Thanx for your professional and informational post TA!
You are doing a great job in absence of TM.
In Dutch there’s a saying when you are hoping for something; duimen maar! Which translates as : Turn thumbs! (Fingers crossed)
So thumbs up, and hopefully the reflectors pass QC and our GT’s will be shipped before Chinese Newyear!
Hi, TA, I am going to request a full refund of the payment, to whom I am writing? I thank the team and other users as PULSAR, for their selfless proposal, but I can not accept, greetings and enjoy this magnificent light to those who own them, greetings!
I had originally chosen registered mail. After reading here about the issues with registered, I replied to the Neal’s confirmation email stating that he ‘could send mine with DHL if he so preferred.’ I also posted on this thread, sometime in the past week or so, that I’m willing to switch to DHL. I was put on that list which someone had compiled for this purpose.
I received a text message (not email) this morning from DHL on my mobile with a tracking number. After tracking it on DHL’s website it appears as if they had received my GT in Hong Kong last night, than sorted, processed, and sent it out to the US, and also notified US Customs this morning. It looks like the package will arrive at the local port overnight, latest tomorrow morning.
That said, I am not sure if Lumintop decided on their own to switch my shipment to DHL, or whether Neal saw my email and forwarded the sentiment to LT, or whether Neal/LT received the list from this thread and went with that.
Hopefully things get resolved satisfactory for everyone who participated.
Thank you GT team for the continued time and effort you put in. The logistics cannot be easy.
And last but not least: thank you Texas_Ace. The patience and level-headedness you demonstrate is admirable.
Refund, refund, ask refund… Refund?
NO - simply wanna get promised goods and promised price.
We believed and was in first dozens, but even second list received for a pair of cheap GT, and we got only additional cost.
GT team created wonderful thing, but result kill the reputation.
But now I’m waiting receive at least one Neal’s message.
Really getting tiresome hearing all this LuminTop bashing. A bunch of “could/should have been done differently” moments, but I still don’t see any bad guys. Well maybe some of the angry posters, but that’s it.
“Shipping included” pricing is rarely a good idea unless it’s padded enough to break even on the most expensive ship-to.
Even group buys of existing production items get some form of “substandard” handling from the manufacturer. Being less trouble is what they’re trading for a reduced price, and the “group” will take on some of the distribution and transactional costs. If the manufacturer is expected to treat each purchase as a separate relationship with all their normal customer service and delivery standards, why would they want to do a group buy?
Did LuminTop solicit this business? All these comments about “they should have figured it out earlier, sucks to be them but they came up with the price” bla bla, seriously? Did they approach you to sell you something? Seems that they agreed to a form of partnership, at BLF’s request. They’re doing US a favor, not the other way around. At this point, a LOT of senior management groups that I know of would look at the situation and say “screw those ungrateful jerks, we’re out”. Instead they appear to not only be sticking to or increasing reflector QA over spec, they are also enduring this lashing out (if all this is in public, imagine what some inboxes must look like) and continuing with the production and delivery commitment. I know what R&D, scaleup and startup can cost, and I doubt ANY profit is really being made yet once you factor in all the handholding this project is taking now. So they are saying “look, we can’t go any further underwater on shipping”. Pretty darn reasonable. They’re also saying “we understand this is not what you expected, so any and all cancellations will be gladly refunded without question.” there’s no purchase minimum to be met.
what more do you want?
Group buys are not for everybody. Especially if the product doesn’t even exist yet. If you can’t afford to wait until it is actually a real, physical thing and enough are produced for you to get one, whatever decade that is, or get your money back, maybe, or lose it altogether, then this is not for you. Nobody needs this light, and anybody who is now in a financial crisis due to having money tied up here instead of a flashlight in their hand was probably gonna be in a financial crisis anyway. How could that even happen? Unless you would have already sold it, in which my sympathy for flippers is pretty non-existent. get the refund. now. yes, you.
everybody else, chill.
/rant off
Send a message to Neal, it might take some time but he will get it taken care of.
If you don’t hear back from him by the end of the month (due to china new years closing down the country for most of the month), send me a message and I will remind him.
Thank you MartWilliams, I appreciate that and totally agree with what you say. :+1:
Thanks TA, message to Neal sent.
Sorry, but you’be been here for 1 whole month. Are you maybe a lumintop reresenter? You sure sound like one. There have been many groupbuys here on blf, and none of them as i rember have gone through without problems. Remembering the Cometa fiasco is just one of them.
“They are doing us a favor”, really? They agreed upon certain things, not to mention the flashlight was designed more or less for free from BLF members.
long time listener, first time caller 
Well, since TA said all this so far is just an informal info from one email, let's wait and see what the official outcome will wound up to be. If this was some kind of probationary LT "feeling up" of the attitude towards rising the price, I think the member opinions were quite clear on that. Most of them, at least.
In the meantime, since the increasing the price is not a fact - maybe GT team should change/remove the opening line on the first opening post in this discussion?
Honoring one's word is probably the most binary means to evaluating one's worth, but it one of the highest standards for someone entering into a deal with another. I'm no model of a good person, but even I once put over a hundreds hours and a good deal of my own funds into modding a light in exchange for about $15 of goods. Even while I was doing the work, I was offered more for the build. I refused the additional funds because that was not the deal we made. It hurt financially and time wise, but I was very proud that I honored my half of the deal. The recipient later gave me a nice token of appreciation after I delivered. That was very much appreciated, but not at all expected.
