- Joined
- Jul 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,941
I was trying to avoid making this thread, but at this point I feel quite justified in telling my not so pleasant story dealing with Andre de Villiers in trying to get my midtech Butcher repaired. Before anyone mentions that I should have researched him on here before I purchased one of his knives, I bought this knife from his first run before there were any threads on here about him. I purchased the knife from Knifecenter almost immediately following BLADE when the first "prototypes" were released to the public.
Initially I was impressed with the quality of the knife. However, after flipping it and fondling it for a few weeks, I noticed that handle screws were always coming loose. More annoying than this issue was that the threads on the screws gave you almost no feedback when you were tightening the knife; I hope I can explain this in an understandable manner through text, but essentially when you tightened the screws, they would tighten to a point and as soon as you went past that point, they would start stripping. Usually when you tighten a screw, you can feel it getting tighter and tighter, which gives you feedback letting you know you should stop. That didn't happen here for some reason, so unsurprisingly I stripped a handle screw.
Problem #1:I got in touch with Andre to get new handle screws and he referred me to Aaron, his US rep who he was in the process of establishing as a source for parts and minor repairs. I asked Aaron for the screws via Facebook and then via email, which he said he would have in a few weeks and then would send to me once he received them from South Africa. I never received any screws from Aaron, but a kind forumite happened to have extras and sent them to me instead.
Problem #2: Eventually my Butcher started to develop lock slip because of the radius that the lock face was cut at. Once again, I reached out to Aaron, who then took two weeks to respond. If someone is your appointed representative for a blossoming midtech business, they should certainly be a bit more responsive to your customers. It's not like he's just selling a few of these here and there, clearly they're doing pretty big numbers. He apologized and explained that his real job and other life issues caused the slow response, but what annoyed me most was that he had to include this little bit shaming me for mentioning that he didn't respond on the forums: "'im sorry i didn't get back to you , but in the future please email me again first before going off on a forum. I'm guilty of forum blazing as well, and this could have been fixed if you had just done a follow up email and cut us a tiny bit of slack."
I would like to mention that all I had posted negatively about ADV and Aaron to this point was this:
Aaron had me send the knife to him to replace the stop pin, which served as a temporary fix as it developed lock slip again a few weeks later. This is where the biggest, most ridiculous issue begins.
Problem #3: I got in touch with Andre himself as per Aaron's instructions regarding having my knife repaired more appropriately. Luckily this was right before the USN Gathering so I was able to mail my knife to Aaron, who was meeting up with Andre there and could pass it off to him. About three weeks later, Andre emailed me to let me know the repairs had been completed. At this point, I was actually quite happy with the turnout as Andre even offered to modify the knife more me if I liked. I politely declined and Andre mailed the knife via TNT Express back to me. There was a little bit of trouble with that courier service and my apartment building, but eventually (3/11/2015) I drove to what turned out to be their office (it was not a retail store) to pick the knife up...
I opened the package and inspected the knife. I first noticed how much better it flipped and I thought oh cool, awesome! I then looked at the lockup which is now ridiculously early and sticky. . More than that, the lockface has very noticeable scorching from where it was clearly overheated as the lock face was ground into it. Aesthetically, it's very unattractive. When I finally inspected the blade long enough, I saw this:
The blade is TOTALLY UNSHARPENED. So yes, this man repaired the knife, replaced the blade with an entirely new one, and shipped it out to be without even noticing that it HADN'T BEEN SHARPENED. I just don't understand how such a fundamental part of making a knife could slip past him. He had it in his hands for weeks and apparently at no point realized that the blade needs to be sharpened before you send it out to a customer. I was genuinely flabberghasted when I noticed how ridiculous of a mistake this is to make.
I immediately got in touch with Andre, who to this point had been communicating very regularly (usually within an hour) when trying to sort out the shipping issue. I informed him of the issues I noticed and he apologized and said he had no idea how it went out like that. He asked me if I could ship it out via his TNT Express account to get him back to him, which I explained I could not because they do not have a retail location in my area and they cannot pick up or drop items off at my apartment complex. I offered to mail it back to him via USPS if he would reimburse me the costs, or mail it to Aaron who could then send it off to him.
