Time from order to delivery?

Thank you Riz and Chiral!!! I have been wanting to say something but I always come across as an asshole.
The wait will be worth it people. I would wait 2 years to get one of these knives if I had to because they're frickin awesome.
 
Hey guys! Chill! I never said I don't trust Guy and company. What I am saying is I don't feel good that emails are either not answered or took an eternity to be answered. I bought into S!K not only because of their quality but mainly because Guy stand behind his products. My only concern is that should there be any issues (lemons do happen right?), how can I actually get my knife serviced when S!K remains incommunicado? I did not say it is a Ponzi scheme. Read what I said for goodness sake. I said that my friend said it and I told him to be patient and have faith. I believe the misunderstanding occurred on my closing sentence when I did not word it properly by saying I am starting to lose faith. I meant to say lose faith in getting customer support from S!K, not that I am suspecting they will run with my money.
 
Its all good bro. Its not any one person, its the sum of all of the comiserating that is getting old.

I have three kids and work full time and usually log ten plus hours OT (almost always from 3-6am) a week. My wife also works shifts and when I am off I am usually on Daddy Duty. I get very little time to be outdoors, doing what I love... hunting, fishing, scouting, camping and practicing my bushcraft skills. One main reason I said what I said is that I log on here to live vicariously through everyone's collective adventures and it happens to be that these guys also choose to carry my favorite knives as their go to cutlery and enjoy doing the same stuff I do. So this weekend is the perfect example of why I got pissed. 32 inches of snow have locked down Maryland, DC and VA and I have been stuck in my house with 3 kids, while my wife has been stuck at her work, delivering babies, and when I log on to read about everyones adventures and new 5.1s, multiple threads are getting filled with a bunch of bitching about wait times and unanswered emails.

You guys are fully entitled to feel the way you do and there isnt any need to back-track or clairfy your feelings. I just wish everyone would ease up. For whatever reason, Guy and Ellie have been off the forum, off facebook and off instagram for the last few days, maybe they went on an adventure of their own and unplugged for a while to take a break. Maybe they had a family emergency, maybe they are pulling an all hands on deck to build blades (hopefully mine). Maybe not. Who knows.

Rant over...

For now...
 
When I learned that it would be a considerable wait for my Survive knife I used it as an excuse to buy another knife.
 
Riz, I'm with you man. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who has read this:

We do not have guaranteed delivery dates for preordered knives

I guess I will take a minute to share my most recent experience with the company. Maybe it will ease a few tensions.

So a couple weeks back I was trying to review what I had on order out there in the knife world. My Survive orders are of course paid up front, but others out there for bussekin are not, and I like to TRY to keep on top of it so that I don't get dinged hard all at once and have to scramble for funds. Well, while reviewing, I cannot find my preorder for the 2.7. Now I've got it in my mind that it's on order just before the starter went off. I scour my paypal accounts, check registers, what the hell, I know I ordered one and didn't just dream it. But I'm telling you for whatever reason (probably increasing panic that set in causing me to get increasingly irrational :) ) I can't find evidence of it. Now I'm wanting a 2.7 bad, so I was starting to freak out pretty bad about now.

So I logged into my Survive account and sent a message to Ellie: Dear Ellie, I'm losing my mind and my 2.7. If you see either, would you please let me know!

I didn't hear anything for about a work week maybe. Then, I logged in and had a message from Ellie. She had located my order for a 2.7 and linked it with my Survive account (I didn't create the account when ordering my 3.5 or 2.7, a mistake on my part) and now I can follow the progress as it's built.

How many of these types of emails does the company get, and the one-woman Customer Relations Committee (Ellie) gets to answer/sort them all out. If Survive had chosen to be shady, they could have given me the Buddy, you're SOL response. Instead, I got a very courteous reply that solved my problem. Ellie is tops in my book!

That's just my experience, your mileage may vary.
 
I bought a knife from a custom maker last year. It took over 7 months to get it. And emails sometimes took a week or 2 to be answered. And it was 4 times the price of a SURVIVE knife.

But it was more than worth it... I ended up getting 2 customs that way.

Keep up the good work up there in Idaho!
 
