# Troutie lights, buyer beware?



## Giel (Jan 16, 2011)

I have been a satisfied user of a Darkness Dominator that I bought of troutie. Great craftmanship and a fine piece of kit. Trouble started when I hamfistedly pulled of the plug from the battery lead. A brief email exchange with troutie and decided the best course of action to take was to send it over to him for repairs. That was in January. Troutie indicates he mailed it to me twice, but in neither case a T&Tnr was provided nor a request for payment and after nearly half a year I am still waiting for my battery. I am increasingly under the impression I got a 250GBP paper weight. 

Chris if you read this, please get in touch, or better still, just send me my battery!


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## zemike (Sep 3, 2007)

You mean that the plug got separated from the cable?


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## Giel (Jan 16, 2011)

I ripped the plug in two when loading my bike in the car and the cable caught on something. My mistake, not a manufacturing problem. 

My gripe is that I contact Chris, send the battery for repair (attach new plug) and never got it back. It's been with him for 6 months. He told me twice he sent it back (but never asked to be paid for work done), but I still haven't got anything. Emails of late go unanswered.

In view of his excellent reputation on here I refrained from voicing this to date, thinking it was just a hiccup and would be sorted. It's been a long time and I increasingly feel I have been ripped off by this chap. Hence: caveat emptor.


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

Could be the battery got lost in mail somewhere..(?) I was going to ask you how you first got the light. Did you have to sign for it when it came? You're from Holland so I have no idea what postal or parcel services you have there. If the battery was sent the same way as the lamp ( and it had to be signed for before delivery ) there should be some insurance that the package get where it's suppose to go. 

Did you check your spam folder? Sometimes good e-mail gets filtered.


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## emu26 (Jun 23, 2008)

Giel I would not be surprised if Troutie wasn't going to charge you for the repairs, he is that sort of bloke. It is also possible that because of restrictions of sending batteries through mail / air freight it might have been stopped. Hope things work out for you and it gets sorted out one way or another.


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## troutie-mtb (Sep 20, 2007)

OK long story short 
Battery arrived here was repaired and sent back but did not arrive 
Micheal contacted me before a race he was doing so another battery was sent and I heard no more about it .
until this week when I have just returned from a holiday and had this letter in my mail



not been on here for a while and just logged on this morning and saw this post

I am now at a loss as to how to send a replacement battery to holland as I am now 1 battery down and dont want to lose another


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

troutie-mtb said:


> ...I am now at a loss as to how to send a replacement battery to holland as I am now 1 battery down and dont want to lose another


...is there a non-royal option? ...sorry, couldn't resist that...but seriously, maybe DHL?


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## SAVAGESAM (Jan 14, 2008)

I've never done business with Troutie. But just from what I've read here, IMHO, there's NO WAY he would rip ANYONE off. We are a community here. You should always give the benefit of doubt. Again, IMHO.


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

troutie-mtb said:


> OK long story short
> Battery arrived here was repaired and sent back but did not arrive
> Micheal contacted me before a race he was doing so another battery was sent and I heard no more about it .
> until this week when I have just returned from a holiday and had this letter in my mail
> ...


The irony in all this is that batteries have been sent through the mail for decades without too many problems. Then suddenly someone builds a Li-ion proto type battery for a multi-million dollar jet ( that fails ) and suddenly IQ's drop on a massively International scale resulting in manic over-reaction and banning of air transport for Li-ion batteries. ut:

Than on the other hand if a wing falls off a passenger jet and kills a hundred people the powers that be just say, "How tragic, we'll have to do an investigation". In the mean time "that model jet" is taken out of service while people continue to fly in other models. Duh....nice to know the powers that be are so concerned about batteries ( as to ban their transport ) but not so concerned about human life. What the heck, we can always grow more humans right?...What's a little plane crash here or there have to do with safety...now a smoking battery....hell no, we can't have that. Toss those lap tops and cell phones out NOW! 

The other irony is that you can be sure that when the mailman comes to deliver your parcel that almost every employee has a cell phone or other electronic device containing a Li-ion cell...not to mention the vehicle has a battery ( which is prohibited in their list ).


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## Giel (Jan 16, 2011)

troutie-mtb said:


> OK long story short
> Battery arrived here was repaired and sent back but did not arrive
> Micheal contacted me before a race he was doing so another battery was sent and I heard no more about it .
> until this week when I have just returned from a holiday and had this letter in my mail
> ...


A late reply, I didn't spent much time on the interweb this summer. Thanks Troutie, this does clear things up. I have in the mean time sourced a battery through another channel. We'll leave it at this. It's obviously not your fault my battery went missing. It is a shame that we're both 1 battery down  Perhaps the RM will change this silly policy after they are privatised.


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## spankone (Aug 31, 2011)

You should be fine shipping with other company's simply declare it.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free


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## mtbRevolution (Aug 10, 2012)

Giel said:


> A late reply, I didn't spent much time on the interweb this summer. Thanks Troutie, this does clear things up. *I have in the mean time sourced a battery through another channel.* We'll leave it at this. It's obviously not your fault my battery went missing. It is a shame that we're both 1 battery down  Perhaps the RM will change this silly policy after they are privatised.


I PMed Troutie when you first mentioned it. I asked for the battery set up whether it was 8.4v etc. No response. We could have suggested battery suppliers in the Netherlands to you. If there's special requirements you can still get a local electronics business/technician to re-solder batteries, PCB and connectors. This would bypass the whole Royal Mail/cross-borders Li-ion shipment issue.

Li-ion is classified as dangerous goods from Day 1. While most of us look at this from our gimme-my-bike-light-now perspective, we will have a different view if our families are onboard a plane loaded with crappy-did-not-pass-any-test-recycled batteries. In view of documented cabin fires from laptops, if there's a fire in the cargo-hold, smelling smoke may mean it's already too late.


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## spankone (Aug 31, 2011)

I popped to the post office today, you now need to declare lithium batteries. I'm sure if you went to the post office and declared it they'll post it


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