hey bro. sorry to hear about your laser and i wish i had an answer but honestly i am just getting in on this topic because i just myself had the pleasure? of dealing with jack at optotronics. the end result of which led me here to see if i was not alone in my concerns about this guys integrity or at the very least what value he places on customer service. my 220 mw laser stopped working when i was changing out the battery one day and the housing surrounding the battery came out right along with it. when i contacted jack he immediately got on the defensive saying i must have attempted to disassemble the laser and thus voided the warranty in doing so. when i assured him this was not the case and said that would be obvious once he actually looked at it. i sent it in and he immediately agreed that the failure was not due to me having taken it apart but referenced a tiny nick on the base of the housing and said it had been dropped and that was why it had stopped working. he went on to say that the internal components that had come loose would not prohibit operation of the laser. the only problem here is that i was present and in possession of the laser the last time it worked up until 30 seconds later when it stopped working and there were no traumatic incidents other than a normal battery swap that took place in that time frame. sorry about the length here, the reason i even started writing this though was to inform you that there is in my belief a possibility that your suspicions about the answer you recieved may be valid and if i have to pay to fix my laser that was not dropped because i voided the warranty by dropping it i will begin a campaign against this guy to prevent anyone else from being ripped off by purchasing from optotronics and wanted you to be aware of it because there is a good possibility something could arise from it that addressess your issue and may be of some help to you hopefully. again sorry but when i know im in the right i get a little carried away. good luck buddy.
Just to set the record straight and let everyone hear both sides of the story.
About 1 month after buying an RPL-260 with reduced 90 day warranty I got an email from from Mr. Leal telling me his laser was no longer working as well as assuring me it had not been dropped. Within 2 hours of getting this email, I replied back asking him if it broke while he was using it or if it failed when he just tried to turn it on and no longer worked.
I then did not hear back from him for just over 3 weeks, then I got this message.
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"he was changing the batteries and when he took the battery out the metal housing surrounding the battery came out with it and he said the screws looked stripped out and it no longer worked. the light was not dropped though. i am on my way to send light and battery and charger back and will send you the tracking number as soon as i return home in next few hours. i will include insurance on the package as well.
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Notice how it was mentioned again that it was not dropped, even though I hadn't even asked.
There are 2 very small screws that hold a cover plate over the battery sleeve. These screws are steel with very fine thread and the laser body is aluminum. They will strip if over tightened which has happened with several customers who had to just open the laser to see how it works and when they put the screws back, it's very easy to to strip them out.
In my replay to Mr. Leal, I mentioned this and that these screws are checked by myself to make sure they are perfect or it doesn't get shipped and that I suppose that by a very rare occurrence it might be possible for one of these screws to work their way loose, but not to strip themselves, let alone both of them. I warned that it might not be a warranty repair, but that I would hold off judgment until I had the laser in hand and inspected it. I arrived right before the 4th of July weekend, so it was not inspected until the Tuesday afterwords.
When I removed the tailcap of his laser, the sleeve cover plate was missing along with the screws and the sleeve itself had a dent in the side of it as if a screwdriver or something was used to pry it out of the laser. It was also installed back in the laser upside down as the serial number which I attach right after checking the screws was now at the bottom end of the laser. So it was not even returned with all of it's parts.
On top of all of this there was a series of small deep marks in the tailcap like those persent if the laser was dropped tail 1st onto concrete or pavement.
I then proceeded to check the threads of the laser body where the cover plate is mounted. I used a screw I had on hand as it didn't have the original screws. The screw just fell completely in the thread hole on both sides, absolutely no threads remained...not only stripped, but stripped completely bare. If it had been like this before hand, it would even have gone together period.
I then emailed him and told him it would almost for sure not be a warranty repair as not only was it returned without all of the parts, but that it had tell tail signs of being dropped.
I gave him an estimated repair cost of $125 to $150 provided the missing parts were mailed to us. I did not hear back for ~5 days, and emailed him every day or two asking about whether we should proceed with the repair based on this estimate.
Early this morning I got the following reply.
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i definitely want the laser repaired and i do not have any problem with paying for the repair if i did something to cause the warranty to be voided. however, your assumption that the lasers failure is due to it being dropped is incorrect. i understand you are far more experienced than i in this field and you are entitled by all means to your hypothesis, but the simple fact is i was there when the laser ceased to work and it absolutely was not dropped. i took the battery out to replace it with the spare and with it came the housing surrounding it. i believe it is true when you say that there are pieces missing and also that the screws were stripped because i did attempt to put the screws back in and in doing so felt that i must have been missing something too. i was outside when this occurred and its very possible that i lost the plate you are talking about when it fell out of the laser body as i stated previously. i did also misplace the screws so that is completely my fault. i accept that no problem. what i am getting at here is if i am to pay for the repair due to my voiding the warranty by dropping the laser then i will do so. i do insist though that i be provided with written documentation from the facility doing the repair stating that their findings at the time of repair are consistent with the findings of your initial inspection as well as an invoice of all parts replaced and work performed that supports the same. if this is not possible for any reason please let me know before proceeding further with the repair.
thank you,
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I have not had time to answer Mr. Leal today, but will post here what I was going to send him as I'm sure he'll read it.
Hi Bill,
If you say it wasn't dropped and it hadn't been, the repair cost will almost for sure be much less than the quoted amount. I know you said you didn't drop it and that may be the case, but often as this has happened in the past is that the owner does not have complete control of the laser at all times. I say this because I've had customer find out later that someone like their kids or a friend got a hold of their laser and dropped it while showing off to friends. I don't know if this was possible in your case or not, but someone could have gotten ahold of it, dropped it and then tried to fix and stripped the screws in the process.
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The following comments were not planned for the email, but just arose after a good customer forwarded this post to me.
Going onto a forum and promising a campaign against us is not going to help your case. Have you ever heard that you will gather more bees with honey than with vinegar (or something along those lines).
I think if you ask around, you will find our customer service to be tops or very near it.
In fact, I've had several customers who have come right out and told me that they dropped their brand new RPL and ruined it. I got them a great deal on fixing it in all cases and with one fellow I was able to fix it for free. I don't think there is a laser company around where you can just send it back in pieces back and expect them not to get on the defensive let along sending it back with some physical damage and pieces missing.
Even though you chose to post here and try to start a one man campaign against us I am going to do my best to keep the costs as low as possible. I had already mentioned that altough it was not likely a warranty repair, we would cover the expensive portion of the shipping from the USA to China and back.
The rest of this message is directed to the original poster who had a scattering problem with his pen pointer. I think you mentioned high humidity and from the picture, this looks to be the case, just a dirty lens. The beam splitting into 2 parts could be the state of the battery change/ voltage level or temperature related and not a bg deal. If it happens at all times, temperatures and voltage levels and did so from the begin or early on, you would have needed to contact us right when it happened and maybe it would have still been under warranty and we would have sent a new one, but there is not much we can do 8 months later when the pen pointers only have a 90 day warranty.
It will be repaired and if it hadn't been dropped, no worries, the cost should be much less
thank you
