UPDATE: Benchmade had me call them about the problem. Spoke with a nice woman on the phone about said issue. They asked me to send pictures of the grind. I sent them the ones in the original post. They promptly responded sending me a pre-paid shipping label and said they would Lifesharp RUSH my knife and get it back to me as soon as possible.
So far, their reputation of customer service has been has been what i expected... top-notch.... I'll ship the knife back and will update with the returned blade.
This whole situation just reinforces my previous statement... Please see below, but please note section "D" onward. Due to that portion being evidenced by the post above, the entire post would apply.
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I have posted the text below in the "Benchmade falling behind" thread, but I feel that in this thread, it is directly applicable.
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Now, I am going to pick this number out of thin air, but say 1 out of every 100 have a flaw significant enough that ZT, Spyderco, (insert brand here) does mark them as such, and prices them accordingly to cover manufacturing costs, and make their profit from the "correct" models.
Which means that a few things are possible, regarding Benchmade, they include things like they;
A) are some form of mass production mega-machine that the likes of which has not been seen, within the confines of the knife industry. And they just don't have the employee volume to check the massive volume they produce.
B) have a smaller second production plant or at the very least, a productions shift worth of personnel thats entire job revolves around the disassembly and reassembly of QC rejected knives.
--The next one is (hopefully) less likely, though it does have the most circumstantial evidence backing it--
C) QC was directly told to be more lenient with what passes their standards.
D) Item "C" would be backed up by a higher warranty likelihood, and would result in the company being more lax when it comes to denials of warranty replacment/repair due to acknowledgement of "C" and their requirement to do so, otherwise risk reputation.
E) Item "D" would then make the company look better in the publics eye; since the general public would view this as the company having a "Good Warranty" when all it
Could Be is (not definitive) the company hoping that knives with issues are bought by customers that;
F1) don't know better
F2) don't care enough
F3) care but don't want the hassle
F4) are willing to accept the knife as QC Passed, therefore it must be OK.
F5) won't purchase from the brand again.
G) this would result in more knives making it out of the plant that are sub-par by our standards, and (unfortunately) considered OK by company standards.
H) All of this second portion would result in us knife nuts saying that Benchmade has to make up ground for a lesser than expected (at this price point) F&F standard.
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I know that this is all conjecture, but it all seems to be a bit too convenient...
,I sure would give up ,there again I'm not that fussy over a production knife .
