What what WHAT????!!!

Ummm..... TeamOrion, you have GOT to be kidding. Its the EXACT SAME charger, specs and all and your making peeps pay a 100%+ price markup? Wow, talk about highway robbery here folks.

We have the well known Thunder AC6 charger for a very nice price of $55

http://www.hobbypartz.com/thac6smbachw.html




But wait, whats this? Team Orion has something that looks......very familiar

http://www.teamorion.com/Products/Ad...dvantage+IQ605


The SAME thing for $120??!!

http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_...rger-6S-5A-50W





Oh but it gets even better! After some more looking around, what do we have here??

http://www.hobbypartz.com/skychb6chdup.html





My goodness, I think someone is making a killing in China for selling "cloned" chargers to a variety of companies and then passing on some insane and plain unfair markups to consumers. Just change the color and a nice, new sh in lable and wallah, instant rip off!

Do your research folks, companies like Team Orion just love to prey on the uninformed consumer.

EDIT:

Here's an even closer look at how even the innards are exactly the same for the most part

[YOUTUBE]uF9e6xPLGyw[/YOUTUBE]

[nitrostarter]

Freeze! These chinese companies have been doing the same thing do ages on these these new, cheap lipo chargers....

The IMAX B5/B6 that hobbyking has has been cloned and renamed by many companies, including Venom. Of course the price jumps up with the name too!

[suicideneil]

^That. Im suprized you only just noticed really- I've seen the same charger with a different label on being sold by half a dozen different companies probably; price varies drastically. Take a look at the Venom Pro charger and then head over to hobbyking... you'll have a heart-attack

[nitrostarter]

Originally Posted by suicideneil

^That. Im suprized you only just noticed really- I've seen the same charger with a different label on being sold by half a dozen different companies probably; price varies drastically. Take a look at the Venom Pro charger and then head over to hobbyking... you'll have a heart-attack

Neil, its fun to go to the race track and see guys using it. Then show them my spare B5 charger that I got for $30. And then watch them have a heart attack knowing they paid hobby shop prices for the same thing...

[suicideneil]

I still choke at the £100 / $150 I paid for my Bantam BC6, when the Thunder AC6 does exactly the same thing and costs ~£30/$55. That said, there werent so many clone-chargers around 3-5 years ago, but still....

Whats worse is that my LHS is charging $200 for that Orion charger and I about flipped out. I actually brought my AC6 in and showed it to a guy who was thinking about buying and he was shocked as well.

In hindsight, maybe that wasn't such a good idea.....

[whitrzac]

<---- just bought a genaric Ipod...


there are a few companies rebadging the quatro charger too at insanely high markups...

[swiftneed]

Yeah you guys are right but your missing the fact that the names are different so the cost goes to changing the names DUH lol ( sarcasm)

[JERRY2KONE]

Guys your missing the real point here. This is probably just like the whole RCM slipperential deal. One company more than likely designed and produced their unit from scratch and some Chinese copycat bought one and duplicated it, selling it for a fraction of the price. This is exactly how China became such a rich country, by ripping off American designs. Our politicians have allowed this to go on with their open trade policies putting money into their pockets as well. BUT with our economy now in the toilet which are we more likely to purchase???

Originally Posted by JERRY2KONE

Guys your missing the real point here. This is probably just like the whole RCM slipperential deal. One company more than likely designed and produced their unit from scratch and some Chinese copycat bought one and duplicated it, selling it for a fraction of the price. This is exactly how China became such a rich country, by ripping off American designs. Our politicians have allowed this to go on with their open trade policies putting money into their pockets as well. BUT with our economy now in th etoilet which are we more likely to purchase???

