Horrible Kershaw CS Experience

[Rey HRH]

If you want to play that game with Kershaw, go ahead. With a brand new, never used knife that works improperly, manufacturers want "first look" at the product by their technicians.



Read the actual LIMITED warranty that says in part:

Kershaw Knives from Kai USA Ltd. carry a limited warranty for the lifetime of the original owner, except when stated otherwise. We guarantee our knives against manufacturing defects in material and construction and to perform as advertised when properly used and maintained. The Limited Lifetime Warranty is non-transferable and does not extend to normal signs of wear, rust, damage or breakage due to improper use, improper maintenance, accidents, loss or theft. Any product we determine to be defective will be repaired or replaced solely at our discretion. To receive warranty repair or replacement, the owner must send the product to be evaluated by Kai USA Warranty Services in our Tualatin, Oregon headquarters.

They clearly state they are NOT RESPONSIBLE for improper maintenance. So the will gladly let you work on your own knife, but if you make a mistake, they don't have to cover it. Note too, the use of their sole discretion of making the determination of what is a warranty issue and what isn't.


Robert

1) I'm not playing any game with kershaw or anyone else. I was addressing your statement wherein you said taking a knife apart will void the warranty.

2) Taking a knife apart does not equal improper maintenance. Improper maintenance is what voids the warranty.

3) It appears you're not parsing the sentence correctly where you bolded the phrase "solely at our discretion." Determining whether the product is defective (and therefore covered under warranty) is their action / responsibility. Concluding whether the product is defective isn't discretionary; it either is or isn't based on standards and a process. Following that process is what enables them to make a determination whether the product is defective. The Quality Control process and determining whether something is defective isn't discretionary. What IS discretionary is whether Kershaw will repair or replace the product once they have determined it is defective and covered under warranty. That is what the sentence actually says is solely at their discretion - whether to repair or replace.

Again, there is a vast difference from what you said that taking the knife apart will void the warranty versus what will actually void the warranty - one of which is improper maintenance which may arise from taking the knife apart and putting it together. But the act of taking the knife apart does not, by itself, void the warranty.

 

[midnight flyer]

Rey HRH, you obviously have a great deal more time and enjoy the warranty game much more than I do.

Regardless of what is thought, how the semantics of the warranty are interpreted, or any other such circumstances, practicality wins out for me. If they cannot get their own customer service people to repair a defective product, I wouldn't trust them to interpret their warranty on my side.

Not saying that it is the case with Kershaw, but as a contractor I buy a LOT of tools and find warranties to be as good as the technician that opens your package. Any warranty I have ever had to use whether it is a lifetime, 90 day, one year, or any other warranty seems tight in writing. However, in actual practice, the folks are unconcerned (Kershaw) or will try to find a way out of honoring their stated warranty (Ridgid).

It is an inspiring moment to see that someone still gives their fellow human being the benefit of the doubt and will not only trust them to do the right thing but defend a company that they probably have no personal experience with as far as warranty services are concerned. I saw that Kershaw dropped the ball the first time and half the ball after another attempt. I saw that Kershaw scratched up the case on his knife, and made no attempt to repair or replace a finely finished knife, which the rainbow series has as its major selling point.

As for me, I have a life sized picture in my head of relating my customer service experience to some kind of upper lever supervisor that said, "wait... are you trying to tell me that one of our guys told you to take the factory fresh knife apart and repair it for us?" Personally, I can easily see another tech telling me, "no way we would tell you to take your knife apart to try to assess the problem and then repair it if it was brand new, and since you did XXX and XXX to it when you reassembled it, you voided your warranty". I don't have the confidence in any of these companies and their warranties that you seem to. I don't care about the verbiage of a company's warranty, I based my comments on personal experience with many, many companies.

I glad I don't have the time to screw with those things. Those are best left to folks that have the time and inclination to argue all the gray areas that are unmentioned or are addressed by nebulous terminology and exculpatory language. My experience is different that most, I have found that any company will get out of warranty service if they can, and if the honor it, it is usually a fist fight. So when something is broken, I send it back. I would be insulted to think I bought a product and then to get the response for a company that I could do their quality control and repairs for them. My take is that they could send me what I paid for, send me the product they describe.

I am sure you are a good match for any customer service and warranty department. Me, not so much... no time to bandy words, ideas, interpretations, a technician's personal interpretation, resolving misunderstandings about warranty issues and coverage, etc. I have found that with other human beings involved, I don't have the interest in resolving the more finite issues of their warranty interpretation. If it is broken when I get it, I send it back. Of course, YMMV.

