You want to use 4 smaller reflectors? Keep in mind that you only get 5440 meters if you use 4 of the big GT reflectors. When you go smaller the throw numbers go down.
Your source is fairly old. Here’s another website that says 239k RMB but it includes white collar jobs only so it’s on the high side.
Here are some more recent average incomes that should better reflect a true average:
111,709k RMB or 16k USD in 2018
121k RMB or 17.4k USD in 2019
Assuming this person needs to be English literate and can work well with computers, I would say they demand at least $17.4k a year. Let’s do some math. Assuming Neal profits $8 after tax, overhead etc., for each FW3A sold (mostly at discounted BLF prices), he needs to sell 2,188 pieces to cover for it or 3,282 pieces using your 1.5 factor. That’s roughly the number of interests recorded in the 2 years of the FW3A development thread. Many people here overestimate the size of the BLF community and its combined buying power. Many group buys here I see have only a few dozen interests or even less. Even the successful ones are couple hundred and the most successful ones like the LT1, FW3A, FT03 are only 2-3k units.
Also I run my own business and have done various types of businesses in the past. You have to keep in mind that many decisions cannot be made by staff, who might not have a full understanding of the situation (flashlight technical, logistic, etc.). The suggestion to hire someone to manage these customer/technical/shipping issues remotely is even more unrealistic. My experience with Banggood customer service staff is that they are very tech savvy about flashlights and are actually knowledgeable about some of the flashlights I reported problems with. Any low paid uneducated remote staff will not be able to do this.
Very well said. Jack at Fireflies and Randy at Pflex Pro are usually very responsive but have on many ocassions taken extremely long to respond to my emails or PMs and I’m talking about over a month or even 2! Like any normal person I had negative thoughts cross my mind during those experiences however they eventually respond and I find that they are actually very honest and good fellows. I’ve bought so many flashlights now and dealt with so many different sellers that I learn to just give them the benefit of the doubt when I don’t get a response. Eventually I always get what I ordered or the issue resolved.
Assuming that Neal is not a bad boy (benefit of the doubt)… I would say that Neal has clients of different categories and I would be among those of minimum category.
When the Giggles purchasing group (BLF GT), if Texas_Ace had not intervened, I don’t know if I had received one.
With the NI40 / SBT purchasing group, my flashlight corresponding to 1 of the 20 units of the stock of the first batch was sent to some higher category customer because “the NI40 is not ship because of the shortage”.
So…
The huge body of the BLF GT is what allows this heavy light to keep the turbo on for 15 minutes instead of just 1-2 minutes like the Acebeam K75. The big body better dissipates the heat. Using the K75 its performance reduces to half after 1-2 minutes, so you cannot say that it has a power that it cannot sustain for a reasonable time.
I'm tempted to order one from Neals but reading all these reports from unhappy customers from this thread, other threads and Reddit is making me want to consider other options.
My past experience with Neals wasn't perfect either. I wanted to slightly modify my order so I sent him 2 emails in total. I have never heard back from him but my orders arrived as per what I original ordered, not what I wanted it to change to.
With all that being said I want to give the guy another chance. Learning that he is running the show all by himself really impressed me.
What are your experiences with PayPal customer protection? especially the dispute side of thing. I do not want to put $400 down and have nothing or a broken light and missing batteries showing up.
