[Roman2025]

I love it when I get contacted and told that someone read my review on a site I have never heard of before. Wonderful, my work is so good it is ending up elsewhere.

You want to take my post content and put it somewhere else? Fine... but by hell you better have my username at least associated with it and 1 or more links back to TNT or AT LEAST the original source you stole the article from (like slatedroid).

Case-in-Point:

"Shite Chinese Seller of the Month" Award Winner: Ebellking

http://www.ebellking...oid-4-1-tablet/

Yes, that very long and detailed article talking about the N101 vs the PiPo M1 was written by your's truly. I sometimes spend several hours writing reviews and I don't do it just for kicks.

Having just launched our own mobile magazine/blog and taking hours and hours to write original content for it (between myself and my partner in the UK who also writes quite a bit) it really pisses me off when I see another company just ripping article content directly from other sites and claiming it as their own.

This kind of crap happens with our firmware to... I have people that buy tablets from e.bay (we pretty much don't sell on e.bay) contacting ME for support because they think their tablet came from TNT because some China outlet is just loading our firmware on their devices. Ridiculous...

Our work is "free" to the community and most likely always will be, but not to our competition.

I would urge folks that are considering spending money on a China tab, don't by from a retailer based in China... they pretty much all have the same business practice and if they do this, trust me it is going to also play over into other areas like customer service. I am sure there are 1 or 2 exceptions but by and large, this is the landscape. That doesn't mean you have to buy TNT either. There are other US retailers and UK retailers that actually are trying to run legitimate businesses.

Sorry for the rant, this just really got under my skin.

Kind Regards,

Roman

This post has been edited by Roman2025: 01 November 2012 - 03:32 PM

[Gnox]

As someone who has purchased 6 different tabs this year from chinese sellers, i have to say I agree with Roman's stance.
For the sake of a (relatively small) premium - buying from a local retailer is a much safer bet.
I have had to return 2 units to china (min 5 week turnaround and high postage costs) and one seller - elijah on aliexpress- refused to take a faulty unit back.
So 50% of my purchases have been faulty and any saving I made buying from china was wiped out.
Having a seller in your region that can QC the unit before shipping, offer quick replacements and support in your own language is invaluable.
I'll be ordering future units from a irish/uk supplier (with tnt uk as a first stop).
Roman - your work on putting various tablets through their paces and developing custom firmwares gives me great confidence that a unit sourced from you guys will be honestly reviewed, well supported and have good community support.
Keep up the good work.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[Tablet_Collector]

Hi Roman,

Very annoying, I feel for you.

I have been there myself when a very well known site copied the content and format of my original Cube U30GT post. Hell they are so dumb they didn't even remove something I put in which was a throw away comment. Still it helped to confirm that they had stolen it!

Jez

This post has been edited by Tablet_Collector: 01 November 2012 - 06:40 PM

[Roman2025]

Thanks all for validating my rant

Steal all they want, we will still support the community. I think I am going to have to start posting all our actual "content" on our site though and just link to it . I had started moving in this direction anyhow. My worry is that if we put it in the forum, we kind of lose all rights to it I think . It isn't the end of the world and I will still certainly be interacting with folks on the forum and helping them out, but 5 page write-ups on tablets put together in the form of a post are probably going to have to be replaced with a 5 page write-up on our site and linked. I would rather just copy of the content everywhere with a link back but I feel like if I do that I am going to continue seeing more of our work being used to promote 2nd rate sellers like Ebellking.

Regards all

Roman

[Roman2025]

Gnox, on 01 November 2012 - 05:28 PM, said:

I have had to return 2 units to china (min 5 week turnaround and high postage costs) and one seller - elijah on aliexpress- refused to take a faulty unit back.

WARNING: ALSO A RANT

Elijah is the "supplier" that almost ran us out of business because we ordered over 40 units from them and they screwed our customers over (40 is a fair number of units as we are a small company). It was an OEM device we rebranded (MISTAKE!) as we really liked the sample unit. The subsequent production units they shipped were horribly Quality Controlled and many had issues. So... When our customers started shipping units back for repair or replacement to them (we had talked with Elijah and they said we could have customers ship direct), Elijah took MONTHS to do the repairs and lost like 10 devices. They said they shipped back (by China post) but the tracking numbers never became active nor were they even recognized. I think they were fake... Then they completely cut off all communication with us (wouldn't answer email, IM, etc.).

