Catastrophic failure of a Fox 599-XT. Customer service only made excuses. My opinion: stay away.

tony281sc2 said:
waving it open repeatedly like a maniac
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I've done exactly this many hundreds of times to Cold Steel wave openers with no damage , so far as I can tell .

That's what a wave opener is supposed to be made for .

Combat and practice for combat / emergency use . That's when you need to be fast . Not to cut your sandwich or a thread on your suit .

Fast , hard opening in a stressful situation .
 
RousingRabbles said:
Well since OP didn’t find it necessary to provide context for his conversation, I guess I will. It’s very unfortunate this happened to him, but I don’t believe he is being authentic about his correspondence.

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Also, here is the piece that broke off. It appears that by how tweaked this looks that it was either already mangled and broken (possibly causing the stiff action OP mentions) or that it had a fracture and was mangled by excessive force causing the full break. Either way, this serves as a good reminder for me to be careful with my blades and never force an opening, no matter how frustrating.

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Picking up some serious Karen vibes from that initial contact. I appreciate you making us aware of the entirety of the situation. Looks to me like Fox took care of an unreasonable customer who doesn't seem to know much about knives. This knife should have been disassembled and inspected when it was initially discovered to have difficulty actuating through its opening motion, not "Well, let me just force it open several dozen times". If the OP was uncomfortable doing so, sending it back to the dealer should have been the next move.
 
Question for the OP:

Were you forcing a wave opening action with LAWKs engaged? That could possibly cause the failure you experienced if the steel at the pivot had a weakness. Those LAWKs secondary locks can be overcome at significant stress to the pivot mechanism.
 
DocJD said:
I've done exactly this many hundreds of times to Cold Steel wave openers with no damage , so far as I can tell .

That's what a wave opener is supposed to be made for .

Combat and practice for combat / emergency use . That's when you need to be fast . Not to cut your sandwich or a thread on your suit .

Fast , hard opening in a stressful situation .
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Yeah, who opens and closes their knife a dozen times to loosen it up when it first comes?! And opening it and closing your new, $50+ knife multiple times, what are you, crazy? That's abuse of the knife!
😁
 
OP might be a bit sore because of it, and the dealer took care of it which is completely fine.

From my time on r/knives community on Reddit one thing seems to be consistent - Fox customer service will just apologize and do pretty much nothing about your issue. They'll just say they're sorry you have issue.

But customers seem to usually be covered by dealers so that might be how Fox operates. You send it back to dealer, dealer gives you a refund and then Fox deals with dealer? It just MIGHT be like that.

In any case, I'm not finding Fox knives interesting, neither do I want one, and even if I did - I'd avoid them for such practices.

If that's your product, and customer is contacting you - how does it look like for you to just point at the dealer and use the dealer as a buffer zone?


If the guy saw something was wrong with it then I agree he should just leave it alone and ask for a refund as it is.
BUT the point is - he shouldn't even have a problem at a first place, your average customer shouldn't have to undergo through DIY project to have an useable knife even after they paid for it.
Whatever he did - blade does not look damaged so he didn't use anything hard on it, the blade looks brand new except for the snap.
So, how did such a thing even pass the quality control???


The guy is pissed, and I understand why is he pissed! He pays a lot for a knife that doesn't even function properly and then just snaps when he tries to fix it, even giving him a nick in the process.
They sold that man something that could potentionally give him a serious injury, and then they didn't even have decency to talk to him or own up to their mistakes afterwards?!?!
 
DocJD said:
You might feel different if this thing flew apart on you ...and stuck in your (or someone else's) eyeball ? :eek:

Of course , if he actually was beating on the knife, in a vise , with a rubber mallet ...that's different . ;)
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I wouldn't have tried to force the knife open/closed multiple times when there was obviously a problem w/the action.

I might have tried to adjust the pivot but, if that didn't work, I would have just returned it for an exchange or refund, which is ultimately what the OP did AFTER he "broke" it. LOL! ;)

And, after he did THAT, the dealer would have been w/in his "rights" to say that it was no longer an exchange/return matter -- because the dealer could no longer put it back in stock to try to re-sell it or send it to Fox for replacement -- BUT a "warranty" issue that the OP would have to take up w/Fox which then REALLY would have pissed him off.

He's actually "lucky" that the dealer didn't do that. Double LOL!!!! 🤣🤣

Sorry but, if it's not already obvious, the OP is not getting any "love" or sympathy from me. 😎

PS: I'm not a knife maker/mfgr or dealer but I have A LOT of sympathy for their situation.

FWIW, out the over 500 knives that I have purchased in the past 4 years, including some really cheap Kershaws, I've only returned ONE knife that I felt I could not accept because it did not "center" properly. I kept and/or resold all of the others. My collection currently stand at just over 350 knives.

AND, btw, NO knife that I ever purchased (new or used; autos, balis, folders or fixed blades) EVER -- and I mean NEVER EVER-- broke on me.

