Questionable Tactics By LED Company?

At least as written, realizing things don't always come across correctly on the net, the first, that seemed reasonable, the second pushing it. If I had ever even slightly suggested I first hand experience with Orphek or their products, that would be one thing, but I'm sure I haven't... If I did, I would have posted it, if anything, for better or for worse, I think I'm a pretty no BS kind of guy....

 

I certainly don't want the thread closed as I would like to enlighten you all. I was not sure if you had any contact with the company or not. I knew mikejrice had contacted them and I knew you purchased an Orphek fixture. With Orphek sponsoring 3reef, I was not sure if you bought your fixture from a retailer like Premium Aquatics or Marine Depot or direct from Orphek as many have.

I am asking these questions because I'm trying to figure out why people are giving them the benefit of the doubt. You say you want facts. I can give them to you. to me the Orphek fixture is not a bad light. It is one of the few fixtures that is 24" long. It is one of the few fixtures that is 120 watts. That gives it an advantage over the AI Sol in total output.

My goal is to protect consumers as I have a lot of friends in this hobby looking to move to LED and there is a lot of junk equipment out there. True, I don't like the spread of the optics but those issues will be proven or not when Sanjay's report comes out. I also don't like the price as I feel the fixture should have remained at it's original EBAY price of $550. This is a 2 yoear old Tech product that increases in price the longer it is on the market. I see that as a problem and just not normal.

For people to undersand the issue, I feel it is important to understand who we are talking about. If we all don't have the definition about who Orphek is, ther is no way for us all to be on the same page.

Shawn Wilson is said to be the only one who can speak for Orphek. Says who? What assurances are there that he won't later be denounced as a rogue independant rep?

Shawn Wilson said there was no affiliation with Mike Maddox and Captive Aquatics. (fact or assumption)

Is there no more representation for Orphek in the US?

Are owners of their fixtures now expected to ship their fixtures to Canada for warranty issues?

 

100% Correct, Sorry m2434 if my message was lost in translation.

 

Thanks gcarroll, that's great info. No worries, been there, done that. Just my point of view is if they are indeed a shady company, as some suggest, then I certainly don't want to be linked to them. However, I have no idea if they are a shady company or not, which is why my interest is in hearing the facts. So, far my opinion is that they are a bit gimmicky, but that is different than shady, and gimmicky doesn't necessarily say anything about their ability to grow corals. These are the important questions IMO. The politicking and slandering IMO should end in the realm of certain bloggers. Here, we'll be much more productive if we can stick to reality.

 

You wanted facts. Facts of what? I can't give you facts if I don't know what you want to confirm or know? No one can even show facts as to who this company is. No one seems to be able to answer a single question about them.

What is your definition of shaddy? Where is that line? I'll help you cross it.

 

Edit: BTW Just to clarify, re: "I knew you purchased an Orphek fixture"
No Orphek purchased by me ever. My current fixtures are all listed in my previous posts. Previous fixtures did not include any Orphek.

As to Shady:
From Merriam-Webster:
Shady
a : of questionable merit : uncertain, unreliable b : disreputable


As to facts, I never asked for facts gman, I asked to stick to the facts. There are tons of comments in this thread that make implications and don't seem to be backed up by facts. Perhapse they are. If so, share, perhaps they are not, if not why? maybe they can't be backed up by facts because the company is indeed Shady. Or maybe they can't be backed up by facts because there are no facts to back them up with. As someone who has no knowledge of the company, or people making these statements, how does that person know which is which?

Here are some quotes and potential facts that could be added to make them more useful. Certainly this isn't an exhaustive list and perhaps some of the facts are unnecessary, I just went through quickly to give some ideas of what I'm talking about. The point is I see lots of speculation and implications. Now, why should I believe them? I'm not trying to take sides, just play the devil's advocate and referee a bit....


" Don't believe everything you read. Especially when it's coming from one individual. There's much more to this story than the Mike Maddox articles. That's all I have to say about that."

Facts desired
More what?



insanespain

" That blog is a joke, and Orphek in general is a joke."
Facts desired
Why?


"High priced unproven fixtures with their "custom" designed diodes that are manufactured where?"

Facts desired
Okay, where?

"I like how the owner told u he refuses to get involved, yet I've seen Orphek directly bash other companies on more than one forum. "

Facts desired
What did they say?

" Anyone can call up a sweat shop in china and order a ton of off brand leds and call em "power" diodes."

