Bad -- True North Knives -- Very Rude Service

[Artfully Martial]

I am really loathe to say this, given the vast amounts of great experiences with True North Knives and Mr. Ostroff. In my many years on this forum, I have never once posted a single negative thread about my interaction with a seller on this forum or a dealer. Unfortunately, Mr. Ostroff's rudeness and breaches of our agreement causes me to break with my tradition of dealing with problems like this privately.

Yesterday I decided to order a ZT0500. I was willing to pay Mr. Ostroff's large price premium over other dealers for a couple reasons: first off, the 0500 is quite rare now, and second, TNK has a sterling reputation here.

In the comments area of my ordered, I asked that the knife be "flawless." Specifically, I requested that he looked to make sure there was no blade play and that the lockup was good. If these were lacking, I asked him to please email me and cancel my order. This was all worded politely and as a request, not a demand.

Beyond this, I called Mr. Ostroff twice during business hours to talk this over with him directly and perhaps he could just pull out the box and check it out while we were talking. He didn't answer either time.

Today I received a strongly worded, but otherwise polite anticipatory repudiation of our agreement saying that he simply could not check the knife to make sure it was flawless and that we couldn't continue.

I replied in an equally strong worded, but polite message saying he had misread my requirements, and I merely requested that the knife be looked over ahead of time--that I didn't mean flawless literally. I also said I expected him to honor our deal. I said I would call him to discuss this when I got home.

Today, he finally answered. I, very nicely, with no anger in my voice, asked if we could discuss the problem we were having. Mr. Ostroff quite angrily (in fairness, he was not yelling, but he was very angry) ranted for minutes interrupting every word I said. I told him that I had heard of great things from TNK and I was hoping that we could reach an agreement, again, staying very polite, calm and nice. He ranted some more about how "this just isn't going to work between us, and you can't possibly expect that I look at these knives, I ship thousands a day, this just isn't going to happen, just go somewhere else, you could find it anywhere else." When I finally was allowed a moment to speak, I started saying "Mr. Ostroff, this knife is very hard to find, please work with me..." but half way through he said "no, this just isn't going to happen, thanks, bye" and hung up on me.

Well, say what you will about his repudiation of our deal and my requirements--if he had left it that, I would be frustrated but would not be posting this. But his conduct on the phone and in his second email give me great pause in recommending this dealer to anyone.

Particularly given the level of products Mr. Ostroff deals in, often in the thousand to two-thousand dollar range, I would be extremely hesitant to put my faith in a dealer that not only feels no obligation to fulfill his contracts/business obligations, but apparently feels that he needs to put the customer in his place.

I have no doubt I will get a dozen replies stating their great experiences with TNK, and that's fair--one bad experience may not override a dozen good ones. But for people who might be dropping several hundred to a thousand dollars, I merely recommend caution with dealing with this person. Perhaps something extremely bad is happening in his personal life to cause him to respond with severe anger towards a very polite customer, and perhaps that element won't be present when you deal with him in the future.

At any rate, Mr. Ostroff shrugged his legal obligation to fulfill our sales contract, acted rudely to me in his second email and acted extremely rudely to me over the phone.

For those looking for a great dealer that doesn't mind helping a customer by looking over their knives, I highly recommend two dealers, both of which are much cheaper than TNK. Those are New Graham and Sooner State Knives. I've been using NGK for years and on every order I ask my knives to be looked over and this has never been a problem. I'm a recent customer of Sooner State Knives and I actually had a great hour long conversation with the young woman on the phone who gladly examined my order and shipped it out to me. She even offered to meet me at a local gun/knife show and give me the knife in person so I didn't have to pay shipping.

So if you're nit-picky about your knives like I am, and you can find your product at one of those two dealers, I would seriously recommend using them before resorting to TNK. I'm supposing that if you ordered a $1500 Darrell Ralph custom, he would consider it an egregious request that the knife be looked at before it is shipped.

Again, I apologize for my negativity, I really despise writing this--if he had just been nice to me on the phone, I'd have dealt with this privately.

