My Broken Godox Flash: A Tale of Bad Customer Service

Back in July, my Godox TT350O flash went wrong. I simply got an E9 message on the LCD and it wouldn’t work at all. It was annoying as I had enjoyed using Godox flashes and wireless transmitter up until then and had even recommended them to others.

I emailed Godox customer support and got a fairly swift reply:

Hello Neil, a

E9 on the LCD, procedure is gone wrong by improper operation, you will have to re-upgrade the Firmware, and that ought to reset your flash.

I couldn’t upgrade the firmware as I got the “Does not recognise the USB device” error message every time I plugged in the USB to my PC, so I left the flash a few days with the batteries out and tried again with no luck. So emailed back saying it didn’t work. I got no reply after 10 days, so I emailed again.

After another 5 days later, I finally got a reply:

Hello Neil,

I am sorry but i am trying to sort out this problem with Godox China.

Anyhow, the engineer is requesting a video clip to have a better understanding

Would you be as kind as to do that? thank you!

It took me a week to get around to filming it and sending it as the file was too big to email and I feared the one week limit on the download link would expire before they got around to downloading it on their end if I used WeTransfer’s file-transfer service. I did and got this reply 8 days later:

Hello Neil,

Terribly sorry, but there seems to be a technical problem to open your video clip (see below note from Godox-China) could you please be as kind as to re-send it.

I think we can all guess what the ‘technical problem’ was here.

I was getting annoyed by this point and had some personal stuff going on so, left I it for a week before I sat down and tried again. To be fair, I got a reply that day saying it had been forwarded on to the engineer.

2 weeks passed and I got a reply:

I am very sorry about this long delay, At long last Godox – China has come with a solution, they haver agreed to ex-change your faulty TT350 flash

Could you please be as kind as to send me back your faulty unit, to the below address.

So I sent it off at my own cost a couple of days later and waited for a reply.

And what I got in response, after all that, was somewhat disappointing:

Hello Neil,

Just to let you know that, I have received your faulty flash!

My plan was to send you straight away a replacement, but unfortunately, we haven’t got in stock any longer.

So i have taken the liberty to enclosed a quotation for a new V350o flash unit, there’s a difference of £22.00 though.

Please let me know if you would like to proceed with this, otherwise, we will have to wait until i received the replacement from Godox, within 12 weeks.

12 weeks! That’s 3 months! Either that or I pay them more money and get a flash that is identical except it uses a built-in battery, for which I’ll have to pay out more money to buy a spare.

I had enough by this point and sent the following:

Hi Juan,

I ‘m afraid waiting 12 weeks is unacceptable. I have been waiting since the 1st July for this to be sorted and have missed a large part of the insect macro season without my flash set up.

I will have to ask for a refund (I paid £69.00 on Amazon) and would like the £4 postage I paid refunded as well.

Kind regards

The response a couple of days later was:

Morning Neil,

I am not justifying the slow process , unfortunately, sometimes this things happen.

Did you buy the unit from us. Photomart i.e.

Now life got very busy for me at this point and dealing with a constant back and forth trying to get a refund on a £70 flash just wasn’t a priority.

But on a recent effort to clear my email backlog I sent a reply:

It was bought from Amazon via Letwing Digital Studio

Unfortunately for me, despite the fact it was purchased through Amazon UK, Godox decided suddenly, now that I had asked for a refund, that this was an issue.

Hello

Well since it was purchased from Amazon , this product is a grey import, as Letwing is a Chinese dealer, you should have take it with them directly.

Regards

Juan

After all this time, they decided it wasn’t their problem. They now have possession of my flash, which I posted to them at my own cost and had me waiting for weeks (even taking into account delays at my end).

So I then asked them this:

So will you not replace the item either then?
regards
Neil

The reply was:

I am afraid the answer in no.

I made you an offer, that you declined …! So i have taken the liberty to enclosed a quotation for a new V350o flash unit, there’s a difference of £ 22.00 though.

Regards

Juan

I find this hard to read as anything other than “you had your chance now give us more money or get nothing.” I didn’t expect top-level customer service paying what I did, but this is just beyond poor.

I sent the following for clarification a few hours ago:

So just so I’m clear: basically its pay £22 or get nothing?

Regards

Neil

We shall see what the reply is… but needless to say, I will be avoiding Godox in the future.

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