chaadster

Well, my IG feed kept putting up ads for this new Farina headlight, and curiosity got the better of me and I navigated over to the SmartBikeLights site to check it out. I’m not sure what to make of this company, and I’m wondering if anyone here knows anything about them.

I’ve seen ads for Cliq going back more than a year probably, so I figured if their launching a companion head lamp, then they’re probably somewhat legit. However, I don't recall any mention of Cliq on BF, so that was a red flag.

The SBL site is slick and the content pretty substantial, which was reassuring, but rather than following the IG link, I decided to Google search in the browser, and the best and top hit is a site called HauteWorks, which then kicks you out to SBL via a “shop” link. While obviously affiliated, I wasn’t clear what the purpose of HW was, so that was another red flag. But again, the SBL site looked good and legit, so I poked around.

I wound up looking at a holiday sale package-deal; it was $115 for both units, which given the tech these things purport to have, seems too good to be true. I added one set to my cart, just to see what that area looked like, and discovered I could not delete it from my cart, only increase the quantity! I couldn’t even reduce quantity back to one, only add. Weird, I thought, so I trouble-shot that all the way back to deleting cookies and data for both HW and SBL sites, but to no avail. I figured that was too weird, and went to Google more about them.

Nothing really came up in terms of trusted media reviews, so I wound up on Trustpilot, which had several comments calling them a scam. Indeed, the SBL site claimed more Trustpilot stars than TP showed, so more red flags.

Has anyone feedback on any of this, or am I reading the signs rightly and staying away appropriately?

znomit

Last time I looked there were no beam shots.

Also the refund policy from a very slick well presented bike light website shouldn't say this I think?
Several types of goods are exempt from being returned. Perishable goods such as food, flowers, newspapers or magazines cannot be returned. We also do not accept products that are intimate or sanitary goods,...

External social media links go to shopify. Hmmmm.

noglider 

I asked about the Farina recently. Thanks for looking into this. Now we know.

JoeyGun13

I have the Cliq (which I've since replaced with the Garmin Varia 515 for its radar capability) and I really like that light. It's super bright, you can customize it a lot with the app, and it has a built-in motion alarm so when you walk away from your bike and someone moves it, you get an alert.

That being said, I ordered the Farina separately on Dec 11, 2021, and because of supply issues, they still haven't sent it. It sucks, but I'm hoping they'll resolve it soon.