Valpo Hawkeye,
Perhaps I should correct one misconception. HDS Systems did not offer pre-orders for the Ra Clicky. We tried pre-orders with the EDC Ultimate many years earlier and decided it was way too much trouble, overhead and aggravation. When the Ra Clicky was "getting close", we had many requests to take pre-orders. We chose to decline. However, some of our dealers decided to offer pre-orders - at their own risk.
From my perspective, if someone takes a pre-order and the price changes prior to delivery, the dealer should have allowed the option of a refund for a price drop. That is what our policy was when we accepted pre-orders many years back. In fact, our policy was to allow pre-order cancelations without penalty up to the day of shipping. However, we do not set dealer policy and only they will decide how they want to handle these things. I have seen dealers that charge a premium to accept pre-orders. Again, it is up to each dealer to formulate their own policy.
Perhaps I should also point out that our earlier specifications were based on what our suppliers said they would be able to supply come ship date. As often happens, technologies do not go according to schedule. Our suppliers took over 9 months longer to deliver the required production LED bins then they had originally quoted and thus it took us much longer than expected to deliver the original specification.
I cannot help but notice that most of the events you are sighting are quite old - perhaps 9 to 12 months old. I am not saying that your comments are invalid but they may be a bit late. Yes, we did have several issues when the Ra Clicky was first released. But we have addressed those issues as they have been brought to our attention. Even with a lot of testing, customers still try things in ways we missed during testing. Sometimes customers tell us when they find a problem and we can get it fixed quickly. Sometimes customers choose not to tell us about problems and months can go by before we find out about them. Unfortunately, if we do not know about a problem, we cannot get it fixed and additional lights will ship with the same problem.
The current software includes major fixes compared to the initial release plus we have also added many features - some documented and many not. Customers who have reported problems and returned their lights have had those problems addressed and received any other improvements at the same time.
Our goal is to ship products and have none returned because of defects. Processing a return is expensive so we would prefer not to have any. When someone sends a product back, we take the time to look it over and try to figure out what can be changed to eliminate the problem. This does take longer than just fixing the problem and sending it back. But we would rather take the extra time and effort and improve the product. We also look over returned products to see what else the product can tell us about usage and wear. You would be surprised about some of the things we have seen.
As for pricing and product offerings, we have to change as we see fit to address the current market conditions. When we first started selling LED flashlights 10 years ago, 12 - 15 lumens with 3 brightness levels cost $300. We now sell 170 lumens with 4 preset levels out of 23 for $189. As technology improves, you can either increase the capability and hold the price constant or hold the capability constant and drop the price. Or some combination of the two. Over the next 5 years you will see a significant increase in LED efficiency and several significant improvements in user interface design. The leading edge of technology is often referred to as the bleeding edge because it is the most expensive and has the most problems.
Henry.
