Question for Justin @ LaserGlow

[Deleted member 10578]

Hi Jason,
Good post you made on deception marketing.
I suppose since you found the digglasers site, you also checked out techlasers webpage as well.
Techlasers posts in their "about us" page that techlasers is the "OFFICIAL" of CNI optoelectronics technology, but when I visit the CNI website www.cnilaser.com , I see no mention of this although several other companies are listed, including laserglow.

What's up with this?
Has the CNI website not been updated yet?
If so, then techlasers would be under pricing the north american CNI distributor (Laserglow) by a great deal.

If they are not the official distributor of CNI, is CNI aware that they are posting so on their website?
It's also interesting that if you look at the CNI products page, they don't offer a 500mW pointer.
Anther observation is that the pointer that techlasers shows on their site that resembles the CNI PGL-III laser uses an "old style" slider type mechanism on the aperture shutter...and I haven't seen this type of shutter on a CNI product for over two years; this makes me think that what they are offering is a cheap counterfeit of a CNI product and passing themselves off as the CNI distributor.

I got a counterfeit RPL laser sent to me for repair last week from a fellow who had bought and imported it directly from a company in China that I had never heard of. He said it died 5 weeks after he bought it and that it had less than 1 hour of total use on it.

I could tell as soon as I got it in my hand it wasn't an RPL, it was quite a bit lighter in weight and didn't have the same feel at all. I opened it up and there wasn't even a driver board for the module, only a resistor to limit current, had a 1 watt diode vs a 2.5Watt and the crystal was about 1/3rd the size of the crystal in an RPL; yet externally they look very much the same. I had to just send it back to him with the news that he needed to send it back to the company he got it from 'cause he got a cheap counterfeit, not an RPL.

So deceptive marketing as well as counterfeit products are running amok.

Jack

 

[Justin]

Hi Jack,

Yeah, this is a concern of ours. We are talking to CNI about this "Official Distributor" stuff because, as shown on CNI's website, WE are the official North American distributor for CNI. Perhaps because Techlasers in based on China they are claiming some new title? "Official Chinese Distributor" would seem to be a bit of a stretch considering the number of Chinese resellers already in the market.

Also, there is no >500mW handheld unit in that housing so I have no idea what they are talking about. It's either counterfeit or just a bogus claim, but I'd be very concerned about purchasing anything from Techlasers until we figure out what their product is and why it is rated at seemingly impossible output powers for such low cost. If it sounds too good to be true...

If there's any relevant news I'll post it to this thread.

 

[Placebo]

Hi,

I was wondering: what significance does this have for the consumer? Is there a difference between purchasing from a site like techlasers that calls itself "an official distributer" and one that does not? Does the distributer list on CNI's site provide any assurances? Thanks for your time!


P.S. Justin, your company's reputation by itself provides enough of everything for me, I'm just curious.

 

[Justin]

Placebo, thanks for the compliment! We try our best to maintain that reputation and I'm glad the hard work is paying off.

As far as us being an "official dealer" for CNI, it's basically a reassurance that you're doing business with an established company that has an openly acknowledged relationship with the actual manufacturer. This means that you know where our product comes from, as opposed to some knock-offs and "clones" that I've seen floating around. I'm not implying that this is necessarily the case with Techlasers, but it wouldn't take much for a Chinese company to clone a few CNI products and try to pass them off as genuine.

It's also an issue of company image, because being listed on the CNI page means that CNI is "vouching" for us and the fact that we do business with them in an honest fashion. They wouldn't list us there if they didn't like us! They would not want to be directly associated with a shady company and as a result you probably won't be seeing a link from CNI to Thinklasers anytime soon.

Also, because we do such a huge amount of business with CNI, we enjoy the benefits of such a relationship. ie. good pricing and QC, smooth returns and repairs, and the ability to special request custom lasers without paying a rediculous prototyping fee. All in all, having an officially recognized relationship offers assurances to the customer that you're dealing with a respected and reliable company, which is why we're a little disturbed that Techlasers is making such a bold claim with no evidence from CNI to back them up. Basically, if Techlasers and Laserglow are both saying that we are "official distributors" and then Techlasers does something shady, it leaves us looking worse by association and we really don't want our hard earned reputation to be sullied by an upstart company who makes a claim to the same title.

I hope this answered your question. We're pursuing the matter through CNI and I'll post if anything newsworthy develops.

 

[Justin]

Update: Techlasers just updated their website which now links to wickedlasers, LC and laserpointer.com. So I guess the guessing game is over about who is in charge over at Techlasers. The question still remains why they are offering impossible output powers. If they are actually selling CNI products, then I've seen everything that is available to them and their claim to have a 500mW laser in an Aries style housing is absurd. They don't even peak that high.

PLUS they claim that their "Copernicus" is "known as the Hercules" but the Hercules is our exclusive product. They cannot possibly be selling Hercules series lasers because we are the only company in the world who sells Hercules series lasers. Something is fishy here, and we're going to sort it all out soon enough. Stay tuned.

 

[SenKat]

Sic 'em, Justin ! Deceptive crap, false advertising, and rediculous claims REALLY get my goat...you will be doing the lasering community a GREAT service by taking these clowns down !

G !

 

[Greenie]

You know, it is really nice that here at LPF we have reps from different companies that get along with each other and look out for us members. Just another reason why LPF is a great place.

Thanks guy.

Greenie

 

[Justin]

I have heard back from my contact at CNI. They say that they have never heard of Techlasers, they've never sold anything directly to Techlasers, and they have not authorized them to become "official distributors". You can check CNI's webpage to get a list of the actual CNI distributors. So Techlasers is lying about this. I wonder what else they're lying about?

 

[millionaire]

Sue for the business they have tooken away from you for saying that they are a cni distrubitor.

 

[Justin]

Trying to sue people in China is like thowing rocks at a tank. You might make a little noise, but they aren't going to slow down to investigate.

Thanks for your support though. Just don't buy anything from them and they'll go away eventually!