Robert

 

[microtechnical]

Hey all,

Just as an update, I decided I didn't want to try and put Amazon on the hook for this. I went to their site and almost contacted them, but thought about it more and realized it just sounded ridiculous... I bought this 5 months ago and have been trying to work with the manufacturer... somehow the manufacturer scratched it up badly in the process - would you all replace it for me? It was just too ridiculous and too much to ask Amazon to do in my opinion.

So I guess I have just decided to eat the loss and just try to forget about it. Currently Amazon is selling these suckers for around $70, definitely a chunk of change even at that discounted price. Hurts a bit to remember actually buying these lol, what a mess.

Anyway, thanks all for the replies, maybe some day Kershaw will see this and respond or something. If anyone has better contact info for them please let me know here or private message me or however that works.

Thanks again all, I think I'll just stick with my scratched up chive and use it as my "who cares" type of blade haha.

Tim

 

[Rey HRH]

Rey HRH, you obviously have a great deal more time and enjoy the warranty game much more than I do.

Regardless of what is thought, how the semantics of the warranty are interpreted, or any other such circumstances, practicality wins out for me. If they cannot get their own customer service people to repair a defective product, I wouldn't trust them to interpret their warranty on my side.

Not saying that it is the case with Kershaw, but as a contractor I buy a LOT of tools and find warranties to be as good as the technician that opens your package. Any warranty I have ever had to use whether it is a lifetime, 90 day, one year, or any other warranty seems tight in writing. However, in actual practice, the folks are unconcerned (Kershaw) or will try to find a way out of honoring their stated warranty (Ridgid).

It is an inspiring moment to see that someone still gives their fellow human being the benefit of the doubt and will not only trust them to do the right thing but defend a company that they probably have no personal experience with as far as warranty services are concerned. I saw that Kershaw dropped the ball the first time and half the ball after another attempt. I saw that Kershaw scratched up the case on his knife, and made no attempt to repair or replace a finely finished knife, which the rainbow series has as its major selling point.

As for me, I have a life sized picture in my head of relating my customer service experience to some kind of upper lever supervisor that said, "wait... are you trying to tell me that one of our guys told you to take the factory fresh knife apart and repair it for us?" Personally, I can easily see another tech telling me, "no way we would tell you to take your knife apart to try to assess the problem and then repair it if it was brand new, and since you did XXX and XXX to it when you reassembled it, you voided your warranty". I don't have the confidence in any of these companies and their warranties that you seem to. I don't care about the verbiage of a company's warranty, I based my comments on personal experience with many, many companies.

I glad I don't have the time to screw with those things. Those are best left to folks that have the time and inclination to argue all the gray areas that are unmentioned or are addressed by nebulous terminology and exculpatory language. My experience is different that most, I have found that any company will get out of warranty service if they can, and if the honor it, it is usually a fist fight. So when something is broken, I send it back. I would be insulted to think I bought a product and then to get the response for a company that I could do their quality control and repairs for them. My take is that they could send me what I paid for, send me the product they describe.

I am sure you are a good match for any customer service and warranty department. Me, not so much... no time to bandy words, ideas, interpretations, a technician's personal interpretation, resolving misunderstandings about warranty issues and coverage, etc. I have found that with other human beings involved, I don't have the interest in resolving the more finite issues of their warranty interpretation. If it is broken when I get it, I send it back. Of course, YMMV.

Robert

1) I do have personal experience with Kai Warranty service which owns Kershaw, ZT, and Shun knives. At best, my attitude regarding their warranty service is neutral which is all that one can expect from a customer who has to send a product back for warranty service. I cannot imagine anyone being ecstatic from finally receiving a product after warranty service in the condition it should have been in the first place. My point from when I responded to your post until now was regarding your statement that disassembling a knife voids the warranty which is not supported by Kershaw's warranty statement.

2) "Rey HRH, you obviously have a great deal more time and enjoy the warranty game much more than I do."

"I glad I don't have the time to screw with those things. Those are best left to folks that have the time and inclination to argue all the gray areas that are unmentioned or are addressed by nebulous terminology and exculpatory language. "

"I am sure you are a good match for any customer service and warranty department. Me, not so much... no time to bandy words, ideas, interpretations, a technician's personal interpretation, resolving misunderstandings about warranty issues and coverage, etc. I have found that with other human beings involved, I don't have the interest in resolving the more finite issues of their warranty interpretation. "

Based on a quick visual assessment of word count on this thread, I disagree with your opinion as to who has more time and inclination to "bandy words about warranty issues." All I wanted to point out was that your statement about taking apart a knife voids the warranty is incorrect, at least, with regards to Kershaw so that other new people may not be misled.