If Mr. Ostroff would like to defend himself here, he is more than welcome to do so. I tried to give him a polite and nice opportunity to explain why he feels this way on the phone, but clearly this was inadequate to him.

 

[Ritt]

You stated in your order that the knife was only acceptable if it was, in your own words, "flawless", and that if it wasn't he should e-mail you and cancel the order.

He e-mailed you, said he couldn't guarantee the knife was flawless, and canceled the order.

What is an "anticipatory repudiation"?

If he didn't take your money, you never had a "deal", and he had no "legal obligation" to fulfill your "sales contract".

Talk about making a mountain out of a mole-hill. No money was exchanged, you insisted on a condition he chose not to agree to, and now you're here crying like a little bitch.

I have no experience with TNK, but I have no problem with the way they dealt with you. The way you dealt with the situation, however, suggests to me you need to buy yourself some big-boy pants.

 

[Ren the devils trailboss]

Op sounds like the customer from hell. Neil has the right to choose who to do business with. Your bad behavior got you in this situation. Suck it up and move on, in my business I also am very reluctant to do business with over demanding, touchy, pissants, no matter what I do its never enough. Neil did nothing wrong and told you he could not meet your demands and told you to do business with some one else. I would have done the same.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

Ritt, you were doing fine. The last two paragraphs really spoiled the tone. We can do this without getting personal.

I can't imagine Neil losing his cool under ordinary circumstances. This is just one of those situations that will come up. Nobody can get along with everybody.

 

[Ritt]

Ritt, you were doing fine. The last two paragraphs really spoiled the tone. We can do this without getting personal.

Sorry Esav, I figured I had a good chance of being infracted as I wrote it, but I really think it needed to be said. In my opinion, given that the OP has no grounds for posting the thread in the first place, it got personal the minute he put it out there. All due respect to the mods, I stand by my statements.

 

[Artfully Martial]

You stated in your order that the knife was only acceptable if it was, in your own words, "flawless", and that if it wasn't he should e-mail you and cancel the order.

He e-mailed you, said he couldn't guarantee the knife was flawless, and canceled the order.

What is an "anticipatory repudiation"?

If he didn't take your money, you never had a "deal", and he had no "legal obligation" to fulfill your "sales contract".

Talk about making a mountain out of a mole-hill. No money was exchanged, you insisted on a condition he chose not to agree to, and now you're here crying like a little bitch.

I have no experience with TNK, but I have no problem with the way they dealt with you. The way you dealt with the situation, however, suggests to me you need to buy yourself some big-boy pants.

On the contrary. The contract was performed when we agreed, not when I began to perform the contract. A promise was exchange for a promise. This occurs all the time. Anticipatory repudiation is the legal term for when one contracting party communicates a breach of contract to the other party before it is technically necessary. For instance, my contract with TNK would have had the knife delivered by Monday--a breach of contract would have occurred had the knife not arrived on Monday, although a court would probably find a one day (or one week) delay immaterial.

At any rate, as I pointed out on multiple occasions in the post, this isn't about the lack of shipping the knife, it was about Mr. Ostroff's rude behavior.

 

[Artfully Martial]

Op sounds like the customer from hell. Neil has the right to choose who to do business with. Your bad behavior got you in this situation. Suck it up and move on, in my business I also am very reluctant to do business with over demanding, touchy, pissants, no matter what I do its never enough. Neil did nothing wrong and told you he could not meet your demands and told you to do business with some one else. I would have done the same.

Mr. Ostroff of course has the right to do business with whomever he pleases. He chose to do business with me when he accepted my agreement on his website when I ordered the knife. Then he broke the deal when he failed to deliver.

I've been very kind. I'm not sure why everyone feels such a desire to attack me. I merely asked him to check out the knife first.

In order to be helpful to me and future knife buyers, could you guys please post which dealers you work for so we don't risk our purchases there in the future?

Thanks

 

[Esav Benyamin]

I wasn't attacking you. Is this how you endeared yourself to Neil Ostroff?
Which dealers we work for? -- Which lawyer do you work for?