Says the man ironically living in Asia

[JERRY2KONE]

Originally Posted by Freezebyte

Says the man ironically living in Asia

Funny you say that. We do not even shop outside the military base. Allot of people purchase the latest DVD movies on the Korean market place for $3 to $4 a piece ripping off the American movie industry. We have a DVD collection of about 800 and everyone of them are original USA DVD's purchased on the US market. We do everything we can to support our country even if that means passing up on what look like good deals or exact copies of US products. The major problem there is no matter where you purchase from Macy's, Sac's, Sears, or any other American company if you look close enough you will find things that are made in China, Taiwon, Korea, or Maylasia. If we see products that appeal to us we always check for where it is made, and if it isn't made in the USA it goes back on the shelf.

Video comparison of innards of clones

[Finnster]

IDK that they illegal clones, they are all likely just built by the same company and whatever company X goes to them and has them build their own branded charger.
You don't think Orion and Venom hire teams of electrical and software engineers, and build manu facilities for these things do you? No, they just contract the base manu's to build the chargers for them to spec. They resell it and pass the markups on to you.

Much is the same with lots of appliances. There are only a few dishwasher, water heater, dryer, etc manus (sometimes only 2.) GE, Kenmore, etc, just contract them to build them a branded unit. These are more shameless as Orion et al don't bother really changing any specs rather than the stickers.

EG. Foxconn.
The world's largest electronics manufacturer you've likely never heard of.
The build all the ipods, iphones, etc as well as products for Dell, HP, & a host of others. The one factory in China employs almost 500,000 people there. Hell, maybe they even built that charger and all its clones.

[reno911]

Originally Posted by JERRY2KONE

Funny you say that. We do not even shop outside the military base. Allot of people purchase the latest DVD movies on the Korean market place for $3 to $4 a piece ripping off the American movie industry. We have a DVD collection of about 800 and everyone of them are original USA DVD's purchased on the US market. We do everything we can to support our country even if that means passing up on what look like good deals or exact copies of US products. The major problem there is no matter where you purchase from Macy's, Sac's, Sears, or any other American company if you look close enough you will find things that are made in China, Taiwon, Korea, or Maylasia. If we see products that appeal to us we always check for where it is made, and if it isn't made in the USA it goes back on the shelf.

I wish i could do the same. However, everything seems to be made where the labor is cheap. You would think with today's American economy that would mean labor is cheap in the States, but it is not. Even at minimum wage a shirt made in the US costs more to produce than in another country. As for the outsourcing.

As for the chargers go, I am sure that 90 percent or more of them are all made in the East. So for one Eastern company to copy and sell a product cheaper than another Eastern manufacturer I couldn't really care, unless that design was designed and produced in America first. If the company designs a product and decides to take advantage of the cheap labor in another country I fell they should not be surprised if their design gets duplicated. However if, like Mike, a product that is designed, produced, and sold in America gets replicated by a company outsourcing it's labor to the Eastern world, that is in my eyes a legal conflict and I would be pissed.

The only high paying part of any manufacturing process these days is in the designing stage. Just for an example, Apple. 100% of it's products are designed in the US, and these jobs are of the highest paying in the Silicon valley. However those designs get shipped off to an outsourced manufacture to complete the finished product.

My question for you is, how is the moral of an Eastern manufacture employee? Seeing as you live amidst them. How do they live and work? Miserable? On strike? If you answer no, than you have answered the very reason we outsource everything. They know we are dependent on them, and frankly they are more grateful for the labor than we were. Nowadays it makes me wonder if we did have this labor return to America, whether or not we would be grateful for it, and the American populist would be okay with the higher price of goods made in America.

[TexasSP]

Originally Posted by Finnster

EG. Foxconn.
The world's largest electronics manufacturer you've likely never heard of.
The build all the ipods, iphones, etc as well as products for Dell, HP, & a host of others. The one factory in China employs almost 500,000 people there. Hell, maybe they even built that charger and all its clones.

And if it wasn't this way everyone would complain about the prices.

I actually had someone argue with me that Apple actually made their own phones etc. It was funny.

There are also really only three manufacturers of laptops as well. If you search around you can find direct importers and buy the same ones as the big name brands for much cheaper with excellent support.

It's the same with a lot of products. Even food and medicines. I stopped buying name brand OTC medicines years ago and my body can't tell the difference.