Hello all,
Although perhaps I may be over-reacting a tad, I still thought I would share my personal experience regarding my attempted purchase at osograndekinves.com.
During the wee hours of the morning (5:00AMish) on Friday, February 18, I found a website (google cache) that listed the Microtech Tachyon on sale for $239.99. The image for the Tachyon even had bold red letters proclaiming "DISCONTINUED ITEM, WE STILL HAVE SOME IN STOCK!". Here I thought "OH BOY! I finally found somewhere that still has them new and in stock!" Seeing as no one else had them in stock, I placed and order immediately. I was even issued a confirmation email stating the contents of my order, including the $9 dollars or so in shipping/handling. I was beaming with the knowledge that I would soon own one of my first balisong knives. How untrue that turned out to be.
That afternoon, I attempted to contact osograndeknives via their listed contact numbers on their website during their displayed business hours so I could confirm the condition of the kinves they were selling. Their phones rung un-answered and and my two messages were left unreturned. Fair enough, perhaps they were extremely busy, or maybe they were understaffed.
When I called again on monday, to inquire about the status of my order, I was blithely told "Oh, we sold out of the Tachyons late last year..." How blissfully WONDERFUL. When I inquired why they hadn't updated their website, and why their system even put the order through, they stated "Oh, sometimes it takes a while for those types of things to update, they should have sent you an email saying they were out of stock..." Even though I was thoroughly ticked off at this point, I politely thanked him and hung up.
At the time of this writing, 10:32PM CST on Monday, February 21st, the item is still listed as in-stock and available for order on their site.
What I fail find reasonable explaination for is this:
- How come when such a popular item like the Tachyon sells out, it takes them ALMOST TWO MONTHS for them to remove that item from their web site? It's not like they have a print catalog that needs addendums sent out, their entire catalog consists of some text based files. With some silly keystrokes and a few clicks of the mouse they could have removed the item. Even if they were too lazy/stubborn to remove the item, they could have at the least added some notes to that page listing the item as sold out.
- How come no one caught the order for the out-of-stock-for-two-months item that popped into the sales queue on that business day on Friday?
- How come no one called me to apologize for the mix-up, or emailed me explaining the situation?
- I underscore the issue once again: HOW COME THE WEB PAGE IS STILL UP!?
Now, some consequences to this situation:
- I will undoubtedly, never again order anything, from osograndeknives.com
- Although others may have had perfectly normal transactions with this vendor, I will strongly reccommend to my friends and colleagues against making a future purchase with this entity.
- Even though all the other re-seller's and community members have no direct affiliation with this retailer, since this was my first sales interaction with the balisong community, it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I can only hope/assume that I accidentally picked a bad apple to order from. I haven't given up already.
- I am left without my Tachyon :-|
- My fingers are starting to hurt, because I accidentally hit the wrong function key and my entire post was erased a few lines ago.
Again, I offer my apologies to anyone who feels that I am over-reacting, and to any mods who find that this post is in the wrong forum. I did a quick search for "dealer discussions" and came up blank. Please move this post as you deem it necessary.
On a more positive note, I want to thank everyone else in the community thus far for providing so much information regarding the art of the balisong, both in the nature of the knife, and in the techniques. These forums have been absolutely a goldmine of information that I hope to continue to pillage in the future, assuming I don't have any more bad run-ins with deadbeat vendors. Above all, I thank you for listing to my blathering.
Respectfully,
Omikron
Edit:
For future searching purposes, I am adding the different ways this company may be referred to.
Oso Grande Knife and Tool Company
Oso Grande Knife & Tool Company
www.osograndeknives.com
Although perhaps I may be over-reacting a tad, I still thought I would share my personal experience regarding my attempted purchase at osograndekinves.com.
During the wee hours of the morning (5:00AMish) on Friday, February 18, I found a website (google cache) that listed the Microtech Tachyon on sale for $239.99. The image for the Tachyon even had bold red letters proclaiming "DISCONTINUED ITEM, WE STILL HAVE SOME IN STOCK!". Here I thought "OH BOY! I finally found somewhere that still has them new and in stock!" Seeing as no one else had them in stock, I placed and order immediately. I was even issued a confirmation email stating the contents of my order, including the $9 dollars or so in shipping/handling. I was beaming with the knowledge that I would soon own one of my first balisong knives. How untrue that turned out to be.
That afternoon, I attempted to contact osograndeknives via their listed contact numbers on their website during their displayed business hours so I could confirm the condition of the kinves they were selling. Their phones rung un-answered and and my two messages were left unreturned. Fair enough, perhaps they were extremely busy, or maybe they were understaffed.
When I called again on monday, to inquire about the status of my order, I was blithely told "Oh, we sold out of the Tachyons late last year..." How blissfully WONDERFUL. When I inquired why they hadn't updated their website, and why their system even put the order through, they stated "Oh, sometimes it takes a while for those types of things to update, they should have sent you an email saying they were out of stock..." Even though I was thoroughly ticked off at this point, I politely thanked him and hung up.
At the time of this writing, 10:32PM CST on Monday, February 21st, the item is still listed as in-stock and available for order on their site.
What I fail find reasonable explaination for is this:
- How come when such a popular item like the Tachyon sells out, it takes them ALMOST TWO MONTHS for them to remove that item from their web site? It's not like they have a print catalog that needs addendums sent out, their entire catalog consists of some text based files. With some silly keystrokes and a few clicks of the mouse they could have removed the item. Even if they were too lazy/stubborn to remove the item, they could have at the least added some notes to that page listing the item as sold out.
- How come no one caught the order for the out-of-stock-for-two-months item that popped into the sales queue on that business day on Friday?
- How come no one called me to apologize for the mix-up, or emailed me explaining the situation?
- I underscore the issue once again: HOW COME THE WEB PAGE IS STILL UP!?
Now, some consequences to this situation:
- I will undoubtedly, never again order anything, from osograndeknives.com
- Although others may have had perfectly normal transactions with this vendor, I will strongly reccommend to my friends and colleagues against making a future purchase with this entity.
- Even though all the other re-seller's and community members have no direct affiliation with this retailer, since this was my first sales interaction with the balisong community, it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I can only hope/assume that I accidentally picked a bad apple to order from. I haven't given up already.
- I am left without my Tachyon :-|
- My fingers are starting to hurt, because I accidentally hit the wrong function key and my entire post was erased a few lines ago.
Again, I offer my apologies to anyone who feels that I am over-reacting, and to any mods who find that this post is in the wrong forum. I did a quick search for "dealer discussions" and came up blank. Please move this post as you deem it necessary.
On a more positive note, I want to thank everyone else in the community thus far for providing so much information regarding the art of the balisong, both in the nature of the knife, and in the techniques. These forums have been absolutely a goldmine of information that I hope to continue to pillage in the future, assuming I don't have any more bad run-ins with deadbeat vendors. Above all, I thank you for listing to my blathering.
Respectfully,
Omikron
Edit:
For future searching purposes, I am adding the different ways this company may be referred to.
Oso Grande Knife and Tool Company
Oso Grande Knife & Tool Company
www.osograndeknives.com
You do sarcasm well.
) SOMETHING made you call them the next day. :footinmou You KNEW something wasn't quite right. Maybe it came to you in a dream. 
I found out another gentleman on these forums ended up with it and I was just SOL.