 

[microtechnical]

Hey all, so after a week of sitting around it was still driving me a bit crazy. So I broke down and wrote a letter yesterday to the general customer service email over at Kershaw as well as everything I could think of like info@ sales@ warranty@ help@ kai-usa.com and only one of those addresses bounced, so it seemed to get to someone. In the letter I said that I had been dealing with the reps there including a supervisor (and named them to show I was serious) and that I've sent some 9 emails to the supervisor with not a single one of them being answered. That my knife is dinged up and it's bothering me, that I have been a fan of theirs for years, and yada yada. Sure enough just a bit ago an email came in from this S.R. supervisor I've talked about before. He basically says - sorry I didn't get back to you sooner and sorry to hear about your knife being scuffed. We want to make this right, can you please send me pictures of the damage? He also mentions that they don't really use clamps so it seems they couldn't have hurt it with a clamp.

Now keep in mind I actually emailed him pictures of the damage and the strange packaging, cut up papers, etc. some 2 months prior. But irregardless I immediately wrote him back and said (paraphrasing here) - Thank you for the reply, I would very much like to get this taken care of too. I actually did send you the pictures some months back but here they are again including some fresh new ones for fun. Also the clamp was just a theory I had, I'm not really sure how the damage was done I was just saying that maybe something like that happened, I really don't know what truly damaged it other than it was fine when it left from my care and came back like this from you folks. Then much to my amazement he wrote back practically instantly and asked if it was on just the one side of the handle. This seems to still be along the lines of if it was a clamp or what, but hey at least he seems like he is trying to figure out what happened.

Now it has been some 30 minutes since his last email where I replied and said yes it's just on the one side. At around the 20 minute mark I went ahead and took a picture of some of my ZT and Kershaw knives and sent that to him too, just to show that I am not just a casual fan or that this was my first purchase. My picture has some 15 Kershaw boxes, 2 ZT boxes and a table full of their folding knives. So hopefully we will get some kind of action on this finally!

Just wanted to keep everybody informed, thanks for all the info.

Oh also - for what it's worth - I think Rey HRH and midnight flyer both have good point and was glad to see this thread sparked some debate in general!

 

[microtechnical]

Ok here we go he replied again, this time I'm just putting the actual reply right on here:

Tim,

So I’ve compared the damage on the knife to everything we have here. There is nothing in our department that would cause though kind of deep scratches in a semi-uniform pattern (they are all in the same direction, but not equal depth). So I would not be able to replace the entire unit. What I can do (and this is an exception to our standard policy) is send you a new front handle for that knife, if you are comfortable swapping the handles. If not, I can send you a pre-paid label and we will get the handle swapped with a new handle.

If you have any questions at all. Please email or call.

Thank you,
[S.R.]


So I wrote him back this, basically saying ya that's OK I guess but really it's pretty poor especially since you insinuate that I'm lying and that you folks didn't scratch the knife. 100% for sure they did by the way. Well either that or the postal people opened the package and decided to scratch my knife in transit. Here is my actual reply to him:

Hey there [S.R.],

Thanks again for the reply. I definitely have no idea what caused the scratches but I do know this knife was brand new fresh out of the box without a single flaw when I sent it to you folks. I'd swear on a stack of bibles that is true. What else is true is I originally mailed this in months ago, over a month later it came back with the scratches, unrepaired, and with my original papers I sent in but now with a bunch of holes cut out using my own knife. I can't imagine that is really standard policy either so it seems the whole thing has been a bit unusual to say the least.

I guess the replacement handle will work, I didn't even think about the fact you could replace a side handle on these but I see what you mean, with the torx screw it would come right off. So I suppose that is acceptable and I will have one of these "franken-knives" as they call them in the blade community. (I thought about it and I guess it's not since it's still a 1600VIB eh?, what do you guys think I should do?)

Truly though it is a bit disappointing, especially since it sounds like you don't think it could have happened on your side.

Is it possible to double check with an even higher level? I have spent thousands on KAI knives over the years, heck probably over a $1000 in just the last year I'm sure. This is the first time I've ever had a warranty claim of any kind.

Also, when I got it back from [J] who was working on it the first time I immediately called you folks, asked for a supervisor and got yourself and I reported the damage. I hand wrote up a long letter asking you to check on the damage and see what could be done, hopefully a replacement could be sent instead I pleaded, but I never heard back and over a month later the same knife came back again with no explanation, no paperwork, nothing. In the meantime I wrote at least 8 emails to [his email here] trying to check on the status and urging for a replacement. Today is the first time I have ever seen any reply at all.