I think its all about perspective, and a lot of times "behind the scenes" information. A lot of readily available "mid-tech" brands are actually contract produced designs. So there are other larger companies that are doing the heavy lifting for the smaller company/designer... not a bad idea, but one that has different drawbacks. You lose a lot of control over the process and at times pass the extra costs onto the consumer. There are other companies with other business models that I like less, but again I put up with because I want the product and the process is spelled out. I have mentioned in older posts about a custom firesteel that took me 6 months to get. NO one is perfect, I think the only thing survive has done that probably wasn't in their best interest is what pjandyho brought up in levying a date against themselves for the new 5.1's right around xmas. In fairness they never promised them, just said they hoped to have them out by date X which I think frothed us all up who are excited for our first taste of new survive product.

I have purchased 5 knives directly from survive, and they have all been delivered. I also have 2 on pre-order and while I will be ecstatic when they show up I also understand why I am having to wait. As others have said, I think the general cold response to complaints comes from what seems like every so often the same topic gets brought up, that could easily be answered through some (albeit annoying and boring) forum research. sigh...

I think it might be a really good Idea to start and hopefully STICKY a general info thread that addresses a lot of these concerns. It would allow new customers to quickly learn what they are getting into (and hopefully help them decide if its for them) It would also hopefully de-cluster the normal threads that bring joy to alot of the regulars as well as any new people that want to get involve.

To be clear, I am not meaning to crap on anyone who feels upset, I just think there might be a better way to get this information to them so they can decide what they want to do...
 
Excellent post my friend. I think a 'general info' sticky or an 'attention, what to do if...' sticky is a stellar idea. At some point this forum is probably going to need a moderator as well.
 
Survive! Knives aren't easy to find, especially at a decent price. Though you will have to wait, pre-ordering makes it much easier
You get the knife exactly as you ordered it at a good price and you don't have to bid against anyone.

You just have to be patient, this is filet mignon , not a big mac.
 
JimmyR said:
Survive! Knives aren't easy to find, especially at a decent price. Though you will have to wait, pre-ordering makes it much easier
You get the knife exactly as you ordered it at a good price and you don't have to bid against anyone.

You just have to be patient, this is filet mignon , not a big mac.
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All good points!
 
jeffbird said:
If a Bushcraft is ordered now, what is the realistic time until actual delivery?
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I've read the responses and this has gone in an unintended direction without ever really answering the question.

The website says:

"We do not have guaranteed delivery dates for preordered knives. Once the knives start production it typically takes 3-6 months for all of the materials to be produced."

http://surviveknives.com/production-schedule/

A year is not that big of a deal for an order. Gene Ingram is a year to a year and a half, Dozier longer, and Phil Wilson is not even taking orders now.

As a small business owner I can say, good communication with clients and customers is critical as is managing expectations from the beginning, especially when requiring payment in full up front, which is not the usual practice.

If the real estimated time is a year or two, then say that up front and let folks know that going in, which might also cut down on the number of customer inquiries and grumbling.

The product appears to be very good and a nice value.

Luckily I found a new one in the exchange for a modest markup, and went ahead and put in an order too for the Bushcraft, which looks very nice.

I wish them all the best and hope they succeed.
 
Awesome! What did you pick up from the exchange? And your point is absolutely spot on.
 
pjandyho said:
Hey guys! Chill! I never said I don't trust Guy and company. What I am saying is I don't feel good that emails are either not answered or took an eternity to be answered. I bought into S!K not only because of their quality but mainly because Guy stand behind his products. My only concern is that should there be any issues (lemons do happen right?), how can I actually get my knife serviced when S!K remains incommunicado? .
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I understand your concern about timely responses, however I think you would be surprised at S!K's response to a damaged knife. I've been to their shop in Gettysburg several times and I've seen Guy stop production to work on damaged blades. They weren't defective just beat and chipped. Guy re-edged the knives and sent them back out. Regarding bad product, about 18 months ago I had 2 knives with bad screws that were brittle and broke. Ellie sent me a full set of replacement fasteners for both knives the day I called her about them. They were very responsive and handled it well. S!K also published the issue on their web site and encouraged people to contact them for replacement fasteners.

