Customer feedback

I try to give ratings of companies that I deal with, particularly those that go out of their way to do right by their customers, or those who have the chance to do so and don't.

I've got one of each for today.

The first is BlitzUSA, makers of the budget 5-gallon gas cans available at your local home improvement store. I bought a few of their gas cans last year just so I could maintain a reserve for my vehicles and my generator. Unfortunately the full cans were stolen by some neighborhood punks to fuel their ATV's, and the cans were subsequently discarded in the woods nearby, without the gas caps, of course. Now gas cans without caps are useless, and I'd already decided to allocate these to "range target" status when I got the idea to look up the manufacturer in the internet and see if I could reach them. Well I could and sis, and when I called BlitzUSA up, they sent me some brand new gas caps at no charge. That's the kind of customer service that'll have me looking for their products the next time that I need something that they sell...like more gas cans.

The second company was Competitive Edge Dynamics, and they probably won't be getting my business again. I purchased a CED Nextorch flashlight from these folks after seeing a review in one of the gun magazines. I then looked at their website and decided that it might be a good light for me to carry and to recommend in self-defense classes that I sometimes teach. I was particularly looking for a light that had a tailcap button that would allow for momentary "ON" with some pressure and constant "ON/OFF" with more pressure. Frankly, that's what I thought I was buying, because their internet ad says "It features both ON / OFF and momentary ON use by pressing the sealed end-cap button." Most tactical lights require you to twist the tailcap for constant "ON", but the way that this ad was written, I believed that it offered a true click on/off feature. So despite the fact that it cost me more money than a Surefire G2, and despite the outrageous $9.00 shipping for this little light (I called them and they wouldn't ship it any cheaper), I bought it to evaluate.

Well I was not happy when I found that it has a regular twist on/off tailcap. I could have gotten that in the Surefire for less money. I also put it up against a Surefire light and found it to be no brighter even though CED claims that the light puts out 80 lumens as compared to the Surefire's 65 lumens. I was also not keen on it's on/off button being recessed into the tailcap. That makes it somewhat hard to get a thumb onto quickly as compared to other similar lights where the button protrudes. In a tactical light, I want instant light without having to fumble for a recessed switch. It may be a good feature for someone who is afraid of bumping th switch, but it just doesn't do it for me. The light wasn't worth the extra money that I paid for it, and had the company just taken it back and given me a full refund--including my shipping costs, since I believe that their ad was inaccurate--I would have called the whole thing even. But Charles Hardy, "CEO of CED" refused, claiming that even though the ad says what it says, since most other lights have a twist on/of switch, I should have assumed that theirs did too. As such, they will only refund the cost of the light, leaving me to eat the original shipping plus the return shipping cost. Screw that. I'll just keep the damned thing and tell anyone who asks what a rip-off I think that it was. I know for a fact that Surefire's policy is that if you have a problem with their products, they cover shipping from their end and do whatever else it takes to make customers happy. Surefire lives by their lifetime guarantees and I should never have strayed to try someone new.

If you need a small tactical light--and who doesn't?--I recommend sticking with Surefire. They're an industry leader for a reason. Forget about the Nextorch. It really doesn't offer anything that Surefire's lights don't, and you're just paying more money to buy from a company that doesn't try to make things right with it's customers like Surefire does.