Issues with Ikelite. Am I the only one?
I got myself a housing for my O-EM 10 mark iii two years ago. It flooded on the first dive of a Galapagos liveaboard trip. Turns out there was a manufacturing defect: micro fissure in the plastic. After some back and forth, they offered me a store credit with the value of the camera and repaired the housing. I bought two strobes DS160 and replaced my mark III with the mark iv (housing was compatible). Right out of the box, one of the strobes was faulty: it wouldn’t go into video light more but fired ok. Sent it back and they fixed it, that was also two years ago. Then last month, the hotshoe had problems. One of the delicate wire was loose and no longer soldered. Got a replacement hotshoe with super fast shipping as I was heading on a dive trip. New hotshoe arrived and worked fine. Then, a few days ago, my TTL converter started acting up. The blue/red lights still turn on but the strobes would fire randomly or not at all when on demand. Contacted the company and it seems like the TTL converter is no longer working as it should. The pins are fine, no corrosion: I just can’t figure out why. I have been able to switch to full manual mode but it’s still an annoyance and extra steps that I tried to avoid by going automatic.
My question is: am I just having really bad luck? Or is there other also people having issues? I’m growing incredibly frustrated. I have dropped thousands of dollars on this underwater setup, that I love when it works well, but I’ve had enough issues now that I feel like it’s poor manufacturing/quality control, or I’m just the woman with the worst luck ever with my underwater photography setup.