Knife Returns

Petunia D. Feeble

Petunia D. Feeble

I sharpen things.
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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Sal Glesser said:
Taking knives apart

Every month we get back hundreds of knives that have been returned to dealers. These knives have been played with, taken apart, re-assembled and then returned to the dealer as "new" for a refund. Dealers will just put them back on the shelf to send to some other poor customers that believes he's getting a new knife. It isn't a new knife; it has been taken apart and put back together by an amateur. Most (95%) of the time a knife is taken apart by an amateur it is not put back together properly so the new customer gets screwed by the previous customer.


Now we have the dealers return the knives to us so as to prevent this from happening. We then have to QC the knives a 2nd time and generally 2nd them. This is an expensive time taker and a loss to our company which has to be put into the costs of doing business which raises the costs of the products.


We ask our customers not to do this. We don't send out internal parts because it encourages customers to take apart their knives. These are not Tinker Toys or Lego sets, they re precision pieces. Follow our procedures and we will take care of you.


We've set up distributors all over the world to try to get the product to our customers and service their needs and problems. This is also expensive and many customers will complain about the cost and try to find ways around it, and then complain when they have a problem that circumvents all of the solutions we have tried to put into place.

We have not been able to figure out a way to sort this. Every month we get numerous customers getting on the forum and complaining publicly that we are screwing our customers. They want to have everything done the way they want it because “they have a reason”. We don’t expect them to understand all that is involved, and often they refuse to because they simply want what they want, which is often unreasonable and more costly to us than the solutions we have already put into place..


We set out policies to be able to solve issues and still make good products, please our customers and maintain a business. Perhaps this can be an ongoing discussion?


Thanx,


sal
Click to expand...

Sal made that statement in the thread linked below, but it can't be a problem unique to Spyderco. I thought I'd open a discussion here as well.

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/taking-knives-apart.1555686/

The root of the issue seems to be the ability to return a knife that's been fiddled with to the dealer whom then either resells it or returns it to the manufacturer.

The answer seems pretty obvious to me. Stop allowing those returns.

Seal the knife in a plastic sleeve and if that seal is broken forbid authorized dealers from accepting the return. Then you don't have to worry about used knives accidentally being sold as new.

This policy is not only reasonable but protects all parties involved, aside from the malicious customer, from loss due to end-user caused damage.

If there's a manufacturing defect like bad centering, voids in the scale, etc. the customer should be taking it up with the manufacturer anyway. There's no reasonable expectation of a dealer ensuring the quality of a sealed product. They shouldn't have to. It's up to the manufacturer to deliver.

Some manufacturers will also remedy layman repair attempts at no charge. That's their decision to make and their price tags will likely reflect the absorption of that cost. Likewise, I see no issue with a manufacturer charging a reasonable fee for repair and parts in cases of obvious abuse.

As someone who has never needed warranty work to remedy my hamfistedness I'd greatly appreciate paying less for a knife due to lower repair costs for the manufacturer.
 
Nobody is arguing that point... the problem is people disassembling (or trying to disassemble) or otherwise "tweaking" knives, THEN returning them.

Edited to add - I took a closer look at the OP, and saw the comment about the buyer turning to the manufacturer.
 
I totally agree with @NickShabazz on the issue. If you order a knife, see a defect/problem with it, return it. IF you decide to try and fix it yourself the knife is yours and AT BEST send it for warranty to the manufacturer NOT the store you bought it from, that disassembled knife is yours, end of story. It's like buying a car, changing the engine, supercharging that engine, blowing it up, then trying to get a lawyer for lemon law and force the dealer to take back your car.
 
The problem is hardly new and definitely not unique to knife manufacturers. Back in my studio days, we had a world famous talent send back a power amp from their home studio for warranty repair. The problem? Rodents had moved into their rack, probably because it was a nice, warm place to live. Their peeing on the amp eventually shorted the thing out.

Cell phone manufacturers started putting moisture sensors in their phones years ago. Too many "warranty claims" on phones that got wet one way or another. Knife manufacturers can do something similar. Sealing the knife with a thin coat of some sort would work. Coating cracked along the frame or scale lines. Someone opened up the knife.
 
There's no silver bullet to stop nefarious practices dead cold in their tracks. Many times when I've bought online, I've asked the retailer to inspect the knife which they're picking up for me to inspect for blatantly obvious defects, F&F, even grinds and some more if a folder. Surprisingly, my written requests have been heeded to in most off the cases wit someone having initialized their name against my requested as printed on the receipt! Now why should I be potentially falling victim because there are people who abuse the system. The policy of if you break the seal and your defenses are with the manufacture is generally NOT a good or a sound policy! It is actually incumbent upon the retailer / dealer to check for potential signs of malfeasance by the returning party.
 
Unfortunately, this would never fly for a seller like Amazon, so it's likely a non-starter.

Hoping to see this thread remain civil, but I have my doubts. Prove me wrong folks!
 
T.L.E. Sharp said:
The answer seems pretty obvious to me. Stop allowing those returns.

Seal the knife in a plastic sleeve and if that seal is broken forbid authorized dealers from accepting the return. Then you don't have to worry about used knives accidentally being sold as new.
Click to expand...