 

[TKAZ]

Regardless of how a customer is being and/or acting (I'm not saying you where out of line) there is never a good reason to be rude or mean to a customer, if in fact you feel he was. But, maybe he was not in a good mood or was just given some bad news or something to that effect.

 

[mr2blue]

I sell products here on BF and if I saw a request that the knife or whatever be "flawless." I would pass as well. Then you say --that I didn't mean flawless literally. as if he is supposed to read your mind and know what type of person you are (the kind that the world revolves around I am guessing)

I am with Neil on this one

 

[Ritt]

I merely asked him to check out the knife first.

In your original post, you state that you asked that the knife be "flawless". That seems a far different expectation than "merely" asking him to "check out the knife". How do you define flawless? Is anything flawless? Is an expectation of "flawless" reasonable?

Only two people have "attacked" you here. The fact that you don't understand why provides the explanation.

 

[Artfully Martial]

All comments so far have made some pretty substantial legal errors. For your benefit (and I mean that sincerely), I'd recommend learning some basics about doing business in countries like the USA and Canada and basic contract law so that you don't end up in a legal battle over something more substantial. I would collect on my purchase against Mr. Ostroff in court had this been a multi-thousand dollar purchase, but one would need to be either unnecessarily wealthy or somewhat insane to litigate over a sub-$200 knife.

But it is somewhat amusing to have the legal opinions of a law student belittled in these vitriolic posts.

Admins, feel free to close or delete the thread as you wish. It's clear nothing productive will be accomplished. People will merely assume I'm lying (I suppose?) and see me as some huge jerk for asking the knife to be looked at before shipping.

I will not reply again unless Mr. Ostroff chooses to defend himself here or something productive is said, although I probably won't be reading any non-TNK posts anyway. I'm sure my apparent opponents will enjoy "defending" their friend by claiming I'm some sort of jerk--although in my 6+ years of knife purchasing, I've never had a knife deal go bad and in my multi-thousands of posts I've never had any problems here. But don't let my 5 or so year productive history here bother you--no doubt I had a total personality switch when dealing with this one particular company.

At any rate, again, enjoy your ranting against me, just be assured you're not doing TNK any favors, you're not hurting my feelings, and you're factually and legally incorrect.

Some of the following posts as I posted this had meritorious comments/questions:
"Regardless of how a customer is being and/or acting (I'm not saying you where out of line) there is never a good reason to be rude or mean to a customer, if in fact you feel he was. But, maybe he was not in a good mood or was just given some bad news or something to that effect." I think this is reasonable. People have bad days, and some people have really bad days. As I suggested here, this service is extremely anomalous given TNK's great reputation here and I'm open to the idea that this was the case.

I wasn't attacking you. Is this how you endeared yourself to Neil Ostroff?
Which dealers we work for? -- Which lawyer do you work for?

I was nothing but nice to Mr. Ostroff--I spoke politely, calmly and sincerely. If he has a recording of our conversation, I consent here for that to be posted, although I accept that this is rather unlikely. Were he to have such a recording, I promise that it would be highly embarrassing to him. As per my law firm, I'm only in my second year of law school, but I was employed by a respected family law firm last summer, although what relevance to my (excellent) knowledge of contracts that might have I'm not sure.

I apologize for the dealer question--when someone wrote "if I had a customer like that, I'd refuse him too" or something to that effect, the implication seemed to me that he actually does have customers--in which case, I'd like to (politely) avoid that business.

As per the interesting comments on what flawless would require, I will try my sincere best to reproduce the comment I submitted with my order for your evaluation.

"I'd like this knife to be flawless. By that I mean a centered blade, no blade play and free of other defects. Please look it over before processing my order, and if it has a problem, please email me and cancel my order. Thanks."

Similar requests have been respected for more than 5 years by NGK and recently by Sooner State Knives. Perhaps TNK represents a baseline standard of fair dealing in the knife business and NGK and Sooner State are simply excellent/superior.

