So then, gather round. Gather close as I tell you a tale of a long journey, a winding path; of hope lost, then redemption gained.
(
TLDR? 3F got back in much more detail and with plenty of feeling, but are still sticking to their original requirement, blaming Waidea. And I only very slightly opened the flask, just unscrewing the top cap, but seemingly fixed it all the same. Have been vaping on it for 5 hours now.)
The Little Boy Who Faced The Brutal World (And Lost)
3FVape got back to me in detail, with Kate spilling her heart out about her sad and frustrated they were. They spent three hours talking to the manufacturer, but the manufacturer just wouldn't listen. They said I was using the wrong batteries (not "Power Batteries", they must be "Power Batteries"!). They said it had to be returned.
(What the hell are Power Batteries, you ask? That's what Waidea calls high-amp-discharge batteries. It hasn't been made clear to me whether 20A counts in their eyes. But Kate did say that they said "no more than 2000mah" for some reason. She - or they - seems to think that there's a ratio between the capacity and the max current, she said max amp should be 20 times the capacity, which would actually mean 2000mah would require a 40A battery, and in any case I have never heard of any such ratio being important?)
In her explanations to me she got really rather involved and it comes across as quite sweet. A small snippet:
3FVape said:
We feel indebted as if it were received in person, you angry, we angry; you happy, we happy.
3FVapre is a fresh company which like a little boy who faced brutal world. We cannot growing and studying without you, we fight with many manufacturers day by day, for your reasonable price, good quality products, convenient RMA etc. But we still need time which can let us stand more higher with more power to get more resource for you.
Amen, sister.
So it was nice that she addressed my concerns in detail, and, if they're to be believed, they fought hard. But for all that, the upshot was no different than the original, impersonal email. I must return it at my cost upfront - she did not address the shipping issue at all, just saying "all our RMA standard based on our customer and manufacturer." and "For customer side, we are trying to make any RMAs more convenient.". Well I don't believe it's at all standard asking a customer to pay upfront for untracked shipping.
I did reply again, saying basically the things I'd said earlier in this thread: that they hold the relationship with me; that it's high-risk ordering from China; that I ordered from them only because I understood they had great customer service such that, should problems arise, they would shoulder as much of the responsibility as possible; that the $15 quoted is insufficient to get it back to them at all; that paying up-front for untracked shipping is a huge risk; and so on.
I was calm and understanding and thanked her for all her time and explanations, but ultimately I was still disappointed and unimpressed. I told her straight that I had expected at the very least they would send a new Waidea flask from stock while awaiting return. I told her that even if worst case they lost $40 in sending two flasks, that was as nothing compared to the future orders I alone would likely have placed (true), let alone the orders of others who would hear of my experience and might be put off. I also asked whether her supervisor Monica would read my email as well.
And while I was quite touched with the personal nature of her response, and I do believe that they went to some trouble trying to convince Waidea (confirmed as the main villains of the piece), I am not convinced that they are "a fresh company which like a little boy who faced brutal world." Sure it's tough as a new company. But they list thousands of products. They have three people in their Customer Service team alone, which must make them at least a 6 person company, probably more like 10. They're not a small backroom firm, and being overseas for 99% of their customers, customer service is vital to them.
MyEpack I know for certain is one guy on his own, working what must be 18-20 hour days. He gets absolutely everything delivered next day, with cheap delivery which is free over £50. I've had one failed product, a Fogger v6. One of the posts on the deck broke off. He replaced that deck without my returning mine, but then when I still had further problems I said I just wanted to return it and swap it for a Lemo RTA, which costs £6 more. I said I'd Paypal the difference. He asked me to return the Fogger and the day after he received that, I received the Lemo, with a note saying not to worry about the price difference, sorry for the trouble.
That's good customer service, and you don't have to be a big company - or even have more than one employee - to do it. And I have no worries that it's going to bankrupt MyEpack, it's service like that that ensures he's fulfilling literally hundreds of orders a week. (How many times have I mentioned myepack in this thread already? And for good reason. How many times will I mention 3F favourably now? None; at most "great stock and good prices, but you're taking a risk.")
The Ferrous Thorn In The Flask's Foot (well, head really)
So anyway, then I opened up the flask and have seemingly fixed it.