The words of someone who probably has access to a well stocked brick and mortar shop to try out knives before they buy. Those of us without such shops nearby aren’t as lucky.
 
tyyreaun said:
The words of someone who probably has access to a well stocked brick and mortar shop to try out knives before they buy. Those of us without such shops nearby aren’t as lucky.
Click to expand...

Well you could try to seal it in a way that still allows you to handle it after getting the knife out of the package. Although I can only think of open back liner locks where it would work well enough. But I generally agree with you, not allowing you to open and inspect the knife at least wouldn't work these days.
 
tyyreaun said:
The words of someone who probably has access to a well stocked brick and mortar shop to try out knives before they buy. Those of us without such shops nearby aren’t as lucky.
Click to expand...

Not at all. I'm a 3+ hour drive from the nearest knife shop. I just don't buy knives from manufacturers with hit and miss quality.
 
b00n said:
Well you could try to seal it in a way that still allows you to handle it after getting the knife out of the package. Although I can only think of open back liner locks where it would work well enough. But I generally agree with you, not allowing you to open and inspect the knife at least wouldn't work these days.
Click to expand...

It would work fine. It puts pressure on the manufacturer to maintain their output quality. Those that don't will suffer in reputation and repair costs.

The idea is not to prevent returns, but to shift the burden of quality from the dealer to the manufacturer. They'll then have to either fix the issue or issue the refund themselves.
 
T.L.E. Sharp said:
It would work fine. It puts pressure on the manufacturer to maintain their output quality. Those that don't will suffer in reputation and repair costs.

The idea is not to prevent returns, but to shift the burden of quality from the dealer to the manufacturer. They'll then have to either fix the issue or issue the refund themselves.
Click to expand...

I meant putting a seal on the knife itself if it's for example a frame lock, wouldn't work too well, since you could still disassemble it (Open construction liner lock could be sealed with some sort of strip around the scales, that way you can still open it, handle it and get a feel for it). What you're asking people to do is buy something without being able to try it. Take a car for example, would you buy one without being able to sit in it and take it on a test drive? I personally am not the type of person to order a knife I won't keep, but I CAN to an extend understand people who want to order a knife, try it in person for ergos and how they like the lock, and then decide to keep or send it back.
I think it would be in a dealers best interest to look the knife over, since other industries do the same thing, THEY order a knife from the distributor, so checking it over saves them a hassle as well, a knife that's perfect won't be returned (tinkered with or unmolested) and sending out a faulty knife is coming back and they have to deal with it for an extra step.
That all being said, I get your point, I suppose in a way it's an issue with many possible solutions. The easiest to me would be a little extra addition to Dealer TOS "We will check all returned merchandise, if it returns in anything other than factory condition we will refuse the return" if that gets enforced regularly it'll trickle down I think.
 
Back when I first started buying higher end knives, it was common to order one and just hope it would be without flaws. Such as, blade centering off, blade having marks on it, handle with dings or clips marked up, black coating on blades with metal showing in spots underneath. I was picky and often sent them back to the dealer for exchange, or to the company for repair/exchange. Many thought I was being too picky. But, I mostly got taken care of.

Now, things have improved with all of the many choices we have when dropping a couple of hundred on a knife or more. Even the lower priced items are mostly flaw free. It still happens though and if I get a defective knife I just send it straight back to where I bought it from. I don't use it, try to fix it, or keep it for over a day. I also won't buy from a dealer that doesn't offer returns. Why should you when paying more now than ever for a knife.
 
I've also had knife companies tell me unless I bought a knife directly from them, they would not make a defect right. Because, they didn't know what happened to the knife after it left their factory. So, my only recourse would be to return to the dealer.
 
For the comments about a dealer being responsible to check over the knives they receive from the manufacturers, do you have any idea how much time and money that would cost them? Not to mention that most dealers are only operated by a few people. There aren’t the resources to do this when they’re receiving and sending hundreds of knives in short periods of time.

It’s much more cost effective for them to deal with the few returns that they’d get. What Sal is seeing is those few returns per dealer, from each dealer. Funny to think that those hundred or so returns are a drop in the bucket when compared to overall sales. I don’t think there’s a concrete way to stop people from doing what they do but to pass the buck down to the dealer level isn’t the answer.
 
When I order a knife from a dealer as soon as it arrives I check it out for obvious defects. Should their be a problem I'd contact the dealer for exchange but after that point anything else would be between myself and the manufacturer.If I was to disassemble a knife and screw it up the problem would be on me. That said I've never had a problem with a dealer or manufacturer. One time I got a new knife directly from the manufacturer that wasn't ground to an apex and I opted to fix the problem myself rather than return it .
 
Petunia D. Feeble Petunia D. Feeble You should ask the Mods to move this discussion back to General.
This discussion makes more sense there since we are not talking about returning knives bought/traded on the exchange.
My guess is that the Moderator who moved it saw your title, and moved it without reading the posts.
 
Returning the defective product back to the manufacturer makes sense (to a degree) as most sales are in the U.S. However, not all of us are blessed and unfortunately live in other countries (some far worse than others) and returning back to the dealer is our only recourse.
 
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