Here's my view, for what it's worth.
Most of the CASE knives I've bought have been good knives and the price was moderate, most but not all. I have to buy all my knives on-line as I'm European and there are no knife shops here selling foreign (American) knives, therefore it can be an uncertain business indeed. A recent example was a brand new CASE Small Stockman Walnut Jigged Bone, a new line. I got it from an on-line dealer who I've used many times as he charges moderately for shipping, remember, I have to factor in up to 25% extra for import tax on the whole deal including shipping costs.... It arrived, looked very nice as the bone was most attractive but gaps a plenty, all blades had real play in them and poor W&T, a state of the art wreck! I contact the dealer and he apologises and asks me to return it and he'll pick out one himself. This is good as many dealers would regard a foreign deal as tough luck you've got what you paid for, there are SOME advantages to the Bay....I have to pay postage but the knife was useless so. It took a long time to get the replacement not because of the dealer but some idiocy at Chicago airport, anyway the replacement had no issues -but much less attractive bone. I'd say there's about a 15% fail rate in the CASE knives I've had in terms of QC, that is quite a lot but it seems to me a big company like CASE has been told by its bean counters, don't overthink QC or spend too much extra time on it, get the batch out. The evidence for this not just the fault rate but the company DOES have a very good warranty repair aspect, which seems to be in shall we say, brisk use? I simply think their long term health would be better served by a more stringent attitude to what gets sent out to the customer in the first place. Time saved and reputation enhanced. A lot of people don't want to be bothered with returning stuff, they may think it's a one off but if it happens again they'll hesitate to buy and that could be damaging. We debate these things as we're enthusiasts, and we should share experiences openly. To me it's no use saying that well the knife is the same but the blade (or scales) are higher grade that ensures a higher price but the build quality is actually rubbish but that's somehow explicable. A poorly assembled or finished knife is a poor knife whatever the value of the materials or the 'heritage' behind it. If we push the car analogy a bit more, what's the use of a badly finished car even if the garage is obliging and helpful and want to fix the faults? It's the reason I will never waste my money on a VW product again, from new terrible, but the dealer was most helpful and attentive, even so...