POOR customer service

[Ramojung]

I am not pleased with this company.
They failed to ship my knife as promised (90 days).
I have asked for a refund twice and have not gotten one.
Now, they are not replying to my phone calls or emails.

 

[Hard Knocks]

Sorry to hear it Ramojung. We should probably throw an @SURVIVE! Ellie in here.

Hope it gets sorted.

 

[Insipid Moniker]

I hope this is resolved quickly. Unfortunately, your experience with them is far from unique, fortunately they do seem to respond more quickly once a thread has been started. Good luck.

 

[Ramojung]

Thank you, My Brother.
I do salute their knives!

 

[Ramojung]

And Jordyn seems nice.

 

[chiral.grolim]

R Ramojung they just sent out a production update that mentioned a family emergency and that staff may be out of the shop more often than usual for a bit
Doesn't help you any, and they aren't the fastest at getting refunds processed as it is, but I thought it might be good for you to have that piece of info.
Here's hoping you get a reply and your refund very soon
I'm also waiting for a "90 day" order that is much later than that, hoping I'll see it this month, along with a few other knives that weren't on that sort of time estimate. Perhaps one day S!K estimates will be remotely accurate again ah well.

 

[Ramojung]

No. Sorry, but that does not help me. We all have family emergencies. I am really beginning to believe this is a RIP OFF company.
I've bought a lot of custom and semicustom knives. This company is the worst I have ever dealt with.
They have had use of my money for months, and they still have it and will not answer my emails of phone calls. I smell a big rat!

 

[chiral.grolim]

Here, this may be what the "family emergency" referred to - what you "smell" may be smoke or the charcoal left-over Don't worry, this was not their knife-shop, but it certainly has an impact on their lives...

"As many of you know, we had been looking forward to moving to a permanent location that we actually owned. A while back, we made a down payment on this building. It was meant to be a place for SURVIVE! to grow while also providing us with a home and eventually extra rental income. The plan was to work on it in small pieces over time but we were never able to really get started because of the ongoing production issues. So we kept dreaming about layouts and waiting until we could start diving into this project.
Swipe to see what it looked like last week.
Fortunately, no one was in the building at the time. We did lose some belongings that were being stored there, but everyone is ok, including the knives.

We have been getting pulled out of the workshop a lot this past week. Things are starting to settle in though, and you should be seeing some shipping notifications later this week.
They have not determined a cause yet but there are several investigators looking into it. I believe it will be several weeks before they have any answers for us.
We have no idea what the next step will be, we are still processing all of this. When something so beautiful exists for over 100 years you don't realize how quickly it could disappear."

Here is a quick news article: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/aug/29/fire-rips-through-historic-kellogg-hotel/#/0

and the video:

 

[ncrockclimb]

BS! These customer service issues (and there are a lot of them) have been going on long before the fire in Guy's investment property. While I am sorry that this fire happened, it is in no way a legitimate excuse for the terrible customer service that S!K has been providing to its customers for years. For you to hold this up as the reason for the OPs issues is disingenuous and reeks of "fanboy."

 

[chiral.grolim]

BS! These customer service issues (and there are a lot of them) have been going on long before the fire in Guy's investment property. While I am sorry that this fire happened, it is in no way a legitimate excuse for the terrible customer service that S!K has been providing to its customers for years. For you to hold this up as the reason for the OPs issues is disingenuous and reeks of "fanboy."

Note the reference ncrockclimb , I replied earlier to the OP (post #6) that he might have trouble getting a response just now because they mentioned a "family emergency" in their "First Friday" Update, and I followed up with this information as it seemed relevant to that.

You think providing that kind of follow-up "reeks of fanboy"?? Wow, if you say so...

If the company had been located in Houston, and I provided a video and news article of their property being destroyed as a possible reason why they weren't returning calls at this time, would that also be "fanboy"?

Information is information. S!K hasn't been good about getting back to people quickly in the past, but they explicitly stated that they would not be around much this past week, and here is the information related thereunto. Do you think that a group of 4 people isn't going to be further slowed by an event like this?
The OP thinks he "smell a big rat", so it seems like he might appreciate more information on the current goings-on of the company. I could post up images of the pallets full of knife blanks to give him an idea of how many knives this company is making and distributing if that would help him recognize the position they are in with regard to the number of orders and getting to them all - of how many 4.7s they shipped out, how many 2.7s, how many 7/7s they are working through and 4.1s, etc. etc. to give evidence that the company continues to make and ship orders day in and day out, but perhaps evidence of the company doing business does not make them any less of a "big rat"?