But I think the most philosophically and legally interesting question is whether or not ANY knife could be flawless. The question is legally and factually irrelevant in the sense that I defined flawless in my comment to TNK, but let's suppose I hadn't and evaluate the legal consequences of that decision.

Several posters have commented that, under their definition of flawless (presumably they mean an objective definition), that request would always be unreasonable because it is literally unobtainable. I would suggest that, if they are correct, the term would simply be read differently--as near perfect, or so on, as no contracting party would demand the literally impossible--so the term would be read with the probable definition of near-perfect.

But, while we're on the subject of legal theory, I'd like to suggest a legal out for TNK. Normally, an offer + acceptance will constitute a contract even if the funds are not withdrawn. If you think about it, this happens all the time--for instance, when you contract to sale Item X to Company Y, once a month, for a period of 12 months, starting next January.

At any rate, TNK's lawyer might claim that my comment constituted an additional term that wasn't impliedly accepted by the online transaction--computer-operated transactions can't possibly take into account new terms to sales contracts.

Of course, this would suppose that my request for my product to be free of defects was a new term. In fact, there's an implied warranty of merchantability of use in all sales not sold "as is." Arguably, then, there was no new term at all, merely make an explicit an otherwise implicit term.

In addition, some of commented that he merely followed my comment quite literally. Nonetheless, there is a legally required obligation of "good faith and fair dealing" in all contracts. I'd argue that reading my conditions as logically impossible, as opposed to a more reasonable reading (which was quite simple, given that I defined what to look for) would violate that (enforceable) condition.

Anyway, it's been fun. Hopefully future customers will turn this post up on a search and learn from my experience.

 

[EMT_Lee]

Mr. Ostroff of course has the right to do business with whomever he pleases. He chose to do business with me when he accepted my agreement on his website when I ordered the knife. Then he broke the deal when he failed to deliver.

I've been very kind. I'm not sure why everyone feels such a desire to attack me. I merely asked him to check out the knife first.

In order to be helpful to me and future knife buyers, could you guys please post which dealers you work for so we don't risk our purchases there in the future?

Thanks

I'm not sure how you define a breach of contract, but it seems to me that he was operating well under the terms that you set. You wanted the knife inspected, and determined to be "flawless". You also state that if that was not possible, that he should cancel the order. He said he could not assure you that the knife would be flawless, and in fact could not be bothered to inspect the knife personally, so he was canceling the order... per your initial request. Where does the problem lie? That you didn't get the knife? You set some pretty hard demands, and he was unable to meet them. That's business.

Now, if he was indeed rude over the phone.. well, that is another matter. It's unprofessional, we'll all grant you that. But, the easy way to deal with that is simply do not give that gentleman your business again. Problem solved.

 

[Daniel]

I am unable to determine the purpose of this whole thread. If your perception of the seller's treatment of you does not meet your expectations, then don't patronize the business.

It is not like he failed to deliver anything to you. If he had promised to deliver a knife without imperfection and then you received one that was not, then you would have a gripe. However, he evidently felt that he was unable to deliver service to your expectation, so he declined your offer to purchase a perfect knife.

 

[BrewCity59]

Anyone want to hear a good lawyer joke?? This is starting to sound like a cross between Judge Judy and Jerry Springer!! Quick ma! Back to the double-wide!!

Seriously -- AM, do you really think that Neil was somehow trying to weasel out of a "contract"??

 

[Leadfoot2]

Arrogance begets rudeness, not hard to figure out.

Leadfoot

 

[EMT_Lee]

All comments so far have made some pretty substantial legal errors. For your benefit (and I mean that sincerely), I'd recommend learning some basics about doing business in countries like the USA and Canada and basic contract law so that you don't end up in a legal battle over something more substantial. I would collect on my purchase against Mr. Ostroff in court had this been a multi-thousand dollar purchase, but one would need to be either unnecessarily wealthy or somewhat insane to litigate over a sub-$200 knife.