I'd like to tell you that I took it apart, identified a loose connection and with great resourcefulness rose to the occasion and did my best solder joint ever. But in fact I didn't get anywhere near that. I couldn't open the thing more than a crack. The top lid came off easily enough, but it wouldn't come away more than a few mm because the 510 is on an incredibly short wire. Peering inside I could see the sled, and figured I had to prise it out. But I wasn't completely sure, and didn't want to risk prising the wrong bit or too hard. So I PM'd dwcraig asking for advice and planned to wait.
But while there I looked around in the tiny bit I could see. There's a big brass nut connected to the 510, which is itself wired to the board and then down to the batteries. At first I wondered if that nut untightened, allowing me to at least get the top completely off and have more room to look at getting the rest out. So I tried to reach it with a pair of tweezers. Didn't get anywhere, but as I pulled the tweezers away I could see a little scrap of wire or metal on them. The wire that connects to the nut is not a standard, plastic coated wire, but rather appears to be some kind of multi-strand wire, bare. And this little scrap of wire looked very much like a little piece of that cable.
I carefully fished it out, then gave a general clean to the exposed screen and bits I could see, blew down inside the case to clear any theoretical loose dust, and put it back together.
That was five hours ago and I've vaped on it constantly since then. I've also tried shaking it gently,and tapping it all over in the places where previously that would trigger the on/off behaviour. It's been completely solid.
So I have to assume that that little scrap of wire was there from the beginning (I was at first worried that maybe I broke it away myself when I had the tweezers in there.) It must have been floating around the connection to the 510, occasionally causing a bridge and a short.
That would certainly explain the very first symptom: when I first got it, the VF worked fine for a few minutes up until I put the ST mini on, which I screwed down a bit tighter than I had the others (it was stiffer to get on.) Suddenly the resistance dropped from 0.57 to 0.07, which had it happened while I was building a coil would tell me I had shorted that coil. Well quite possibly my tightening caused a bit of wire to come loose, or move, and shorted it internally. Then that wire must have shifted further such that it was now shorting the connection to the board, not just bridging the 510.
That's my theory, anyway! If it was only bridging the 510 then I'd think that'd be no different to a shorted external coil, and shouldn't have caused the many symptoms I saw.
I still have the worry that I haven't proved it's fixed. Maybe that scrap of wire was actually caused by me, and there was some other problem that coincidentally happened to get resolved while I was opening it up or blowing down in it - like a loose ball of solder that moved further in and is currently secure, but won't stay that way.
But certainly at the moment it gives every appearance of working fine. I'm yet to try TC, but will later.
One thing I've noticed - and I think others reported this on their clones? - is that the resistance on coils is consistently reading 0.01 - 0.03 higher than on my Smok M80. Unfortunately I don't yet have a standalone ohms reader, just the Smok and VF with two decimal place displays (and an iStick 50W with one decimal place, and weird rounding rules, so that's no use.) So I can't say for sure that it's the VF that's wrong not the Smok, except the Smok always seems closer to what I would expect - e.g. reading 0.55 on both an Atlantis and Subtank 0.5 coils (both a few days old), where the VF reads 0.58 - 0.59. I will soon try a brand new coil that should read exactly 0.50.
Another thing is the resistance fluctuates more than in the Smok, e.g. 0.58 will be either 0.59 or 0.58, fluctuating vape-by-vape. This could of course also be a sign of more precision, as one might expect a slight resistance rise from a hotter coil, even in Kanthal.
And I never know whether any particular experience is to be expected from all clones, or a sign of trouble. Like for example it says "New Coil Up" an awful lot, even when I'm putting the same atty back on. And if I take an atty off it immediately zeroes the resistance, but doesn't update the resistance when an atty is put on until until fire is pressed (unlike the live display on my iStick 50W.) That last one I would be pretty sure must be normal behaviour for the clone, not specific to mine.
I always say New Coil given I'm not using TC at the moment. Oh that's another thing, is it meant to ask New Coil even when TC is off? What is the point? But again I could see that being how they implemented the clone; I can't see how that could be a specific problem in mine.
But overall, it is definitely working and seemingly fine. TC is next to try!
