In the May of 2014, I had bought a lightning cable (ignore image, for representation purpose only) from this seller called AFFLUX on Amazon.com. Incase you get bored and don’t read further, don’t buy anything from these guys. They are a third party seller on Amazon.com
It was an iSmooth iPhone 5s charging cable (3ft), not very expensive, however the cable was always very buggy and often would complain that the accessory is not supported. I battled through it, standing on one leg, re-attaching the wire etc. every time it would happen. However as time passed the wire became more and more unreliable. So much so that it became impossible to recharge using this cable.
I remembered that the cable was iSmooth’s and on their website they claimed a 10 year warranty on their cable products. So I tried to get in touch with AFFLUX through Amazon asking them if they can help in this matter. To my surprise they did not even reply to my complaints.
Next, I contacted ISmooth who offer the warranty, they asked me for the invoice from Amazon and promptly told me that they will not honor warranty as AFFLUX is not an authorized reseller and they are following up with Amazon and AFFLUX. I am currently following up on them regarding a replacement since their warranty terms don’t mention anything about purchasing from them only. However not much I can do if they refuse since its too small for small claims.
I filed a return request with Amazon and this time AFFLUX was super fast, they immediately declined my claim and as the return period had passed Amazon was cool with it. So I am in this bind, the manufacturer says the sale is unauthorized and the seller is AWOL and only responds when I file a claim. That too in the negative.
Anyway I contacted Amazon and they told me since this is by a third party seller they cannot refund me the money but have offered me a promotional credit. I will follow-up with ISmooth and update the thread on that replacement. They have however claimed that the super buggy cables are bound to go bad again.
In the meantime, be careful when buying stuff from Amazon’s third party sellers. This was a fairly low price item but I doubt Amazon would refund $500 after 9 months in such a situation. So that’s the lesson learnt.