Any experience with acutabovecustomcutlery.com?

[SoCalRandy]

I searched here on this site and I tried a Google search but can't find any references good or bad about these guys? They have a knife I've been searching for but I don't want to get burned.:grumpy: So, anybody have any advice one way or the other?

http://acutabovecustomcutlery.com

 

[almasy87]

I don't have any experience with that site, but personally, I wouldn't order anything from it. For all I know the owner could be a great and honest guy, but there are a couple of things that bug me:

1. The tiny text at the bottom the home page. I copied it into Word and it turns out it was 1-point font. Anyway, here's about 1/5 of it:

Jerome Anders, David Anders, Randall Made knives, Custom knives,Handmade knives, Barry Dawson, Lynn Dawson, Dennis Cook, Jim Behring, Treeman Knives, Mike Ruth,Ray Kirk, Hank Knickmeyer, Larry Fuegon, Heather Harvey, Kevin Harvey,Ed Caffrey, Jody Muller, Dennis Riley, Arno Bernard, Anton D' Holder,Ruffin Johnson, George Herron, Ralph Turnbull, Jerry Fisk, Bret Gattlin,Jim Walker, Jim Crowell, Mike Williams, JR Cook, Reggie Barker,

Basically, he's listing a bunch of search terms that are too small for people to see but are something that a web spider could pick up. It's a list of a bunch of knife makers (most of which don't seem to have their knives being sold on the site) that is there to make search engines like Google spit out that search result when people are searching for knives. In other words, it's a dirty little trick to drive traffic to the site...kind of like a caller at a seedy carnival yelling out all kinds of things to get people to pay to get into that tent.

It doesn't mean that the site isn't legit, but I've never seen a reputable site use this tactic.


2. The owner seems to have two addresses/phone numbers:

Address One
Address Two

The second address was found by running a search on the email address he lists on the site (250gto@att.net) and finding this ad from last year.

Not sure what that's about, but it still seems odd.



Feel free to take this with a grain of salt. It may mean nothing at all. However, those are just a couple of things that make me a bit wary in regard to that site, so you may want to consider avoiding it unless someone else here has a positive experience to share.

 

[SoCalRandy]

I don't have any experience with that site, but personally, I wouldn't order anything from it. For all I know the owner could be a great and honest guy, but there are a couple of things that bug me:

1. The tiny text at the bottom the home page. I copied it into Word and it turns out it was 1-point font. Anyway, here's about 1/5 of it:

Jerome Anders, David Anders, Randall Made knives, Custom knives,Handmade knives, Barry Dawson, Lynn Dawson, Dennis Cook, Jim Behring, Treeman Knives, Mike Ruth,Ray Kirk, Hank Knickmeyer, Larry Fuegon, Heather Harvey, Kevin Harvey,Ed Caffrey, Jody Muller, Dennis Riley, Arno Bernard, Anton D' Holder,Ruffin Johnson, George Herron, Ralph Turnbull, Jerry Fisk, Bret Gattlin,Jim Walker, Jim Crowell, Mike Williams, JR Cook, Reggie Barker,

Basically, he's listing a bunch of search terms that are too small for people to see but are something that a web spider could pick up. It's a list of a bunch of knife makers (most of which don't seem to have their knives being sold on the site) that is there to make search engines like Google spit out that search result when people are searching for knives. In other words, it's a dirty little trick to drive traffic to the site...kind of like a caller at a seedy carnival yelling out all kinds of things to get people to pay to get into that tent.

It doesn't mean that the site isn't legit, but I've never seen a reputable site use this tactic.


2. The owner seems to have two addresses/phone numbers:

Address One
Address Two

The second address was found by running a search on the email address he lists on the site (250gto@att.net) and finding this ad from last year.

Not sure what that's about, but it still seems odd.



Feel free to take this with a grain of salt. It may mean nothing at all. However, those are just a couple of things that make me a bit wary in regard to that site, so you may want to consider avoiding it unless someone else here has a positive experience to share.

Wow! your Google Fu is very strong I wasn't able to come up with anything but you really did some homework for me here. Thank you for responding. I think I will take your advice and look elsewhere...

 

[Gatogordo]

I've looked over his knives a few times, but haven't ordered from him and don't know anything about him. However, if he has a custom knife you want, then use Paypal and you have some decent protection against fraud. Note: I'm not promoting paypal, just noting that their buyer protection plan is fairly solid.

FWIW, which is almost nothing I freely admit, my gut feeling is that the guy is ok. Using the above mentioned "trick" to attract potential customers to his site seems fairly smart to me, as way for a smaller outfit to get noticed.

 

[almasy87]

FWIW, which is almost nothing I freely admit, my gut feeling is that the guy is ok. Using the above mentioned "trick" to attract potential customers to his site seems fairly smart to me, as way for a smaller outfit to get noticed.

It's true that it's a smart trick, but the problem I have with it is that the same trick is used by link farms and spam sites. If the site is fairly new then it's understandable that he would want to do everything he could to get his name out there, but it still irks me a bit that he's hiding the keywords in 1-point font at the bottom of the page.

Also, you don't have a point about using PayPal. PayPal certainly isn't perfect, but I've heard time and again that its fraud protection tends to work in favor of buyers (a bit unfairly, as reputable sellers can get scammed this way).

I suppose if you really can't find the knife anywhere else, then you could give it a shot as long as you can pay through PayPal. I'd also recommend both calling and emailing him to talk to him first. That way you can try to gauge him a bit and make a final decision.

 

[Fliprfly]

I bought this George Herron knife from this site a few years back. Great knife and no problems. Unless something has changed, I think your safe.

Jay