Russ, I know that you are not intended to make me feel uncomfortable, it is just my feeling that I should take some responsibility for my formerly promoting on ThorTek's products. Like other members have mentioned, they might have ordered the products from them without any warranty due to my or other people's promotion or advertisement. I totally agree with your describing and posting your own situation in public. This does remind anyone of the risk they should take before they purchase one or more products from them and pay the money.
To me, customer service is much more important than the fuctionality of products that should have. A product that can work normally may not be suitable to one person but satisfied to another. But a product that come "without fuctionality" is totally a junk to anyone. I think damages caused during the international shipment are often encountered problems to any companies no matter they are famous or anonymous, big or small, and that is why customer service and warranty are so important to end consumers.
LED lighting is still a costly investment at least for now. People are looking forward to the price-down of this comparatively new tech. I have the same expectation too, but I did give a try to any LED lighting products here in Taiwan after I have realized how they treat customers. To me, Illumagic did better on customer service than ThorTek, but will this be the same to international customers? I don't know.
Ask Russ, he might be able to tell you some information about this new fixture I guess! lol~