I owe FastTech an apology from my last post. I said I’d “black-balled” them for charging FAKE taxes.
I was deeply bored at the family gathering last week and I did shop them on BF (15% off site-wide) and they did NOT charge a FAKE tax when I put a light in my cart and went through the checkout process. I also didn’t see any BS coupons or pop up crap while I tried a few Convoys on for size.
So kudos to FT for NOT wasting my time- but running what seems to be a decent site (for now). Hope they keep it up!
Yeh, that’s why I’m still buying stuff from ’em. :laughing:
Still wanna mod my big Mags, ordered a bunch of front glass (Mags have plastic, believe it or not :confounded: ) and what should be a great reflector that’d fit. Reflector’s discontinued, got refunded w/o a hitch, and glass should be coming Any Day Now.
Yep, FastTech is quickly becoming my preferred Chinese e-commerce site, since they don’t have layers upon layers of sales and promotions to keep track of.
All I need to worry about is the occasional site-wide coupon code, which they announce well in advance.
Having to only deal with a single entity for customer service is much nicer, too - AliExpress is always luck of the draw.
I don’t buy direct from China anymore. I did a few years ago when I was first trying out all the different kinds of lights (and knives) and I could basically buy one of each in any category I was interested in.
I never got ripped off or anything but waiting wasn’t fun and communicating wasn’t fun and the product ads are just generally annoying. Now I either buy those same products from Amazon or from other U.S. suppliers on Ebay or from places like Banggood from their U.S. warehouse.
I also tend to pay a little more (not a lot more) because I’m getting it quicker and because I’m buying better stuff now that I know what I want. There is just less reason (for me) to buy directly from China these days.
They are still benefiting from me however. Without the Chinese market I wouldn’t have many lights and I wouldn’t have any knives. I’m not really “into” these things to the degree and am in other hobbies. I actually got started only because of scuba diving a lot here in the PNW and I wanted a different kind of dive light.
I was using a big, heavy, expensive halogen based light. In the U.S. market LEDs were powerful enough for any dive lights other than some small backup light meant for the tropics. I found something in China for $100 and I wanted to try it out. A halogen bulb costs $100 and the rechargeable battery pack was about $200. It was only after getting that and testing it out (it worked well and I still use it) that I found this forum and all the other kinds of lights and knives.