The reason I feel justified is that as of today, March 15th 2015, Andre hasn't responded to my emails, yet continues to post on all forms of social media. Clearly he is ignoring me and this absolutely boneheaded mistake he made, which is a poor reflection on his customer service as a whole. I'm sure once he catches wind of this thread things will only get more contentious, but when a customer has already had an issue with his knife twice, you should be much more accommodating when you, the maker, make such an embarrassing mistake.
Initially I was impressed with the quality of the knife. However, after flipping it and fondling it for a few weeks, I noticed that handle screws were always coming loose. More annoying than this issue was that the threads on the screws gave you almost no feedback when you were tightening the knife; I hope I can explain this in an understandable manner through text, but essentially when you tightened the screws, they would tighten to a point and as soon as you went past that point, they would start stripping. Usually when you tighten a screw, you can feel it getting tighter and tighter, which gives you feedback letting you know you should stop. That didn't happen here for some reason, so unsurprisingly I stripped a handle screw.
Problem #1:I got in touch with Andre to get new handle screws and he referred me to Aaron, his US rep who he was in the process of establishing as a source for parts and minor repairs. I asked Aaron for the screws via Facebook and then via email, which he said he would have in a few weeks and then would send to me once he received them from South Africa. I never received any screws from Aaron, but a kind forumite happened to have extras and sent them to me instead.
Problem #2: Eventually my Butcher started to develop lock slip because of the radius that the lock face was cut at. Once again, I reached out to Aaron, who then took two weeks to respond. If someone is your appointed representative for a blossoming midtech business, they should certainly be a bit more responsive to your customers. It's not like he's just selling a few of these here and there, clearly they're doing pretty big numbers. He apologized and explained that his real job and other life issues caused the slow response, but what annoyed me most was that he had to include this little bit shaming me for mentioning that he didn't respond on the forums: "'im sorry i didn't get back to you , but in the future please email me again first before going off on a forum. I'm guilty of forum blazing as well, and this could have been fixed if you had just done a follow up email and cut us a tiny bit of slack."
I would like to mention that all I had posted negatively about ADV and Aaron to this point was this:
Aaron had me send the knife to him to replace the stop pin, which served as a temporary fix as it developed lock slip again a few weeks later. This is where the biggest, most ridiculous issue begins.
Problem #3: I got in touch with Andre himself as per Aaron's instructions regarding having my knife repaired more appropriately. Luckily this was right before the USN Gathering so I was able to mail my knife to Aaron, who was meeting up with Andre there and could pass it off to him. About three weeks later, Andre emailed me to let me know the repairs had been completed. At this point, I was actually quite happy with the turnout as Andre even offered to modify the knife more me if I liked. I politely declined and Andre mailed the knife via TNT Express back to me. There was a little bit of trouble with that courier service and my apartment building, but eventually (3/11/2015) I drove to what turned out to be their office (it was not a retail store) to pick the knife up...
I opened the package and inspected the knife. I first noticed how much better it flipped and I thought oh cool, awesome! I then looked at the lockup which is now ridiculously early and sticky. . More than that, the lockface has very noticeable scorching from where it was clearly overheated as the lock face was ground into it. Aesthetically, it's very unattractive. When I finally inspected the blade long enough, I saw this:
The blade is TOTALLY UNSHARPENED. So yes, this man repaired the knife, replaced the blade with an entirely new one, and shipped it out to be without even noticing that it HADN'T BEEN SHARPENED. I just don't understand how such a fundamental part of making a knife could slip past him. He had it in his hands for weeks and apparently at no point realized that the blade needs to be sharpened before you send it out to a customer. I was genuinely flabberghasted when I noticed how ridiculous of a mistake this is to make.
I immediately got in touch with Andre, who to this point had been communicating very regularly (usually within an hour) when trying to sort out the shipping issue. I informed him of the issues I noticed and he apologized and said he had no idea how it went out like that. He asked me if I could ship it out via his TNT Express account to get him back to him, which I explained I could not because they do not have a retail location in my area and they cannot pick up or drop items off at my apartment complex. I offered to mail it back to him via USPS if he would reimburse me the costs, or mail it to Aaron who could then send it off to him.
The reason I feel justified is that as of today, March 15th 2015, Andre hasn't responded to my emails, yet continues to post on all forms of social media. Clearly he is ignoring me and this absolutely boneheaded mistake he made, which is a poor reflection on his customer service as a whole. I'm sure once he catches wind of this thread things will only get more contentious, but when a customer has already had an issue with his knife twice, you should be much more accommodating when you, the maker, make such an embarrassing mistake.
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