You need to understand that these are not mass produced knives using cheap steel and parts to keep costs down. Also there are only 5 or 6 pieces to their knives, the knife, 2 scales and 2 to 3 screws and fasteners. They have fixed the fastener issues, the scales are rock solid and unless they get a bad batch of steel the 3v and 20cv blades are pretty tough to break. So you the chance of getting a "bad" or "lemon" is very small. But even so I am certain that S!K will respond a ton faster to I have a broken "X" than where's my knife, especially since they publish their production schedule.
 
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I'm just going to be honest here, I'm not ready to read all of these as fully as I should (and ultimately will). But I can see the general idea...

Yes, I am behind on emails. We receive a lot of emails each day and if I miss a day they pile up. For example: this past weekend we were in Montana to visit with Guy's family that is visiting there for a vacation. We had no cell service and no internet. In that time we received around 100 emails, 17 voicemails, and 20 messages through customer accounts on our website. There were a ton of new posts here and I haven't checked Facebook yet.

Hiring someone... A part time person will spend a lot of their time asking me how to answer questions because they won't know the answer. A full time person will be bored half the time (ie unhappy), and expensive. The next hire will be a customer service person, but we haven't found the right person and it doesn't make sense to go looking for them right now.

So we do what we can. We have an auto reply letting folks know there will be some delay in getting back to them. It also encourages people to check our Production Schedule and FAQ. When I am working on the inbox, I try to skim over subjects in search of things that need immediate attention: refunds, address changes, etc. If the message was sent through the contact form on our website I don't get a subject line, so those are harder to skim.

I'm not sure what else to say beyond what has been said already about us being a small team and the information about preordering taking time. So I will leave it at that for now.
 
SURVIVE! Ellie said:
I'm just going to be honest here, I'm not ready to read all of these as fully as I should (and ultimately will). But I can see the general idea...

Yes, I am behind on emails. We receive a lot of emails each day and if I miss a day they pile up. For example: this past weekend we were in Montana to visit with Guy's family that is visiting there for a vacation. We had no cell service and no internet. In that time we received around 100 emails, 17 voicemails, and 20 messages through customer accounts on our website. There were a ton of new posts here and I haven't checked Facebook yet.

Hiring someone... A part time person will spend a lot of their time asking me how to answer questions because they won't know the answer. A full time person will be bored half the time (ie unhappy), and expensive. The next hire will be a customer service person, but we haven't found the right person and it doesn't make sense to go looking for them right now.

So we do what we can. We have an auto reply letting folks know there will be some delay in getting back to them. It also encourages people to check our Production Schedule and FAQ. When I am working on the inbox, I try to skim over subjects in search of things that need immediate attention: refunds, address changes, etc. If the message was sent through the contact form on our website I don't get a subject line, so those are harder to skim.

I'm not sure what else to say beyond what has been said already about us being a small team and the information about preordering taking time. So I will leave it at that for now.
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The majority of those emails are probably from Hard Knocks and I. We'll try to stop sending HAT mail.
 
SURVIVE! Ellie said:
I'm just going to be honest here, I'm not ready to read all of these as fully as I should (and ultimately will). But I can see the general idea...

Yes, I am behind on emails. We receive a lot of emails each day and if I miss a day they pile up. For example: this past weekend we were in Montana to visit with Guy's family that is visiting there for a vacation. We had no cell service and no internet. In that time we received around 100 emails, 17 voicemails, and 20 messages through customer accounts on our website. There were a ton of new posts here and I haven't checked Facebook yet.

Hiring someone... A part time person will spend a lot of their time asking me how to answer questions because they won't know the answer. A full time person will be bored half the time (ie unhappy), and expensive. The next hire will be a customer service person, but we haven't found the right person and it doesn't make sense to go looking for them right now.

So we do what we can. We have an auto reply letting folks know there will be some delay in getting back to them. It also encourages people to check our Production Schedule and FAQ. When I am working on the inbox, I try to skim over subjects in search of things that need immediate attention: refunds, address changes, etc. If the message was sent through the contact form on our website I don't get a subject line, so those are harder to skim.

I'm not sure what else to say beyond what has been said already about us being a small team and the information about preordering taking time. So I will leave it at that for now.
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Thanks for chiming in. I apologize if I come off an ass. I understand you guys are running a tight ship and although I have unanswered emails, I will leave you guys alone so we can get our orders fulfilled fast. No more emails from me,only new orders.
 
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