1st, we fully reimbursed customers for their shipping costs back to china... that was very expensive as you well know... THEN for all the customers that never got devices back, we replaced those devices... that was insanely expensive because we were paying for the units twice.

Absolutely nuts . That company should burn to the ground and have all its Sr. Management thrown in jail. Not that I am holding a grudge or anything... they just pretty much wiped out a years worth of work (financially speaking) for TNT.

Going forward though, lesson learned... Being much more cautious about who we deal with and what we sell. It was a "good" learning but a very very hard one. It just irks me that folks still buy from them not realizing what a horrible group of b@$tards they are.

-Roman

This post has been edited by Roman2025: 01 November 2012 - 09:44 PM

[jsaily]

Beware of mixeshop.com too, they shipped me a faulty Zenithink C97 and the return process was far from smooth. I returned the device but they cut off all communication. Fortunately they didn't respond to my PayPal claim either so I got my money back from PayPal yesterday :-/ But I had to pay shipping back to China (32 EUR).

[mkh]

nathan u r justtified with your rant..thanks for all the hard work u guys put in..am looking forward to buying and getting shipped to inda a tablet from TNT..just keep up the hard work..and u shall be rewarded

[theOperative]

I agree with you about Chinese retailers but it seems that warning postings are either not loud enough nor well placed so that buyers can BEWARE.

Perhaps a forum should be set-up where experiences with these companies can be detailed and folks can be directed to see such forum before deciding buy from a Chinese Retailer.
It might also be a good idea to offer a list of retailers like TNT as an alternative.

As for stealing firmware, could there be a way to make custom firmware that would only work with devices registered with the developer or to be cheeky stop working the moment they encounter Chinese Apps!
Perhaps it might be worth talking with Google about having registered custom ROMS which people could buy.

Yea, these ideas fly in the face of free software, but getting ripped off buy commercial organisations completely defeats the spirit and purpose of free software.

[BaconBits]

Just when you thought you've seen lowest of the low... stealing an article and making it look like your own is just low.

Ps. Ì saw we were warning others for current stores? Stay away of AntElife, descriptions are wrong and you just can't do anything about it.

[Tango One]

I was actually going to order a few pipo s1 from Elijah but due to this thread I will be going else where. Thanks

[Roman2025]

Tango One, on 02 November 2012 - 05:16 PM, said:

I was actually going to order a few pipo s1 from Elijah but due to this thread I will be going else where. Thanks

Yes, avoid them like the plague in particular. Not sure where you are at geographically but I know our Canadian partner http://ca.topnotchtablets.com has started carrying them and the USA site should also be carrying them in a few days. I am sure there are other legitimate retailers carrying them as well.

Kind Regards,

Roman

[Roman2025]

theOperative, on 02 November 2012 - 02:10 PM, said:

I agree with you about Chinese retailers but it seems that warning postings are either not loud enough nor well placed so that buyers can BEWARE.

Perhaps a forum should be set-up where experiences with these companies can be detailed and folks can be directed to see such forum before deciding buy from a Chinese Retailer.
It might also be a good idea to offer a list of retailers like TNT as an alternative.

As for stealing firmware, could there be a way to make custom firmware that would only work with devices registered with the developer or to be cheeky stop working the moment they encounter Chinese Apps!
Perhaps it might be worth talking with Google about having registered custom ROMS which people could buy.

Yea, these ideas fly in the face of free software, but getting ripped off buy commercial organisations completely defeats the spirit and purpose of free software.

Slatedroid has this:
http://www.slatedroi...rchant-reviews/

I have thought about starting a page on the TNT website devoted to it however I think most would view it as self-serving and of course biased

I would try to be fair and list off other retailers I have heard good things about. Honestly, I haven't dealt directly with many "retailers" per se' however I do know some are much better than others based on things I have read. Among the Chinese retail shops I have heard mostly good things about Merimobiles. I know the gent who runs F&L Superstore is a good guy and based in Florida and I have also heard good things about MP4 Nation. Of that list, Merimobiles is the only one I am not all that sure of but most of what I have heard has been good and several of the major posters on Slatedroid have direct connections with them I think which does legitimize their business a bit more imho.

Kind Regards,

Roman