S!K is behind on orders, and they are slow on refunds recently, and they just experienced a major fire that is taking them away from work even more than usual. *shrug* None of that makes them a "rat", it just makes them a difficult company to do business with.

I hope the OP gets his refund soon so that he can move on

I am not sure what it is you are hoping for...?

 

[Oyster]

I understand that some people are (very) discouraged and even upset.
Still, I was just about to chime in and explain how I read Chiral's post, but it seems he got in ahead of me and did so himself.
There are a lot of "fans" of the products that - while trying to remain hopeful - are still less than enamored with the company's business practices.
For my part, I have to admit that it makes me a little uneasy when a financially struggling company loses property to a fire (as unfair as that may be esp. as I have little/no insight into the particular circumstances)...

 

[chiral.grolim]

I understand that some people are (very) discouraged and even upset.
Still, I was just about to chime in and explain how I read Chiral's post, but it seems he got in ahead of me and did so himself.
There are a lot of "fans" of the products that - while trying to remain hopeful - are still less than enamored with the company's business practices.
For my part, I have to admit that it makes me a little uneasy when a financially struggling company loses property to a fire (as unfair as that may be esp. as I have little/no insight into the particular circumstances)...

I've been a fan of their products since I received my first GSO-10 A lot of thought goes into the designs and materials, and the prices have been exceedingly competitive for what they offer.
The fact that they repeatedly miss the deadlines they themselves set upsets me, but in the end I still would rather have that knife than a lot of other options, hence my sticking around.

I wouldn't get too uneasy about them losing the hotel unless they didn't have insurance on it and have to pay for all the cleanup or the damage to some of the surrounding structures. From a property-value perspective, the building wasn't worth all that much, according to the news article. Hopefully Guy finds out what caused the fire and is able to recover some of the losses.

In the meantime, here's hoping that Jordyn or Ellie is able to sift through other messages or maybe checks on here and notices the OPs complaint and can connect him with his refund asap

 

[Oyster]

Deleted

 

[Oyster]

Agreed. Hope the OP's situation is sorted out quickly.

 

[grogimus]

I hope everyone who isn't happy cancels all of their orders. No situations solved. No lives matter. R Ramojung what was your order?

 

[RichardBay]

I wouldn't walk across the street for a free survive knife. Every time I look at it it would make me think of terrible integrity. Lies lies and more lies. I have read so many of these threads on BF.

 

[Lapedog]

Seems like every single time money needs to be returned it is time for a family Emergency. I've heard of one guy using the excuse his grandmother died like 12 different times.

That's never mind the fact the guy's grandma musta been 150 judging by the age of the scam artist.

 

[Uncle Timbo]

I have no dogs in this hunt, but to me, the way I see it, you should be passionate enough about what you want that nothing else matters. Nothing.
If you liked Remington rifles and they were hard to come by, wouldn't you get in line to get one? Regardless?
My beloved Ratweiler FINALLY came offered in Infi, I signed up blindly, and never, ever asked how long it will take. It is what it is. I am passionate enough to want it no matter what.

 

[ncrockclimb]

Note the reference ncrockclimb , I replied earlier to the OP (post #6) that he might have trouble getting a response just now because they mentioned a "family emergency" in their "First Friday" Update, and I followed up with this information as it seemed relevant to that.

You think providing that kind of follow-up "reeks of fanboy"?? Wow, if you say so...

If the company had been located in Houston, and I provided a video and news article of their property being destroyed as a possible reason why they weren't returning calls at this time, would that also be "fanboy"?

Information is information. S!K hasn't been good about getting back to people quickly in the past, but they explicitly stated that they would not be around much this past week, and here is the information related thereunto. Do you think that a group of 4 people isn't going to be further slowed by an event like this?
The OP thinks he "smell a big rat", so it seems like he might appreciate more information on the current goings-on of the company. I could post up images of the pallets full of knife blanks to give him an idea of how many knives this company is making and distributing if that would help him recognize the position they are in with regard to the number of orders and getting to them all - of how many 4.7s they shipped out, how many 2.7s, how many 7/7s they are working through and 4.1s, etc. etc. to give evidence that the company continues to make and ship orders day in and day out, but perhaps evidence of the company doing business does not make them any less of a "big rat"?