But it is somewhat amusing to have the legal opinions of a law student belittled in these vitriolic posts.

Admins, feel free to close or delete the thread as you wish. It's clear nothing productive will be accomplished. People will merely assume I'm lying (I suppose?) and see me as some huge jerk for asking the knife to be looked at before shipping.

I will not reply again unless Mr. Ostroff chooses to defend himself here or something productive is said, although I probably won't be reading any non-TNK posts anyway. I'm sure my apparent opponents will enjoy "defending" their friend by claiming I'm some sort of jerk--although in my 6+ years of knife purchasing, I've never had a knife deal go bad and in my multi-thousands of posts I've never had any problems here. But don't let my 5 or so year productive history here bother you--no doubt I had a total personality switch when dealing with this one particular company.

At any rate, again, enjoy your ranting against me, just be assured you're not doing TNK any favors, you're not hurting my feelings, and you're factually and legally incorrect.

Some of the following posts as I posted this had meritorious comments/questions:
"Regardless of how a customer is being and/or acting (I'm not saying you where out of line) there is never a good reason to be rude or mean to a customer, if in fact you feel he was. But, maybe he was not in a good mood or was just given some bad news or something to that effect." I think this is reasonable. People have bad days, and some people have really bad days. As I suggested here, this service is extremely anomalous given TNK's great reputation here and I'm open to the idea that this was the case.



I was nothing but nice to Mr. Ostroff--I spoke politely, calmly and sincerely. If he has a recording of our conversation, I consent here for that to be posted, although I accept that this is rather unlikely. Were he to have such a recording, I promise that it would be highly embarrassing to him. As per my law firm, I'm only in my second year of law school, but I was employed by a respected family law firm last summer, although what relevance to my (excellent) knowledge of contracts that might have I'm not sure.

I apologize for the dealer question--when someone wrote "if I had a customer like that, I'd refuse him too" or something to that effect, the implication seemed to me that he actually does have customers--in which case, I'd like to (politely) avoid that business.

As per the interesting comments on what flawless would require, I will try my sincere best to reproduce the comment I submitted with my order for your evaluation.

"I'd like this knife to be flawless. By that I mean a centered blade, no blade play and free of other defects. Please look it over before processing my order, and if it has a problem, please email me and cancel my order. Thanks."

Similar requests have been respected for more than 5 years by NGK and recently by Sooner State Knives. Perhaps TNK represents a baseline standard of fair dealing in the knife business and NGK and Sooner State are simply excellent/superior.

But I think the most philosophically and legally interesting question is whether or not ANY knife could be flawless. The question is legally and factually irrelevant in the sense that I defined flawless in my comment to TNK, but let's suppose I hadn't and evaluate the legal consequences of that decision.

Several posters have commented that, under their definition of flawless (presumably they mean an objective definition), that request would always be unreasonable because it is literally unobtainable. I would suggest that, if they are correct, the term would simply be read differently--as near perfect, or so on, as no contracting party would demand the literally impossible--so the term would be read with the probable definition of near-perfect.

But, while we're on the subject of legal theory, I'd like to suggest a legal out for TNK. Normally, an offer + acceptance will constitute a contract even if the funds are not withdrawn. If you think about it, this happens all the time--for instance, when you contract to sale Item X to Company Y, once a month, for a period of 12 months, starting next January.

At any rate, TNK's lawyer might claim that my comment constituted an additional term that wasn't impliedly accepted by the online transaction--computer-operated transactions can't possibly take into account new terms to sales contracts.

Of course, this would suppose that my request for my product to be free of defects was a new term. In fact, there's an implied warranty of merchantability of use in all sales not sold "as is." Arguably, then, there was no new term at all, merely make an explicit an otherwise implicit term.

In addition, some of commented that he merely followed my comment quite literally. Nonetheless, there is a legally required obligation of "good faith and fair dealing" in all contracts. I'd argue that reading my conditions as logically impossible, as opposed to a more reasonable reading (which was quite simple, given that I defined what to look for) would violate that (enforceable) condition.