So if possible I'd like to escalate this even a bit farther, I don't really want to have a pieced together knife, I guess it wouldn't be the end of the world but just this whole process has been a bit disappointing to say the least.

Please let me know.

Thanks,

Tim






So what do you guys think? Am I a bit crazy or would you have done the same?

 

[Rey HRH]

You sound reasonable. I will give them a short time to respond, like a week at most, then follow up with a phone call.

Since you brought up the "i spent $1000 on KAI in just the last year," if you can easily show them pics of the receipts, I think that will help your case to show 1) you're not lying and 2) you don't have a history of being nit picky with them.

If it were me, I would be persistent (up to a reasonable point, of course).

Good luck.

 

[brainsick]

Hello all,

I had to vent somewhere over my crazy Kershaw experience with customer service. I have always heard great things about their service but this was the first time I ever had to actually try and "use" it so to speak. The first ever knife I remember getting when I was a kid was Kershaw and now that I'm in my early 30's I have at least 15 of them.

Well I purchased two more Kershaw blades around Halloween time, two identical 1600VIB "rainbow" Chive knives. They were on a super special one day online so I grabbed them. Well the strangest thing happened, they came and they both stuck when you tried to open them. As mentioned I have a whole slew of Kershaw knives and most of them are assisted opening with the "speedsafe" system. I know how it usually works and that some of mine have broken in over time, etc. Well these two both just STUCK and I mean stuck hard when you tried to flick them open. Then you'd try to use the tiny little thumb studs and it'd feel like grinding gears trying to get it fully snapped open. I put some lube in there (Boeshield T-9) and even completely took apart the Torx screw, took the blades out and put them back together. Now that is where things start to get screwy.

I put both knives back together after lubricating them and now suddenly one snapped open nicely with a convincing "thwack", however the other one still completely stuck at the same point. Made no sense to me since I did everything exactly the same with them and they were both new in the box. So I thought hey, I'll break down and call Kershaw to see what they recommend. I called in and talked to a young guy (I have all the names but will keep from posting for now) and told him the issue. He said ya that seems weird, send that one in and I'll see what I can do with a complete overhaul on it. I ship it in, put it to his attention and see the tracking shows delivered 2 days later. Then complete silence for 5 weeks straight. On the 5th week I finally called back thinking that was far long enough to wait for what was a brand new knife. I called and the guy wasn't there but a girl looked it up in the computer and said a new torsion spring was put in it and it would be to me any day. 2 weeks later finally I get a shipping notice from UPS. The knife comes and I open the box... it has the original piece of paper I sent in with the knife but now featuring a whole bunch of cut out slash marks (obviously made with my knife), the knife itself and nothing else. I immediately grabbed the knife and tried to open it, immediately it stuck EXACTLY the same way it had before. I tried it many times and no way could I get it to open smoothly, it was exactly the same as before. Now mind you this is nearly 2 months after I shipped it in to them, I get back my original slip of paper with nothing on it but a bunch of cut out holes and my still messed up knife, now duller from cutting the paper and also with a bunch of scratches on it from someone maybe putting it in a clamp or something and clamping too hard, not sure, but major dings to the lovely rainbow body.

Ok so I called back to Kershaw and got the same lady that checked the status before, I asked for a manger and after explaining a bit she grabbed him for me. S. R. as I will call him came on the line and I explained everything. He said "my that is no good, let me send you a label to return the knife". I said great thanks and we hung up, pretty short and sweet but I felt I had told a manager and it was going to be fine now. A UPS label came and I sent it back that same day, it arrived 2 days later again. Now it has been again 5 weeks since that day. I called in to Kershaw this last week, talked to S.R. again and it was obvious he had no recollection of me or any of it. He looked in the computer and repeated the exact same phrase as I heard months ago "we sent it to repair, the replaced they torsion spring". I said hmm OK that is what they said last time, but it definitely springs open nicely now? "Yes it does" he said, OK Great I said when will it come, "it should ship tomorrow". Now it has been 6 days since then and still no shipment. If the same knife comes back in the same shape I am going to be beyond upset. I only possessed the knife for maybe 4 hours total before shipping it to warranty for the help, now we are at the nearly 4 MONTH mark and it hasn't come back.

I think I may write a letter to the owners, or does anyone know how I can reach them? I thought for sure a manager would help me but this is ridiculous.

Thanks for reading, sorry for the long post!

I have some photos as well to show the cut up paper and some of the dings on the knife. I can maybe post those in a bit if anyone cares.

Tim

I dont knoe if you tried to slide the blade locking things by the tip of the blade when its in the handle?