S!K is behind on orders, and they are slow on refunds recently, and they just experienced a major fire that is taking them away from work even more than usual. *shrug* None of that makes them a "rat", it just makes them a difficult company to do business with.

I hope the OP gets his refund soon so that he can move on

I am not sure what it is you are hoping for...?

"recently"?!?! You must be kidding. S!Ks terrible customer service and blatant misrepresentation (AKA lies) about order fulfillment times have been going on for YEARS. You, and the other fanboys, keep on trying to gloss over this.

You like S!K. Fine. But please stop trying to hide the fact that Guy and Ellie consistently lie to their customers and fail to provide refunds in a timely manner.

 

[chiral.grolim]

"recently"?!?! You must be kidding. S!Ks terrible customer service and blatant misrepresentation (AKA lies) about order fulfillment times have been going on for YEARS. You, and the other fanboys, keep on trying to gloss over this.

You like S!K. Fine. But please stop trying to hide the fact that Guy and Ellie consistently lie to their customers and fail to provide refunds in a timely manner.

The very first model in which they fell behind in production was the GSO-4.7 and that model didn't come out until part-way through 2016. The first of the new-gen models, the GSO-5.1, finished production and began shipping in January 2016, and the 4.7 was some months behind that (as is to be expected) - March 2016 is when they began shipping out and GSO-5.1s were available for regular ordering until stock was depleted. That was when the trouble started, that model and then the 2.7 which was in production at the same time. They finally have ALL of the 4.7s out the door and have almost eliminated every 2.7 as well. We have no idea how many of each they sold, we can only establish from the photos that it was at least many hundreds of 2.7s and over 1000 of the 4.7s, each and every one hand-finished, blah, blah, blah - it took a LONG time and it is now late 2017 and they have been working through an even LARGER order of 4.1s. So by my estimate, it has been not even 18 months that S!K has been struggling with deadlines. It may seem like longer, but I got my first S!K knife, that GSO-10, back in late 2012 and others already had EDC-4s (I missed out on those), some 5 years ago.

So there is your reality check - it has not been "years" that they have been struggling or "misrepresenting" order fulfillment times, so please stop asserting it. If you are going to accuse others of lying, you should have your facts straight to begin with. or do you consider 1 year and maybe 6 months to really be 2-3 years?

As to refunds, that again is something that I don't have a handle on with regard to numbers. If there are 4 people running S!K and only 2 handle customer service from time to time, and those two people process THOUSANDS OF ORDERS and many thousands more requests/e-mails/messages/etc. then how long should it reasonably take them to get to a single individual's refund request?
I have no idea, but we have heard about - what? 4? 5? requests for refunds taking longer than might be hoped, this time weeks for them to process the request? That sucks and really speaks to S!K needing to stop taking orders or hire more staff to process those requests.

I strongly hope that the OP's request is fulfilled swiftly, that Ellie or Jordyn sees this thread and is able to contact the OP directly (hopefully without much detective work) and get right on it, as I typed before. The bad time-lines and missed deadlines is not something that "we" "gloss over", unless by "gloss" you mean that "we" remain customers awaiting fulfillment of our own orders, it gets brought up again and again.
So what? This is the S!K sub-forum, fans of the knives don't come here to rag on the company, or is the lack of constant negativity what you mean by "gloss" and also what you mean by "fanboy"? People who don't like S!K knives shouldn't waste their time in the S!K subforum, don't you think? If you are just here to flame S!K, that's what GB&U and W&C is for, not so? If it is really "fine" that I like S!K, why the "fanboy" epithet? You mean it as an insult, as if to say, "No one can like S!K and not be an irrational fanboy!" It doesn't sound like you think it "fine" if anyone likes S!K or even tolerates them and is happy to order and content to wait - that is some serious baggage.

Again, the point of my reply to the OP was to point out why he might not get a quick response right now (that fire) although hopefully the staff are now back in the shop for definitively and focused on our orders - both those awaiting refunds as well as those awaiting fulfillment.