My experience with Kaidomaine and Ultrafire RL-2088

I ordered the RL-2088 ,6 ea 18650's and a charger on july 17th , my payment was received the same day. When looking up my order with the provided purchased number my order was listed as back ordered . there was no indication of this before payment only after they already had my money. After an e-mail enquiry the prompt response was it would be in on monday (3 days) not so bad. When my purchase still hadn't shipped by the 23rd I enquired once more and was told it would ship the following day , finally it shipped on the 28th although Jacky at Kaidomaine insisted it went out on the 24th . I finally received the light on the 10th of August after finding out it was sent registered mail , if I had been informed of this in advance I would have felt like my investment was simply being taken care of instead of thinking it was lost or stolen. If I had been told the light was on backorder I still would have purchased it from them and would have admired their honesty instead of the whole experience leaving a bad taste that I don't want to experience again! The light is very solid and has a great look however the UI only works intermittently with the light always wanting to stay on strobeafter 10 or 15 tries to get out of strobe it will go to low high and strobe as it should and then get stuck in strobe again VERY frustrating . The light also occasionally won't light at all until I slap it against my palm a couple of times so I really wonder how long untill it won't function at all . I am not sure what to do ,if my previous experience with this company had been positive then I might have some confidence that contacting them might give me some resolution instead of just more frustration . If the light worked well I would have just let the whole matter go instead of venting here I have owned a bussiness and wouldn't want someone talking bad about me because I made a mistake were all just people and are subject to error. If anyone has a suggestion based on their experience with this company that would give me confidence to try and get some satisfaction or experience that I would be happier just chalking it up to an experience not to be repeated please let me know.
Best regards , Lee

Don't ever expect either KD or DX to have anything in stock they are slow they are cheap and as far as quality goes you take pot luck. Having said that I have bought various bits and pieces and some cheap lights and know what to expect from them. They have always made good any mix ups or problems I've had and there hasn't been many of those.
In general you get what you pay for, with that in mind I have never been disappointed by either KD or DX.
Norm

I just made my first order at KD and my experience is the same as yours. I still haven't received my first order, which was on July 25th. DX has been much better for me. I have contacted DX with questions regarding my order and they did respond to all of them. Their support ticket interface gives a sufficient method to tracking responses. KD has nothing of the sort and my emails have gone unanswered unless I requested a refund.

In regards to your problem, if slapping is required, it seems some sort of contact is preventing it from working reliably. I think you'd be better off trying to fix the problem instead of causing yourself more frustration. You should probably try the basic stuff like tightening the retaining ring in the tailcap and the contacts are clean. Hope you works things out.

There are a couple other threads on this flashlight and the same issues it has with the switch. I'd do a search and check em out. I found that if I wiped off the gold contacts inside and on the battery holder, it helped somewhat. Mine came with a gob of grease on everything. Yecch. Not like its going to rust! As far as the flashing goes, it took a little practice to get the half click thing down but it does work.

I love Kai and DX. Fantastic.
I can buy a lot of their products locally for about 3 times the price.

Therefore I accept the typical 2-6 weeks it takes for parts to arrive.
Many orders , never missed a single part. Perfect record. (about 25 seperate orders over 12 months)

I'm not going to add up the cost , lets say ballpark $500. I could have owned all those parts a few weeks earlier for $1500 buying locally. (And I could not have got everything anyway , would have had to wait for some bits)

See , you probably thought I was being sarcastic when I said they're fantastic...

I have never seen the need to email or track parts. Order , wait , receive has always worked well for me. If there were less "have you sent it yet" emails and people could just save email for genuine problems (like a faulty RL-2088) you'd all get your parts quicker anyway.

Read the Cheers'n'Jeers in the CPFMP - there are a number of very similar threads to yours, singing the same tune: buyer beware, you get what you pay for, etc.

Should have gone with a Maglite.

Wrong forum, please use the Marketplace.