ARC-AAA Premium (GS) - Turns on Intermittently

I am new in these parts. Today I received a new ARC-AAA Premium GS flashlight. When I twist the head sometimes it turns on and sometimes it doesn't. I just emailed the company but thought I would post here. I will return it if I have to but I thought the experts here might help me solve this issue myself.

I'd be thankful for any help.

If it's brand new and having problems, best is probably let Arc take care of it. They will probably respond to your email within a few days.

Thanks for your response. I am going to send the flashlight back. For what I paid it should turn on and off without a problem. My new Fenix works flawlessly. I am disappointed.

:welcome: dclawyer

It's most likely an issue with dirty threads/contacts. I hate to do this, especially since this is your first post, but there's several threads on the Arc subforum with instructions on how to clean an ArcAAA, and also how to troubleshoot anything else.

If else fails, send it back.

Like greenLED said. Take a Q-tip and some alcohol to all the threads and contact points. A pencil eraser for the bottom of the battery tube and head contact works well, too. They all have this problem eventually when oxidation builds up.

Geoff

I don't know if the Arc AAA is still designed this way, but early head twisty lights like the Infinity Ultra and early Arc AAA used a roll crimp to hold the PCB in place. This could work loose with use and make for an iffy contact because the battery pushed in on the board.

FYI, a do it yourself fix for that would be to put small dents in the crimp which would dimple the inside and get a better contact. This was done by laying the head PCB up on a flat surface, putting a small screwdriver against the roll crimp at right angles and tapping it gently with something.

That would usually do the trick, but has its' risks. As your light is new, I'd just return it.

I had that happen to me. Check the foam ring on the backside of the emitter. Sometimes the holes are too small for the battery nipple to make contact with the the solder blob. I used an exacto knife to trim some of it away and my light works fine.

I think those roll crimp issues were straightened out years ago. There are some online pages about maintenance procedures (contact cleaning and restoration, etc.) that you can do to freshen up old lights that have seen a lot of use. But for a brand new light, unless the prob is something obvious and simple, I'd just let Arc deal with it.

I returned the flashlight for a refund. They received it via UPS on January 30th but have not refunded the money to my credit card and have not responded to my email of one week ago. So they send me a flashlight that doesn't work properly and then don't refund the money as they should in my opinion. I've disputed the charge on my credit card and won't do business with this firm again.

This doesn't sound typical of Arc, at least the Arc of the past. I wouldn't give up on Peter so quickly, though I know it's disappointing. There must have been some sort of explainable mix-up, I hope.

Geoff

Geoff,

I hear you. I am new on the forum and from what I've read this vendor has a good reputation. But taking more than a week to answer an email from a customer isn't good customer service.

Why don't you get their phone number from their website (FAQ page) and give them a call to resolve this.

Today my account was credited for the refund. They did not, however, respond to my emails.

Glad to hear you got your refund dclawyer. I am particulary interested in this thread because it appears customer service did not answer your email. However, I looked through the Arc email for the past month and couldn't find anything that matched your description. We use IMAP and I can see if an incoming email was responded to. I wonder if the email was blocked somehow?

peter

I sent the emails to [email protected].

Gransee said:

Glad to hear you got your refund dclawyer. I am particulary interested in this thread because it appears customer service did not answer your email. However, I looked through the Arc email for the past month and couldn't find anything that matched your description. We use IMAP and I can see if an incoming email was responded to. I wonder if the email was blocked somehow?

peter

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This is, of course, the problem with relying on email! It's usually reliable, so we trust it. When it fails we all get upset. Often, simply resending can fix the issue. However, if you don't get a response, a telephone call is often the best course of action.

From my experience, arc customer service is really good. I would definitely buy from them again.

When the defective flashlight came I emailed the firm and the response took two or three days. I would have preferred a quicker response. In my opinion, if a firm sells over the internet it should respond to emails promptly. It has not been a problem for me with any other business with whom I have done business.

If the firm would like to PM me an email address I will be happy to forward the emails I sent so the firm can investigate further.

For my part, I will take my business elsewhere. I am posting this so others are aware and can decide for themselves how to spend their money.

I am sorry you received a defective light. It looks like that was eventually resolved. My purpose of posting to this thread was to investigate the possibility there was a problem with our spam filter, etc.

However, after looking over your posts, I think the email did work, it was just not as fast as you would have liked. Not sure what to say... We are a small company and we are doing well if we can respond to most emails within 1 week. I understand that me saying that won't change how you feel. Again, my apologies.

peter

dclawyer said:

[...]They received it via UPS on January 30th but have not refunded the money to my credit card and have not responded to my email of one week ago. [...]

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dclawyer said:

Today my account was credited for the refund. They did not, however, respond to my emails.

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dclawyer said:

When the defective flashlight came I emailed the firm and the response took two or three days. [...]

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Don't worry too much about it, Mr. Gransee. In my experience (i.e. family), lawyers (especially litigators) have absolutely no idea how much email businesses can receive in a day, because a lot of the correspondence lawyers deal with is too sensitive to trust to a shared fax machine, much less email, so they don't get nearly as much email as most people do. Between the ten people in my office, we might receive 1000 emails (mostly one-liners) on a good day, and far more on a bad one. And we don't even deal in retail products!

According to various online surveys, most ecommerce sites respond to email in a matter of hours, maybe a day or two tops. With an average (I estimate) of about a week, our response time is slower than that.

I think it is understandable that this would be dissapointing. Therefore, I have tried not to dismiss the concerns of dclawyer (lawyers already don't feel well loved by the general public).

There may be aspects to our business (high end product, etc) that make our email to product volume ratio different than say other businesses this size, I don't know. I have made changes to our system to make it more efficient and we do have several people who check the email throughout the day, there is a lot of messages and sometimes it takes awhile to respond. And sometimes emails get lost (we get a lot of spam and as a result have fairly aggressive filters).

Btw, dclawyer did email me tonight. Now that I have his email address, I searched the inbox for that address and found no incoming email. It appears we did send out an email to him but that appears to be it for email between us. I could be missing something, but I am only seeing the one email and that was the one we sent. Ideally, we would have sent that email sooner of course.


According to our website, when a person has a problem with our product or otherwise needs service, we encourage them to contact us (we provide an email address and a phone number). During the initial email or phone call, we like to have an oppratunity to possibly fix the situation without requiring an additional shipping cost. If necessary, we ask the person to ship us the product. We include our address and instructions with that request. We don't require an RMA like many other resellers, but we do like to hear from people before getting a package mysteriously in the mail. Once we get the package, I have instructed the staff to contact the customer letting them know we have it. Truthfully, they don't always do that and I bug them about it from time to time. After the corrective action (repair, refund), I then want them to email the customer again with a status. It is ok for them to combine those 2 emails into one if the corrective action occurs fairly quickly. Usually, that is the last email we send to the customer unless they have other questions. From my audits, most service requests are handled like this. Occasionally a package gets lost in shipping, emails get blocked or the customer doesn't give us any way to contact them (it happens suprisingly often), etc but most cases are handled to the customer's satisfaction (according to what most customers tell us).

peter