Doesn't mean it still couldn't happen in the future but I don't handle my knives in a way that that is likely to EVER happen.
 
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Seeing the original email, I can understand why Fox was a bit defensive, but they didn't seem totally unreasonable. I've gotten a colder response than that from Spyderco, and they are usually great to work with. Any time I have to deal with a company I'm kind and give them a fair chance. After they have a fair chance to fix the issue and fail to, then it's more than fair to get upset.

Obviously the damage was done before OP received the knife, but I still don't see how assembly didn't notice the inoperable pivot.
 
Point is - their QC shouldn't have let tj
DocJD said:
Not defending the maker , but there are real legal liability concerns these days .

If they say " Yeah , we know these are defective and it's all our fault " and then someone is seriously injured (or fakes it ) , they end up in a huge lawsuit
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Point is - QC should have never let that knife out...
 
MarkN86 said:
Obviously the damage was done before OP received the knife, but I still don't see how assembly didn't notice the inoperable pivot.
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This is NOT obvious at all! The knife wasn't broken before he got it. It broke after he f*cked w/it.

That breakage "may" have been due to a defect in mfg BUT if he didn't F*CK w/it, it would not have broken before he sent it back to the dealer.
 
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Quote- "I am beyond furious. Is this the quality control that's typical of your company? Unless you make some extraordinary efforts in terms of customer service, you have lost a knife-enthusiast customer forever, and I will tell everyone I know and on every blade forum to avoid your company like the plague."

Wow.

While I can certainly understand being upset that a knife you bought proved to be a piece of junk, and you got injured, I don't think that justifies a temper tantrum, or making threats.

I would expect sending that^ sort of email after being given the brush-off, but not in the initial contact before even giving them a chance to explain themselves and make it right (though it appears the dealer is best positioned to make it right). Instead you went off the rails and straight to DEFCON 1 .

I'd say Fox handled the matter with a great deal of restraint, professionalism, and respect. I own one Fox knife (Bellum), and seeing how well they reacted to an irate, irrational customer I'd be more willing to give them my business, not less. I've known people who worked in customer service dealing with such customers, it's not an easy job, nor is it easy to stay polite.

Based on your email, I'm surprised they didn't tell you "BAFUNGU!". I think they would have been justified in doing so.

Take a breath. Count to ten. Never email angry :).
 
I don't see any issue with continuing to try to open the knife while it was initially having issues. I don't think anyone here can honestly have guessed that a spectacular failure like that would have occurred. Just that it happened at all adds it to the list of reasons why Fox Knives just don't interest me.

That being said, OP's email to customer service was out of line, and their response was totally fine here.
 
sgt1372 said:
I wouldn't have tried to force the knife open/closed multiple times when there was obviously a problem w/the action.

I might have tried to adjust the pivot but, if that didn't work, I would have just returned it for an exchange or refund, which is ultimately what the OP did AFTER he "broke" it. LOL! ;)

And, after he did THAT, the dealer would have been w/in his "rights" to say that it was no longer an exchange/return matter -- because the dealer could no longer put it back in stock to re-sell it or sent it to Fox for replacement -- BUT a "warranty" issue that the OP would have to take up w/Fox which then REALLY would have pissed him off.

He's actually "lucky" that the dealer didn't do that. Double LOL!!!! 🤣🤣

Sorry but, if it's not already obvious, the OP is not getting any "love" or sympathy from me. 😎
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I don't have any Fox products , never have had , so no real feeling for their QC or CS .

IDK how I would deal with this kind of problem with an unfamiliar design .

With difficult Cold Steel Tri-ad locks , I'm almost expert at break-in . :rolleyes:
 
sgt1372 said:
This is NOT obvious at all! The knife wasn't broken before he got it. It broke after he f*cked w/it.

That breakage "may" have been due ot a defect in mfg BUT if he didn't F*CK w/it, it would not have broken before he sent it back to the dealer.
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That makes no sense. It was either broken or it wasn't. I doubt that you or anybody else could snap a piece of the tang off like that unless it was already seriously compromised to the point of failure. Opening the knife didn't "break" it. It was already broken. All the OP did was open the knife a few times so that the pieces fell out. Better it happened then than if the knife was actually being used to cut something.
 
RousingRabbles said:
Well since OP didn’t find it necessary to provide context for his conversation, I guess I will. It’s very unfortunate this happened to him, but I don’t believe he is being authentic about his correspondence.

View attachment 1723733View attachment 1723734


Also, here is the piece that broke off. It appears that by how tweaked this looks that it was either already mangled and broken (possibly causing the stiff action OP mentions) or that it had a fracture and was mangled by excessive force causing the full break. Either way, this serves as a good reminder for me to be careful with my blades and never force an opening, no matter how frustrating.

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Thanks for sharing this.
 
Its bad enough theres no steel around the pivot, but add the fact that all that material is removed inside that pivot as well making it pretty thin theres not much left at all ..
 
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