Grey market will not have the same QC. And they can skimp on quality if they can juice the margins.
For 10,000 units cutting 10 cents in cost makes them an extra $1000. Pure profit.
Imagine they cut $1 or $2 on a high value item. $10,000-$20,000 in extra pure profit.
I wonder what that translates to in the real world. I’m not gonna buy a counterfeit torch because I respect what Fenix does and I want to support them if I’m buying something they made, but i find the whole grey run industry fascinating. Such products are known to have infiltrated genuine supply lines and I wonder how common it is for nobody to even realise.
What would poor QC on a Fenix light look like? Wrong/cheap parts or just stuff like machining tolerances not what they should be? I wonder if anyone has ever torn a known grey sample down just to see how it compares to a genuine light.
In any case, Fenix have ways to identify counterfeit lights and aliex orders have a returns policy so if it does turn out to be fake I guess you’d get your money back?
Like I said above , some stores close and reopen. Example: OTR official store. It was closed some weeks ago, and then reopened.
And guess what, it has reopened already! (at least it is open through the AliExpress app)
You buy grey market you are not getting your money back from the seller unless aliexpress has some kind of policy mandating it.
From crummy machining to cheaper anodizing to fake LED chips to cheaper metal to reject chips in the drivers and more are possible with grey market stuff.
In other instances products with insufficient electrical isolations that could cause fires or capacitors with low temperature ratings or plastics that melt at low temperatures or plastic formulations that are brittle and snap in cold temperatures and more have happened.
Heck mercury, lead and melamine have been found in counterfeit/grey market merchandise.
https://www.aliexpress.com/buyerprotection/how_to_be_eligible.html
According to this, if something you buy is counterfeit you can get 3x your money back in compensation!
Oh that’s only if the seller has opted in, still a good thing though
It’s not entirely clear to me how to tell if a seller is participating in this programme. Lots of the listings for the PD35v3 are listed as “75-day buyer protection” which I suspect is the same thing but not 100% sure.
Should be about the same price from fasttech if they do a 10% labor day sale.
Have you personally seen a counterfeit Sandisk flash drive?
If not then it doesn’t exist :weary:
I also know BS when i see it 
They look identical to non counterfeit drives. Thats the point.
My favourite are the ones with firmware that misreports the capacity to the operating system, what happens is if you try to fill it the newest data overwrites the oldest data.
It may be the case that grey runs at the factory produce identical products to the legit ones (how hard is it to get the correct parts, really? in china?) but since they’re unauthorised and taken away for sale by factory workers operating when the factory is meant to be closed, they are technically still counterfeit despite being identical to the legitimate ones. Buying such items deprives Fenix of their right to profit from their intellectual property and their investment in product design and refinement.
The fact that Fenix mention this on their website makes me believe that something does happen, otherwise they wouldn’t have mentioned it. Whether it’s actual bad counterfeits or grey factory runs, who knows.
Putting aside the authenticity risk, purchasing from a non-budget brand also ostensibly includes the benefit of a warranty and local support — that is unlikely to be honoured by the local agent or distributor for goods not obtained through their channels.
If anything goes wrong, the only form of support will be from an unverified seller thousands of miles away, which might be acceptable for a budget light that is a fraction of the cost, but is that acceptable for a more costly product? Is the potential savings enough to outweigh that, and the other risks?
IIRC, there was also.a plea for help recently posted here, or on r/f, about ordering a larger light from the “official” store and receiving a keychain light in the package wass’t there?
How much of a gambler are you?
This is “that” thread, which didn’t have further notice on the resolution of the issue:
A large part of the cost of a legit product that has to be taken into account of the selling price are: the cost that have to be met before production actually starts, and the cost that occur after the product has been sold.
So if you are in “posession” of the original manufacturing specifications, maybe even CNC-input, and skip town before after sales or warranties are needed, you can make a profit on a product with the same quality and a lower price.
Same can happen after designers change teams. As far as I can remember Jetbeam and Fenix manufactured some very similar looking 4*AA lights.
As for batteries with the same brand as the lights they are sold with. You (that is: me) don’t know what’s inside them, and I’m affraid small and starting manufacturers don’t know either.
If you wanna buy Fenix lights on Ali: check the reviews. And NOT the ones that look like: oooooh, it smelled sooooo nice when I opened the box. And similar one-liners
Schnauzers are the best, we have one too xD
We have two 
I just got a PD35 V3 from OPED THE LIGHT Store on AE. It’s a genuine Fenix product.
If you lookup the serial number on the Fenix website what does it say, also will they honour the warranty?
I also got a Fenix from OPED THE LIGHT Store. Indeed genuine and very fast shipping. But I don’t know if Fenix would honor the warranty. I would not trust that this store would, as it can disappear at any time and reappears with other name, as already happened.
Well the serial number is recognised on the fenix site and says sales area China. So it’s a genuine product. I assume warranty would also have to come thru China which is where the problem begins.