Facts desired
Are they made in a sweat shop in China?

gcarrol
"Mike, I'm just impressed that you speak Chinese"

Facts desired
Is the president of Orphek Chinese? I thought they were a Brazilian company or something? Are they in China? Manufactured there? Etc... ?

Pickupman66
" Hey.. I was looking at their products.. their website is doingsome really really funky stuff.. yall be careful.


EDIT.. yea it has been hacked.. redirecting everywhere...."

Facts desired
Is it really? How do you know?

insanespain

"My theory is, do you really think a small company like orphek can just produce an led from scratch that is better than a huge proven company like cree?"

Facts desired
How does Orphek explain this

"Nobody can sit here and make me believe for one second that he isn't getting something from orphek to do so. "

Facts desired
Is there a relationship between him and Orphek?

"Just like I'm curious on why super old orphek threads get revived with a post hyping oprhek products by someone who just signed up to the forum and hasn't made any other posts.....hmmm"

Facts desired
Do you have an example?

ZepQuarium

"If They Used some crappy random LED's off the shelf somewhere, they are going to be wasting up to 3/4's the energy and 'light' that we see... IE it is only giving about 20-25% of its light in the spectrum corals need."

Facts desired
Where/how did you come up with those numbers? Do they use crappy random LEDs off the shelf somewhere?



James.F
"I saw that Orphek stated that Mike is a distributor and is cutting ties with him, but Mike's LinkdIn profile says he is a Director at the company; do we know which one it is?"

Facts desired
Which is it?

Insanepain
"There's a reason they don't provide detailed data on their "power" leds."

Facts desired
What's the reason? What do you define as detailed data? They do seem to provide spectral data for example. What detailed data would you like to see? I'd like to see more on PAR and spread, but that's me.


Mikejrice

" According to the owner of Orphek (Take that how you want.) He was not an official distributor of Orphek. He was buying from a in country whole seller for his site. He was never offered any position at Orphek. An easy way to weed out the fakes with Orphek is that nobody in the states is authorized to speak on the behalf of Orphek other than Mr. Wilson. I believe he's on Central a lot."

Facts desired
Besides according to the "owner" is this true?


pescado
" Mr. Wilson claims the buyorphek site was unauthorized, yet OrphekUSA refers customers to it."

Facts desired
Yeah, what's up with that?

thepanfish
"I received some news from a credible source (which I will keep anonymous to avoid bashing) that the Orphek dense matrix type light was actually an OEM emitter used in warehouses with some blue added. While I cannot personally verify this information, I will ask the source for proof to see whether this may actually be true."

Facts desired
Is this true? And why are you even mentioning it if you can't confirm it's true?


Insanepain
"I've been saying all along that there's no way a small company like orphek could design their own emitter from scratch."

Facts desired
You believe this to be true, or know it to be true?

"There's no question orphek is a shady company with some hot heads in charge of blowing up reef forums with advertisment."

Facts desired
Examples/proof
" I would venture to say that we never see succesful reef tanks long term under orphek lighting."

Facts desired
Are there successful reeftanks under Orphek lights? What is your definition of long-term.

 

I see this one closing shortly. Turning into a soap opera thread. The last 4 pages are just to see who is better at twisting each others words around. Like many have mentioned there are alot of requests for facts and shots being fired at each other here and there. Unfortunately nobody of any direct value has said anything.

 

Turning into a soap opera? This was a soap opera long before this thread started LMAO. What the heck did you not find to be a soap opera in the first 3 pages?

 

I think it's a good thread. We may have started talking directly about LEDs, and we may have had some shots fired in there, but I always enjoy talking about factual logical argument. That's just healthy conversation.

I think the problem in this case is that the only fact flying around here are ones passed on. This is common on forums and usually the only way we can converse about reef technology. None of us have been to Orphek's factory and if we had, we would quickly be dismissed as biased shillers working for Orphek. All we can do is gage our sources and present the information we perceive to be most accurate. Naturally some of us will do that better than others, and that's why argumentation is an art.

 

I agree that a lot of what has been said has been opinions/assumptions, including my own posts. But I will leave you with a fact to think about:

Nobody can seem to find answers to any questions about orphek the company, or their products - FACT.

That is a fact until proven otherwise, which would take orphek providing information themselves to answer our questions.

Do you guys find yourselves asking this many questions about Ecotech, BoostLED, ecoxotic, or aqua illuminations?

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