LT should honor the original deal. If they want more money, they can open a thread soliciting more funds for the project. It's awfully hard for me to swallow that they did not diligently evaluate the shipping costs for this behemoth of a light that they hoped would create much excitement and be wanted all over the world.
Stay calm everyone, wait for final proposal/decision by GT team and Lumintop. You will help everyone to calm down if you don’t vent your anger or disappointment here, TA got enough of responses from us already and knows what we are thinking.
I think this is evidence that Neal and Lumintop are working behind the scenes. Could they be more communicative? Absolutely. But they’re not just tending to an individual issue here. Shipping costs/methods to different countries with different laws and commercial volumes (less means less shipping options).
Before anything else, let me state that I have received my BLF GT.
It’s very understandable to be frustrated at not receiving something one has paid for a couple of months ago. Having been presented the possibility of having to part with more money likely just kicks that frustration up a notch. Yes, the price was set and all that… but even that set price was at least loosely based on the original GB target price of $100. TA should be able to confirm this, but I believe that LT’s price range has been impacted by that target price in the first place. If they were happy with $111, there would not have been a different price to the second group… there might not have been a second group at all, just one long(er) list of buyers.
Also, let’s not forget that the price was set before the design was finalised. Anybody who has worked in product development would know that project costs can and do change from the initial concept to the actual production run. There’s also the matter of Lumintop having to establish a production line for this product. This involves considerable cost. Yes, they got a great design for free, but BLF also got a manufacturer. And great designs don’t always mean you’ll make money of it.
For me personally, and I’m not even Lumintop, I find the use of words like “extortion” and “ransom” quite out of line. If that was their goal, they would have done it for all and not shipped a single flashlight until we all coughed up extra dough. For this reason, I accept TA’s explanation that it is merely to cover shipping costs to those specific destinations.
Price is one of the things I consider when joining a group buy. If the extra cost put this out of my range, I would pull out. I am not going to borrow money to feed a hobby. This facility (refund) is available. If you really want the “flashlight you paid for”, in the mean time please shut up and keep waiting. TA, Neal and Lumintop are trying to find a solution. Yapping about where things went wrong isn’t gonna get you your flashlight any sooner.
It’s easy to find a target (and Lumintop is an easy one to pick) and unload a clip, or more, at it. But after the thrill of that, you’re still left with the problem at hand.
TA, Jason and all the others who are keeping this together, I shine my GT at tip my hat off to you. It’s no easy task.
Lastly, I hope those still waiting continue to have the patience and, more importantly, that you eventually get your hands on your BLF GT. When you do, you will forget all about this sordid debacle and just… giggle.
Bad news for your thoughts I’m afraid 
FedEx (UK) called me, after they had managed to speak with FedEx (HK). It appears FedEx in HK disagreed with the declared value, and sent it back. I’m aware that Neal has likely increased the value, but my light at least has still been sent back, three times now.
I tried pressing on who has made the decision that the package is worth more than the declared value, how they come to this decision, and what I can do if it is the correct value but still gets sent back-but the lady didn’t seem to be able to answer any of them and kept repeating that the shipper needs to contact FedEx in HK.
So it is indeed to do with the declared value.
To be honest, whingers on here aside, I really don’t have a massive issue with the declared value being what I actually paid. The last PayPal receipt will say 101 or whatever it was, and FedEx/customs/whoever can’t disagree with that. Yes, import taxes etc will probably be applied, but I’m just interested in having the light in my hands now.
I am slightly surprised that they are sending the package back though, only a few months back I bought a robot vacuum from gearbest (!) can’t remember the exact price but it was more than this light and the box was also way bigger, and it came straight through, no problems, no additional fees, taxes. But that’s the shipper, or customs-nothing to do with BLF, Neal, any individual involved in the GT……or Lumintop.
Thanks for the info and Thanks for confirming that Lumintop was indeed correct in what they told me.
Like I have said, thus far they have given me exactly zero reason to not trust them, until that changes, I will continue to give them the trust they have earned. Trust is a 2 way street.
I got a reply from lumintop a little bit ago, I will wait until they reply again to say anything but I have a possible idea I am pitching that could be a good compromise for all involved.
To heck with my thoughts Tuigali, I’m just glad you got a firm answer from FedEx my friend. :+1:
It puts a reason to it, & like TA says… verifies exactly what was said to him. I think there will be several besides me surprised also that it happened in the shipper country of orgin & not the receiving country.
Thank you for your reply………
17600 messages, oh my god every day it gets harder and harder to read all this. I imagine how TA tired you are from this forum, you need to put a monument in life 
Thanks that you do not quit the thread :+1:
I agree. Lumintop royally f*ed up.
I think they f*ed up by not cutting off the group buy at 555 as originally negotiated by The Miller. But they were nice and let us continue the group buy.
I think they f*ed up by agreeing to try to ship some of the GTs in two packages via registered mail, rather than one package via DHL as originally negotiated. But they were nice and tried to work with us to get two smaller packages past your customs inspectors even if it required more work for them.
I think they f*ed up by trying to ship out lights to us as soon as possible even thought they didn’t have 100% of the reflectors. But they were nice and understood our anxiousness to have a toy flashlight in our hands.
So lets all pile on and bash them. :smiling_imp:
I just hope they don’t feel f*ed by BLF and never want to work with us again.
f* counter == 5 :sunglasses: