Mad Dog Refuses Warranty Repair!

[jbravo]

"Guys, I call bullsh1t on this mess." I agree completely. Parker and I have done several knife deals together (mostly MD knives), and all were perfect in every respect. So I know him, and can empathize entirely with his desire to defuse a complaint aimed at maker he supports. (I just wish he hadn't mentioned the name of that world class P-T, pseudo-scientist Cliff in my thread; it debases us all). So I know this is aimed at the message and not the messenger. I just wish the complaint were unnecessary! The knife's performance and the maker's response were, indeed, bullsh!t and made a mess.

"Guys, I call bullsh1t on this mess." Again, I must agree. Unlike many of my fellow posters, I do not have much of a "collection" of knives; rather, I own several knives to use in my daily activities. When they get dull, I can sharpen them to a degree I find satisfactory(a legacy of many years spent as a Marine grunt perfecting "hard use"). A divot-like chip is beyond the capacity of my sharpeners, and is exactly the type of repair a hand builder of knives should be able to fix. I've sent knives back to a virtual 'Who's Who' of custom knives, and Kit Carson, Bob Terzuola, Ernest Emerson, Reese Weiland, Greg Lightfoot, and even that dirtbag Dale Reif, just to name a few, managed to fix the problem and return the knives. The bullsh!t is not whether I had to send the Mongoose back, its that the maker doesn't stand up for his product.

"Guys, I call bullsh1t on this mess." And again, I agree! To a large degree, knife choices are heavily influenced by the person who made it. For years and years, a long time maker of Japanese influenced knives that had a piece of soul in them refused to warrant his knives to people who were not the original buyer. He has now relented, and stands by all his knives, and is a better guy for it. Its called doing the right thing. Kevin has shown - in my estimation - that his sense of honor, truthfulness, and respect for service to one's country is bullsh!t and that is a mess.

The point of the G,B, & U forum is to report experiences to fellow forumites so that they may make informed decisions in our shared pursuit. That is what I recounted, along with my future buying decisions. YMMV

 

[Parker]

jbravo, yes we have and I understand your frustration here, as well as your decision. I'm not interested in changing that decision.

As we've seen entirely recently here, GBU offers a chance for exposure, conversation and rectification of the problem. The problem with this is that quite frankly, not everyone in the knife world is part of BFC. Since Kevin is not going to respond at BFC, I again offer whatever assistance I can give.

I would suggest you could either take the problem to him publicly at TFC, or if you prefer, I will be happy to insert myself into the situation and have the issue corrected. Potentially, this may bring him a step closer to the same self-improvement you describe above.

And again, if send me a pic of the dink, or send me the knife - I have fixed some pretty significant issues of my own previously. Something about the rock next to the root not understanding it was supposed to either cut or move, you know

However you'd like my assistance, my offer stands, and I will make the knife right for you in whatever manner needs to be accomplished.

I'm glad this is starting to veer a little more civilized. I don't have the energy or time to work thru a 10-page thread today.

 

[Michelle]

I agree with Parker (gasp! ) insofar as there is a difference between a 1 man shop and a 3 (or more) man shop regarding turn around and response time. It is a HUGE work load to be dealing with making the new stuff, fixing broken stuff, dealing with customers, orders, getting your materials, dealing with billing, etc. I honestly don't know how the 1 man shop guys do it all.

On the other hand.... holding onto it for a long time, THEN determining down the road you're going to charge for the repair, THEN not giving a timeline of when it will be done is irksome to a lot of customers. Even if you said "I'm sorry but I'm not going to get to this for 6 months", at least your customer has a baseline idea of when they can expect it back, and they can make an informed decision of whether they can afford (timewise) to be without the knife for that long, or if they would rather have it sent back to pursue another option. Everyone understands people are busy, but no customer likes to feel like they just don't matter.

Either way, that is awful nice of Parker to offer to help out.

m1

 

[C. STORR]

buy busse! or swamprat! i just sent in a camp tramp that had been used quite a bit. the tip looked like it had been chipped then reprofiled and the blade had too many scratches to count. i knew it was in this condition when i bought it, but really wanted a tan handled ct.

so i send it in after emailing first. it took about three months, i had indicated time was not a factor when it was sent. i got a bead blast finish, tip reprofiling, resharpening, and penetrator tip added..........at no cost no questions asked!!!!

Cool! I'd like to see a pic of the finished product!!!

 

[silenthunterstudios]

Scott Gossman, Ivan Campos and Larry Nowicki stand behind their work. I can vouch for that. I hope that the other custom knives I buy down the road come with such good customer service as I've received from them.

 

[Keith Montgomery]

Parker is a standup guy, and someone that I respect very much. What he has offered to do here is what Kevin should have done. Anyway, good on ya Parker.

 

[Parker]

Keith, we all get a little sideways some days, I'm just looking out for all parties involved is all (and when did I become the voice of reason? I think it's Michelle's fault!)

Anyway, thanks for the nod and let's just get this done and make everyone a little happier today.

 

[Cobalt]

Guys, I call bullsh1t on this mess.

Lemme see if I get this right - you picked up a knife second hand, took a chunk out of the edge and sent it to the maker to see about re-profiling/ re-creating an edge without a chunk of steel missing. You removed a chunk of metal approximately what, about a quarter of an inch? eighth of an inch? in diameter from the edge and sent it to him, based on a conversation or email you had with him.

You wanted him to drop what he's doing and resharpen the knife for you. Fine. He told you he'd get to it when he could. I've no idea what experience you have with guys who build one at a time. I've a bit. A month is usually a couple months, and so on. See, unlike Busse, the single-operator shop has one guy doing all the work, not a crew. No dis against Busse or Strider or any of the production crews out there at all, but if you send a knife into a sole operator, you're on his or her time clock, not yours.

I was using it to cut down a piece of pine from a desk and hit a brad I didn't see in it, and it put a distinct chip in the edge. Not gigantic, but about the size of lower case letter "c" in 9 point type. That really surprised and upset me, because I've read all the "Kevin hit the anvil in his shop with a MD knife and a piece of the anvil flew off" type of claims made on his forums. So I sent it to him (Express mail, received the next day)with a short note of explanation, plus a request to redo the edge to eliminate the chip. 3 weeks go by, no word. I email, no reply. Finally, I call him and ask about the knife. "Soon" is the jist of the reply. Another two weeks go by, I call again. It takes a while, but I finally get through, and he basically says he doesn't think the damage is covered and want payment for the fix "when" he gets around to it! This goes back and forth, and finally I just ask for it back as is. Which is what he did. I will never buy another Mad Dog knife, both because the performance claims are bull, and because he didn't stand up for them when shown to be bull. Caveat Emptor!

I'll go on record that Cliff can break an anvil and so could I if I wanted to. It makes neither of us a good judge of a knife to do so. His decision to break a TUSK, demand a new one and set about destroying the replacement is pretty well known, and I figured that given the flap about Lynn Thompson and the Strider rip-off, it was only a matter of time before an Anti-Mad-Dog thread was created. So it's been said, I've addressed it and now we can get to the crux of the matter.

By his own admission, jbravo acquired the knife on the secondary market. I doubt it's foolish for any maker to continue on the activity which pays their rent, buys their breakfast, etc, when they could instead be doing secondhand market repairs which contribute nothing to their bottom line. IN this case, the maker has a backlog of four or five years, so if he's not jumping to the sharpening job, so be it. If this is a simple resharpening job, as held out, then I doubt pretty frankly it's one of those "catastrophic" event failures. ANY knife will dink of you chop a nail with it, particularly if you torque the edge when you hit the nail. Whatever - I've beaten on my knives, dinked them, and fixed them. If I have to send them back, I send them back and expect they'll come back, well, "soon."

I was using it to cut down a piece of pine from a desk and hit a brad I didn't see in it, and it put a distinct chip in the edge. Not gigantic, but about the size of lower case letter "c" in 9 point type. That really surprised and upset me, because I've read all the "Kevin hit the anvil in his shop with a MD knife and a piece of the anvil flew off" type of claims made on his forums. So I sent it to him (Express mail, received the next day)with a short note of explanation, plus a request to redo the edge to eliminate the chip. 3 weeks go by, no word. I email, no reply. Finally, I call him and ask about the knife. "Soon" is the jist of the reply. Another two weeks go by, I call again. It takes a while, but I finally get through, and he basically says he doesn't think the damage is covered and want payment for the fix "when" he gets around to it! !

I think MD should have fixed it no questions, especially considering the high premium he gets for his knives.

 

[jbravo]

Thanks to the several people who offered to fix the Mongoose for me. Instead, due to the karma, I traded it to a buddy (with full disclosure first) for a nice smallish black ti coated tanto. Both parties OK with it, so consider this one done.

 

[wolfmann601]

I have never had a maker refuse to touch up/repair one of his knives whether bought directly from him or the secondary market.

I was under the impression MD knives were indestructable. If that's the case this one is clearly defective, maybe bad heat treat or something and should have been replaced.

Ok, not replaced just touched up for free, that's what Makers who believe in good customer service does.

Or is that what good makers who believe in customer service does. You put the "good" where it belongs, either way it should have been repaired at no charge, period.......

 

[Parker]

jbravo, I'm glad you've at least got some sort of resolution on this, though I'm not sure anyone's 100% happy about any of it. Still, a solution, even a caveat'd solution, is better than an open problem with nothing to show for it.

Wolfy, I've yet to find anyone claim the (Mad Dog) knives are indestructible. In fact, I've publicly commented on my own ability to do stupid stuff like dink the edge on a rock while removing an offending tree limb on a Sunday afternoon run.

Hitting a nail or a rock or a stove or whatever and chipping an edge is entirely possible with any edge, but certainly with any knife made for cutting, as opposed to a sharp prybar. It's a matter of user-driven error.

At no point did I see that Mad Dog Knives/ Kevin McClung refused to repair or sharp up the knife, it's that he as a sole owner/ operator either did not budget the time in immediately to perform the operations required in a manner appropriate to the situation, and said situation deteriorated. Since we've only got one side of the story here, as well as the opinions of others not privy to the situation as it developed (mine included) then I guess we all make our determinations by ourselves.

That said, I have taken the liberty of looking at a few other makers and manufacturers out there and the gist of what i'm running into is almost any knives made out there short of Busses are guaranteed against defects in workmanship or materials. User-induced problems are another matter and can in some cases be remedied, but if said remedies are to be had, they'll cost a little. If the knife is procured on the secondary market, or in other words, if I did not buy it from the maker or one of his dealers, I'm not his customer, and I'd need to live by his rules on the matter. Obviously there are going to be differing opinions out here, but in the end, the matter is sort of resolved, and I guess that's what matters.

Have a good night folks, I'm off to the land of Nyquil and fever-dreams.

 

[LaBella]

good show, Parker!