Anyway, it's been fun. Hopefully future customers will turn this post up on a search and learn from my experience.

Before the edit, your post said "But it is somewhat amusing to have the legal opinions of a lawyer belittled in these vitriolic posts." Now, suddenly, you're a law student. Second year. That sort of thing doesn't put you in a good light, and it doesn't speak well for your level of honesty. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

 

[Ren the devils trailboss]

Let me sum it up. This is a big to do about nothing. Op has some over defined sense of right and wrong and some legal expertise. Aside from that. Yawn

 

[Ritt]

But it is somewhat amusing to have the legal opinions of a law student belittled in these vitriolic posts.

Admins, feel free to close or delete the thread as you wish. It's clear nothing productive will be accomplished. People will merely assume I'm lying (I suppose?) and see me as some huge jerk for asking the knife to be looked at before shipping.

I will not reply again unless Mr. Ostroff chooses to defend himself here or something productive is said, although I probably won't be reading any non-TNK posts anyway. I'm sure my apparent opponents will enjoy "defending" their friend by claiming I'm some sort of jerk--although in my 6+ years of knife purchasing, I've never had a knife deal go bad and in my multi-thousands of posts I've never had any problems here. But don't let my 5 or so year productive history here bother you--no doubt I had a total personality switch when dealing with this one particular company.

At any rate, again, enjoy your ranting against me, just be assured you're not doing TNK any favors, you're not hurting my feelings, and you're factually and legally incorrect.

Some of the following posts as I posted this had meritorious comments/questions:
"Regardless of how a customer is being and/or acting (I'm not saying you where out of line) there is never a good reason to be rude or mean to a customer, if in fact you feel he was. But, maybe he was not in a good mood or was just given some bad news or something to that effect." I think this is reasonable. People have bad days, and some people have really bad days. As I suggested here, this service is extremely anomalous given TNK's great reputation here and I'm open to the idea that this was the case.



I was nothing but nice to Mr. Ostroff--I spoke politely, calmly and sincerely. If he has a recording of our conversation, I consent here for that to be posted, although I accept that this is rather unlikely. Were he to have such a recording, I promise that it would be highly embarrassing to him. As per my law firm, I'm only in my second year of law school, but I was employed by a respected family law firm last summer, although what relevance to my (excellent) knowledge of contracts that might have I'm not sure.

I apologize for the dealer question--when someone wrote "if I had a customer like that, I'd refuse him too" or something to that effect, the implication seemed to me that he actually does have customers--in which case, I'd like to (politely) avoid that business.

I don't think anyone's belittling your legal opinions, I think they're just belittling your behavior in general. And I disagree that there's any vitriol here. I'm very calming saying I think you're acting like a little bitch.

I don't think you're lying. But I am confused as to the switch from your original post, in which you require that the knife be "flawless", to your several later claims that you simply ask that "the knife be looked at before shipping." That seems a world of difference, especially for someone so well versed and experienced in law.

As I previously stated, I have no ties to TNK, never had any dealings with him, certainly wouldn't call him a friend. I'm not claiming you're a jerk, just saying in this particular case you're acting like a bitch. Doesn't really matter to me how many posts you have or how many years you've been here.

I'm not ranting, I'm stating my opinion. That's what these forums are for, right? I'm assuming you put your experience out there with the expectation of feedback from the membership. You didn't hear what you wanted to, so now you're walking away?

 

[Bryan J]

I have no experience dealing with True North Knives and thus have no dog in this fight, but I find this vendor's actions perfectly understandable. I think it's a bit excessive to be emailing and calling a vendor several times a week over the fit and finish of a $150 knife that was mass produced by Kai/Kershaw/Zero Tolerance. Plus in the end, one person's notion of "flawlessness" or "excellent lockup" or "acceptable bladeplay" is different from another's.

By the way, Kai/Kershaw/ZT has an excellent reputation of standing by their products. You should have just bought the knife with the comfort of knowing that you could always appeal to ZT to make things right in the even that you received a lemon.