Re: Received Smart Strings poor quality

[Pete]

After a month of communications with Ray I received what Ray calls an acceptable offering for the 344 bad nodes on 35 strings of lights.  He sent me 3 - 128 node strings and two flex strips (to replace 2 defective  flex strips).  I am not happy and I have filed a dispute (only 12 hours left).  I also email Ray and explained my dis-satisfaction with his service, for what it is worth!

I expected better for the $1900 of product ordered.

Thanks,
Pete

Here is an update:
Ray contacted me and a long story short has agreed to replace all the strings.  With the open dispute and clock ticking I told him I would cancel the dispute once I received quality strings, tested them and all is good.  He says he will ship them out Monday.   We shall see . . . .

[taybrynn]

I did so many splices, that I actually spliced a 7 node section into a circle by accident.  !!! argh !!

And how many times do I have to put the heat shrink on last (instead of first) before I stop doing that! ... lol
I get so irritated after winding the wires together, only to find I forgot to put on the heat shrink tubing.  And if you
get the iron too close (to the heat shrink) ... thats another thing I've learned not to do!

I'm also finding that dealing with Ray takes time and patience.  It took a few iterations to get my initial order invoiced ...
and the 25 replacement nodes ... well he came back with an invoice for $3 off the total and charged me for the replacements,
incl. extra shipping.  It was actually more money than just doing it online, so I sent him another email to attempt to make it right.
I've only got him on chat once so far, so its mostly one email per day.

I'm sure he'll get it right eventually, but you need time and patience to do all the back and forth to get the invoice right.

I really messed up by not inspecting the nodes really closely when I first got them ... and released the funds too early.

I am finding that the TH2010-x controller is a must for testing these things ... and is actually very cool.

[Lucas]

If you get new good strings as a replacement it might be best not to cut them up, but keep them as a working unspoiled string... Then just cut the bad nodes out of the faulty strings... Wouldn't it? Is that what you guys are doing?

[tng5737]

Don't feel bad - I pulled a great one the other day myself!   I was splicing my nodes for a project and abt halfway thru decided to test my work using the TH2010 - only about half of the nodes lit up.  I concluded after those many hours of sucking in solder smoke that I had a bad node.  After cutting out the offending node I decided to test it - it worked!  It was then that I remembered I had forgotten to UP the COUNT inside the TH2010 -  ended up splicing it all back to gether AGAIN!!!

[taybrynn]

Thats a good one.  Luckily, I read here about increasing the node count on the th2010-x.

Since I have just one 128 node string, and I'm putting them all onto one display item ... I'm splicing them all back into a single string.   Helps keeps it straight for me ... lol.

I just got a new invoice from Ray and its correct this time.  He's a good, honest guy.

Can you weatherproof (clear dip) the nodes with completely exposed circuit boards?

[tng5737]

Sure!  If you talking about the square modules It might be easier just to brush it on, though.  I have a couple like that!  Oddly, it was from the last batch I got from ray - the first batch were just fine!   
I believe Ray to be an honest person - although I question some of his tactics like charging the same amounts on shipping even though he combines shipments.  Also, his propensity for issuing fake shipping numbers is a practice I wish he'd stop!
Overall, he seems to be a good guy!

[taybrynn]

Thanks.  Actually I was just talking about the SS nodes ... some of mine have a broken outer shell and you can actually touch the chips inside. Most are just inserted into the molding too near the surface, so have a solder joint sticking out.

[bcstuff]

My replacement nodes arrived and all are sealed properly and no bad nodes.
This new batch is way superior to the batches many of us received from the orders in early March.
As suggested above, I will leave these strings whole and chop the worse strings.