photoman12001
Gold Member
- Joined
- May 23, 2008
- Messages
- 2,673
So I just had my first experience with Spyderco's warranty service. Overall it was a good experience. I have dealt with Benchmade and ZT a lot more and will give them an edge for being much easier to get on the phone if nothing else. Still, I have no serious complaints. I've copied the details below that I posted in another thread in case anyone is interested but that's not really the point of this thread. The Burch Chubby is the point of this thread.
This is a knife that has been discontinued, as so many good ones are. I received it directly from Spyderco as a warranty replacement for my discontinued PPT that they could not fix. It has been in my possession for about two hours. I own more than my fair share of knifes, about 200. Benchmade, Spyderco, and Chris Reeve make up the majority of my collection with a few miscellaneous brands sprinkled in. I say this because I've had the pleasure of handling a lot of knives of various quality and design. It's pretty rare that I come across one that really impresses me. The Burch Chubby impresses me.
I've been aware of this knife for a little while. I first saw it on Massdrop several weeks ago and thought it looked interesting but not enough to pull the trigger. It just seemed like I would either love it or hate and I wasn't willing to roll the dice. If you read the details below you'll find out why I ended up acquiring this one. Honestly, I was planning to sell it immediately and buy something else but that idea was dead within 60 seconds of holding it.
I know I'm gushing over this knife and I haven't even used it. Honestly, I probably never will. I've got so many users now that I can't decide what to carry each day. Maybe if I actually used the Chubby I would find a bunch of faults and hate it, but it's not too often that a knife comes along that really "wows" me. The Chubby's combination of unique design, good ergonomics, and excellent build quality did. I'm glad to have added it to my collection. If it hadn't been for a unique set of circumstances I probably would never have owned one. Luckily I have a another PPT too.
I didn't send the PPT's lanyard back with the knife; I was expecting to get it back. I'm not much of one for lanyards but figured it was fitting to put the PPT's on the Chubby.
Warranty Experience Details:
This is a knife that has been discontinued, as so many good ones are. I received it directly from Spyderco as a warranty replacement for my discontinued PPT that they could not fix. It has been in my possession for about two hours. I own more than my fair share of knifes, about 200. Benchmade, Spyderco, and Chris Reeve make up the majority of my collection with a few miscellaneous brands sprinkled in. I say this because I've had the pleasure of handling a lot of knives of various quality and design. It's pretty rare that I come across one that really impresses me. The Burch Chubby impresses me.
I've been aware of this knife for a little while. I first saw it on Massdrop several weeks ago and thought it looked interesting but not enough to pull the trigger. It just seemed like I would either love it or hate and I wasn't willing to roll the dice. If you read the details below you'll find out why I ended up acquiring this one. Honestly, I was planning to sell it immediately and buy something else but that idea was dead within 60 seconds of holding it.
- This is a beautifully constructed knife with great ergonomics. The ZT 0900 is one of my favorite ECD knives. It's a great size for me and fits my hand very well. While they are not exactly the same size, the Chubby feels about the same in my hand.
- I like the carbon fiber inlays. Little details like this appeal to me. These are well done and subtle but add a nice visual flare.
- The lockup is very satisfying. The lock bar creates a great "thwack" sound when it engages. The only other knife I have to which it compares is my plain Chris Reeve Sebenza 25.
- The fit/finish are really nice. This is pretty standard for Taichung knives but the Titanium handles on this are really well done.
- I like the blade shape. I haven't used it yet so I don't know how well it actually works but it's certainly different from anything else in my collection.
I know I'm gushing over this knife and I haven't even used it. Honestly, I probably never will. I've got so many users now that I can't decide what to carry each day. Maybe if I actually used the Chubby I would find a bunch of faults and hate it, but it's not too often that a knife comes along that really "wows" me. The Chubby's combination of unique design, good ergonomics, and excellent build quality did. I'm glad to have added it to my collection. If it hadn't been for a unique set of circumstances I probably would never have owned one. Luckily I have a another PPT too.
I didn't send the PPT's lanyard back with the knife; I was expecting to get it back. I'm not much of one for lanyards but figured it was fitting to put the PPT's on the Chubby.
Warranty Experience Details:
- It's more difficult to get ahold of them than Benchmade, ZT, or Chris Reeve.
- Their turn-around time was exactly equal to Benchmade's (who sets the gold standard for knife customer service in my book). I sent knives to Benchmade, Spyderco, Chris Reeve, ZT and Emerson on the same day. The Benchmades and Spydercos came back on the same day, a little shy of two weeks.
- One of the knives I sent in was an original Manix that I bought on the Exchange here. It had a very gritty action. I disassembled it to see if a cleaning/greasing would help. It did not so I sent the knife to them explaining the issue. They returned it with a much smoother action. It would have been obvious that I disassembled it due to the Slide Glide grease I applied which would be nothing like a factory lube.
- Another knife I sent in was an original PPT with lockup issues. The issues was documented within the pass-around thread when this knife was released. The lockbar simply did not travel over far enough to properly engage the blade tang. Spyderco obviously changed the design because my newer sprint run PPT has a larger lockbar cut out and excellent lockup. Spyderco stated they could not fix it and offered a credit of $240 (the knife's MSRP when new). Now this sounded like a good deal until I started crunching numbers. That credit applies to Spyderco's MSRPs. Have you seen these insane numbers? No one is paying those prices. The street prices are much lower. I did not feel that any of the knives within a $240 MSRP window really matched the PPT. I had the option of paying the extra amount over $240 for any other knife but the way the numbers worked out I'd be paying $50 or more (maybe much more) than the actual retail price for these knives considering the original $150 of the PPT. I stewed over that for a few days trying to decide what to do. Anyway, it ended up working out because I found they had a few of the discontinued Burch Chubby knives marked down from MRSP $360 to $216 so I went with one of those. If not for that exceptional circumstance I would not have felt great about that experience. Essentially the high MSRPs can screw you in that circumstance. By the way, Spyderco kept the PPT too. Now contrast that with a similar experience I had with Benchmade last year. My 110 dive knife was rusting under the rubber handle. It was still functional but I was sending 13 other knives to them for various things and threw it in the box. They cleaned it up as best they could but said they couldn't really do much with it. They returned the still functional knife to me AND gave me a $100 credit (price of the knife when I bought it). I don't know if that was normal but it blew me away.
- Conslusion: Overall the Spyderco customer service experience left me pretty luke warm. Not terrible, not great and in my experience Benchmade has them beat in that arena.
