Last Wednesday (3/15/23), I bought a supposably "lightly used" left handed Kirby Lambert Flare off of
Jrocklage
from his ebay page rock_3151. I'm posting here as well because he also had a for sale ad posted here and I want to warn people not to do business with this guy. Here's the link to his ad: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/sold-wts-left-handed-kirby-lambert-flare.1919455/#post-21815797
So here's my experience: The knife was posted on both sites, but he took it off the bay since it had been a week with no hits. I had been considering buying it, so when the ad got removed, I contacted him to ask about selling the knife and he responded quickly about it still being for sale and that he would take the $1000 he was asking for and I offered to him. The knife seemed kind of pricey, but I was willing to buy it due to its rarity and me being under the impression that it was "lightly used" with no issues. He wanted to sell it over blade forums, which I understand since he wanted to save money, but I didn't trust it since he has no feedback here and that's a lot of money. Plus I've never dropped this much on a knife before. I wanted to buy it off eBay for my protection and to have more paying options through PayPal. Before I bought it, this is what I asked him verbatim:
Me: "How is the action and centering? Any issues with it? All the hardware ok?"
Him: "It’s perfect, no issues with the hardware."
I made sure to check the description on both sites to see what he stated about the knife. On the bay, this is what his description said:
"Kirby Lambert Left Handed Pocket Knife. Lightly used, with pocket clip. Extremely rare as Kirby doesn't make left handed knives that often and hasn't made any new ones in years."
So yeah, I asked him about the quality of the knife and he said it was perfect, so I went ahead with purchasing it. He stated right off the bat that it would take him a few days to ship because he hasn't been home and he lives in a storm affected area, I guess. I was like ok, you have 2-3 days to ship it out anyways, it's all good. Fast forward 5 days later and several excuses, he finally ships out the knife. By day 3, I was wondering what was going on and he asks me if I can "sit tight" before he ships it because ebay is going to take a month to release his funds and he wanted them as soon as possible so that he could buy another knife he was trying to get. I was like, wtf? You need to ship it out first and it needs to be delivered before you can receive your funds. I don't know why he thought it was ok to have me "sit tight" while he's trying to buy a knife with money he doesn't currently have. If he wanted the funds so quickly, where was that urgency to ship it out? I don't mind waiting the given 3 days, but come on, 5 days and this kind of crap, nah, not ok. After all that, I finally get the knife after a week, which isn't too bad overall, but the post office was quicker than this guy. I honestly thought this guy was going to try to scam me and not send the knife. He still scammed me anyways since I overpaid by a few hundred dollars.
I unboxed the knife and was immediately appalled with what I was seeing. I wish I had taken pictures, but I was so annoyed, I just wanted to immediately get the knife cleaned and fixed. Now remember, I was under the impression that the knife was "lightly used" as he put it and the centering and everything was perfect. That was far from the truth. The blade was so off centered, it was rubbing the titanium liner and you couldn't even open the knife properly without pushing the blade over first. The knife was incredibly dirty, full of gunk, dirt, loctite. All the hardware and everything had basically fused together. It was extremely difficult to remove the pivot barrel. It was reassembled incorrectly at one point and was basically jammed in a bit off centered, which was causing the centering issues. I get that that is fixable, but I paid $1096 after everything, I shouldn't have to do all this for a knife I just bought, regardless of it being "lightly used". This guy butchered the knife, shelved it, and then passed on his mistakes to me. What if I couldn't have fixed that? I'm stuck with this headache and I either try to get my money back even though he wasn't accepting returns, so my next option would probably be to send it to Kirby. Luckily I know what I'm doing and knew I could fix the knife, but I shouldn't have to. This wasn't disclosed to me. It also wasn't disclosed that the liners were so full of scratches/snail trails, which is much more than lightly used. I only knew the clip had them. There were also several scratches on the blade that I didn't know about, some from blade rub. After fixing the centering issues, deep cleaning the knife, I put it back together and was getting some bad lock stick. I took the knife apart again and tuned the lock bar a couple times, cleaned up the lock faces, etc. I put it back together and it's working pretty nicely now. It still could use a little bit of work and some clean up, but I'm just exhausted with this whole ordeal.
I tried to contact the seller afterward and see if he would partially refund me $200. I thought that was fair for overpaying for lies and misrepresentation of the knife, but this guy couldn't care less about doing the right thing, being forthcoming and honest about the sale, disclosing any and all issues with the knife, or even have an apology for doing me dirty like this. As long as he gets his money, he's ok with pawning off this kind of dishonest sale. Then he has the nerve to say that he expected this from me and called me a scammer and a Karen. Are you serious dude? You sold me a knife that was falsely represented and don't expect me to have an issue with it? That's a lot of money to be getting told lies and then being told to "sit tight" before taking 5 days to ship out with no reasonable excuse. All I wanted was an honest transaction. I paid the money you wanted immediately and expected good service for the amount that I was spending. Ship on time, disclose all information, and if there's an issue, try to make things right amicably. Or don't sell. It's as easy as that. I didn't pay to be given an unusable knife right out of the box and have to fix it myself. I paid for a "lightly used" Kirby Lambert Flare and this wasn't what I was expecting. I don't care at this point about getting a partial refund. I still wanted to keep the knife despite the initial problems with it, but I wanted the overpaid money I spent on this falsely advertised sale. I know I won't get it at this point, but that's fine. As long as I can warn people to stay away from this seller. He doesn't care about what he's selling you, as long as he can get what he needs.
