@IJM - there's no priority mail from NZ

it was shipped to calif "international economy". ten and change was the cheapest i could get.

in any case, if i have to go out of pocket to return something with this type of a defect, i wouldn't complain if they threw in a "little something" for the inconvenience (a lot of companies would do this). that they'd ask me to cover return shipping is a bit shocking. when you provide a warranty like theirs, then the failure rate, warranty return rate, return postage rate, etc needs to be included in the purchase price. otherwise i'd just buy from deal-extreme... if it works, great. if it doesn't work, toss it in the bin but at least it's cheap.

then again, deal-extreme never charged me postage to replace a dud. that really puts cygolite in an ugly spot.