find of another compelling reason aside from MAP.
Acebeam is very strict on that thing, they take away your ‘official’ dealership when caught violating, that’s why you can hardly, if ever, find a real coupon code price discount of their products anywhere…
Klarus has always been a small-fry in a large market that never impressed beyond their competition or price point. So they can go right ahead and sink themselves and Id never notice till someone whined a few years later. Im sure a shill from cpf will soon drop by any moment now, with some load of BS why they are so important and outstanding to our hobby. But the truth is as they are seen. Simon seems to garner the lions share of my purchases, and I almost always buy in large quantity to supply several others. He earned our business and does not waver. He’s also a role model that displays a standard of business for his competition to follow.
I stopped supporting Acebeam after they seriously screwed up a large group buy I hosted for them. After selling nearly 200 of their flagship model expensive lights, they refused to correct a potentially dangerous in-light charging system that recharged 6 x18650 cells in parallel but discharged them in series. A cell voltage imbalance might have resulted in a catastrophic failure of an improperly charged cell, which was just an accident waiting to happen. They actually had the gall to tell me not to divulge the voltage imbalance problems I had discovered! Then when I announced it on the forum and asked members to report their end-of-charge cell voltages, Acebeam made up even more excuses and lies. I had to involve the consumer protection agency to threaten to stop the import of their garbage products into the US before they attempted to resolve the problem… literally more than 100 emails filled with lies and false innuendo from them. Sorry but “ ACEBEAM!!!” That company gives honest manufacturers a VERY, VERY bad name, and they still continue to do so on a more sporadic basis to our members. Let them all sink to the very bottom of the fecal barrel, where they can enjoy in the misery of each others unethical business practices, backstabbing and backpedaling!
The only Klarus flashlight I bought is the P20, which I found a great deal for.
Anything above that price range left me uninterested, as for every pricey Klarus model, there were another (one or more) reasonably priced models of other brands.
Anyway, I also support the thought: If an item’s serial number turns out to be valid by a manufacturer check, that item should not be abandoned by its manufacturer in any ways regarding aftersales service.
So, this announcement let me come to a few conclusions:
- Ok (assuming someone is still interested), who ARE the authorized dealers?
- Thank you for warning me to not buy anything from you in the future. Really. This makes things easier, so even when I see anything mildly/moderately interesting (there were a few times, but I could not justify the price), I can safely opt out from thinking about it.
- Abandoning aftersales service is a declaration of not taking responsibility in general - this is like wearing a big stenciled sign on the forehead saying ‘I am NOT trustworthy’.
Given, that this declaration was thought necessary by the brand management, this signifies, that there were significant volume of aftersales cases - again a sign of not trustworthiness.
Stores like banggood, gearbest, etc … sell those things under MAP price (MAP price is a minimum amount that resellers agree not to advertise below). All those “private only” promo codes, which aren’t so private, under MAP price by those stores most likely caused this.
I doubt that any manufacturer make those steps lightly and I am wondering how many warnings they sent to those stores and how much patience was tested before they made this drastic move.
Are you referring to the P20, the 2xAAA Nichia pen light? If so, that’s my only Klarus light as well. For the $17 that I paid for it, I’d say it’s pretty nice.
Thanks for this. Read up a bit on the fiasco and yeah… this is treason for consumers. I don’t buy Acebeam ever again. Thanks for your due diligence on not letting them get away with such criminal negligence and deviousness. A real shame, because they do produce some quality products. Such a grave error where on-line enthusiast forums are concerned can totally ruin a reputation. They took a gamble and lost. And now, their loss.
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