Jrocklage
from his ebay page rock_3151. I'm posting here as well because he also had a for sale ad posted here and I want to warn people not to do business with this guy. Here's the link to his ad: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/sold-wts-left-handed-kirby-lambert-flare.1919455/#post-21815797
So here's my experience: The knife was posted on both sites, but he took it off the bay since it had been a week with no hits. I had been considering buying it, so when the ad got removed, I contacted him to ask about selling the knife and he responded quickly about it still being for sale and that he would take the $1000 he was asking for and I offered to him. The knife seemed kind of pricey, but I was willing to buy it due to its rarity and me being under the impression that it was "lightly used" with no issues. He wanted to sell it over blade forums, which I understand since he wanted to save money, but I didn't trust it since he has no feedback here and that's a lot of money. Plus I've never dropped this much on a knife before. I wanted to buy it off eBay for my protection and to have more paying options through PayPal. Before I bought it, this is what I asked him verbatim:
Me: "How is the action and centering? Any issues with it? All the hardware ok?"
Him: "It’s perfect, no issues with the hardware."
I made sure to check the description on both sites to see what he stated about the knife. On the bay, this is what his description said:
"Kirby Lambert Left Handed Pocket Knife. Lightly used, with pocket clip. Extremely rare as Kirby doesn't make left handed knives that often and hasn't made any new ones in years."
So yeah, I asked him about the quality of the knife and he said it was perfect, so I went ahead with purchasing it. He stated right off the bat that it would take him a few days to ship because he hasn't been home and he lives in a storm affected area, I guess. I was like ok, you have 2-3 days to ship it out anyways, it's all good. Fast forward 5 days later and several excuses, he finally ships out the knife. By day 3, I was wondering what was going on and he asks me if I can "sit tight" before he ships it because ebay is going to take a month to release his funds and he wanted them as soon as possible so that he could buy another knife he was trying to get. I was like, wtf? You need to ship it out first and it needs to be delivered before you can receive your funds. I don't know why he thought it was ok to have me "sit tight" while he's trying to buy a knife with money he doesn't currently have. If he wanted the funds so quickly, where was that urgency to ship it out? I don't mind waiting the given 3 days, but come on, 5 days and this kind of crap, nah, not ok. After all that, I finally get the knife after a week, which isn't too bad overall, but the post office was quicker than this guy. I honestly thought this guy was going to try to scam me and not send the knife. He still scammed me anyways since I overpaid by a few hundred dollars.
I unboxed the knife and was immediately appalled with what I was seeing. I wish I had taken pictures, but I was so annoyed, I just wanted to immediately get the knife cleaned and fixed. Now remember, I was under the impression that the knife was "lightly used" as he put it and the centering and everything was perfect. That was far from the truth. The blade was so off centered, it was rubbing the titanium liner and you couldn't even open the knife properly without pushing the blade over first. The knife was incredibly dirty, full of gunk, dirt, loctite. All the hardware and everything had basically fused together. It was extremely difficult to remove the pivot barrel. It was reassembled incorrectly at one point and was basically jammed in a bit off centered, which was causing the centering issues. I get that that is fixable, but I paid $1096 after everything, I shouldn't have to do all this for a knife I just bought, regardless of it being "lightly used". This guy butchered the knife, shelved it, and then passed on his mistakes to me. What if I couldn't have fixed that? I'm stuck with this headache and I either try to get my money back even though he wasn't accepting returns, so my next option would probably be to send it to Kirby. Luckily I know what I'm doing and knew I could fix the knife, but I shouldn't have to. This wasn't disclosed to me. It also wasn't disclosed that the liners were so full of scratches/snail trails, which is much more than lightly used. I only knew the clip had them. There were also several scratches on the blade that I didn't know about, some from blade rub. After fixing the centering issues, deep cleaning the knife, I put it back together and was getting some bad lock stick. I took the knife apart again and tuned the lock bar a couple times, cleaned up the lock faces, etc. I put it back together and it's working pretty nicely now. It still could use a little bit of work and some clean up, but I'm just exhausted with this whole ordeal.
I tried to contact the seller afterward and see if he would partially refund me $200. I thought that was fair for overpaying for lies and misrepresentation of the knife, but this guy couldn't care less about doing the right thing, being forthcoming and honest about the sale, disclosing any and all issues with the knife, or even have an apology for doing me dirty like this. As long as he gets his money, he's ok with pawning off this kind of dishonest sale. Then he has the nerve to say that he expected this from me and called me a scammer and a Karen. Are you serious dude? You sold me a knife that was falsely represented and don't expect me to have an issue with it? That's a lot of money to be getting told lies and then being told to "sit tight" before taking 5 days to ship out with no reasonable excuse. All I wanted was an honest transaction. I paid the money you wanted immediately and expected good service for the amount that I was spending. Ship on time, disclose all information, and if there's an issue, try to make things right amicably. Or don't sell. It's as easy as that. I didn't pay to be given an unusable knife right out of the box and have to fix it myself. I paid for a "lightly used" Kirby Lambert Flare and this wasn't what I was expecting. I don't care at this point about getting a partial refund. I still wanted to keep the knife despite the initial problems with it, but I wanted the overpaid money I spent on this falsely advertised sale. I know I won't get it at this point, but that's fine. As long as I can warn people to stay away from this seller. He doesn't care about what he's selling you, as long as he can get what he needs.
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