What's up with some of the online dealers?

Plumberdv

Plumberdv

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I've seen so many folks bashing Ebay, but I have to say I've had much better luck with sellers there than I've had recently with online knife dealers.

Twice recently I've ordered knives from dealers that had them listed on their site. In both instances, I received a confirmation and an order number right then, then nothing. After a week or so, I sent e-mails asking about the status of my order and all I received was a very short "that knife is not available"! No indication if they were back ordered or discontinued or anything.:thumbdn:

OK, fine, but why the heck did I have to ask? Why don't these people let you know?

It happened when I ordered from Knife Outlet and Knife Supply. :thumbdn::thumbdn::thumbdn: They are both on my "not to buy from list" now.

On the other hand, I placed an online order with Dave's Knife World on a Sunday. Monday morning I received a phone call from them to tell me that the
knife was back ordered and asked if I wanted to cancel the order, substitute a different knife or wait until the new ones arrived. :thumbup::thumbup: I opted to wait and when they shipped about two weeks later, they upgraded the shipping to Priority Mail. Now those are people I'll deal with again!
 
I know exactly what you mean and it upsets me as well. Knifeworks is one of my favorite online dealers for this very reason. On more than one occasion they have called me on the phone within a couple of hours after placing an online order to let me know that an item was not in stock, and given the option to cancel or not.

Tom
 
I'm the opposite.
I've ordered things off of the Bay only 5 times and 2 of those I was sent the wrong items by "accident".
That has never happened from an online dealer.

I also will only buy from a place that has live inventory. It might limit my choices, but that's me.
Now I have my brother, so when I need something I tell him what I want and he get's it for me. He hasn't screwed me yet. :D
 
I agree. I have ordered 77 items from eBay and have never been unhappy. They do an incredible job of weeding out the misfits. As long as you bid on sellers that have 99% or above rating you can't go wrong 99.9% of the time. I also order a great deal of products from online sellers and have had 100% satisfaction, except from knife dealers. My satisfaction rate is 50% at best. I don't know why this is but over the years I have learned to stick with just a very short list of preffered online knife sites. I search this forum for feedback whenever I consider buying from a dealer I have not used before and have found the forum to be invaluable. Quite frankly I do not understand how ebay can do such a good job with customer satisfaction. I'm no business wiz but I wouldn't be surprised if ebay becomes the exclusive source for online sales one day thanks in part to the fact that there is no way to police or drive out of business rip off companies like "The Blade Shop"
 
I now have 1190 positive feedbacks and that's all from buying over the years. I've never sold anything on Ebay. I can count on one hand the number of times that I was truly uhappy about the item or the service.

Contrasting that with my experience with online knife dealers lately and it's pretty stellar!
 
As I'm in Europe, nearly all my US knives come on the Bay and I've yet to be short changed or let down, knock on ebony wood. When you find a good e-bay dealer, they are first rate it seems.
 
Plumber, as I told you yesterday, our web site is not an inventory listing. It is a catalog. Obviously it isn't the right type of web site for you. That's fine. You shouldn't shop here. However, you do me a disservice by telling people that I didn't communicate with you. We sent an email the day after you ordered explaining that the product was not available. I believe that you didn't receive it. That's not uncommon in this age of spam blockers. But I did send it nevertheless. I just wanted to clear that up. Best of luck to you.
 
Knife Outlet said:
Plumber, as I told you yesterday, our web site is not an inventory listing. It is a catalog. Obviously it isn't the right type of web site for you. That's fine. You shouldn't shop here. However, you do me a disservice by telling people that I didn't communicate with you. We sent an email the day after you ordered explaining that the product was not available. I believe that you didn't receive it. That's not uncommon in this age of spam blockers. But I did send it nevertheless. I just wanted to clear that up. Best of luck to you.
Click to expand...

My spam blocker doesn't do away with any mail. I know for a fact that it puts things there that are not spamand that's why I check it every time I see that there is something in it, If you sent one, it was disguised enough that it was not recognisable as being from you without opening it (which I won't do).

As far as your site being a catalog, what's the difference? I just checked and you are still showing the knife I ordered at your discounted price. There is absolutley nothing that I can see to let an prospect buyer to "beware, we may not have what we adverise we have".

You are right about one thing though, your web site is not the type for me!
 
"As far as your site being a catalog, what's the difference? I just checked and you are still showing the knife I ordered at your discounted price. There is absolutley nothing that I can see to let an prospect buyer to "beware, we may not have what we adverise we have"

Let me help you understand better what a catalog is. You say we may not have what we advertise we have. We don't advertise that we have anything. The catalog is simply a compilation of current products from the manufacturers. Sometimes those products go out-of-stock at the manufacturer. In fact virtually all of them do at one time or another. When that happens, they become unavailable until the manufacturer makes more and makes them available again. The products stay on the web site until the manufacturer discontinues the product or when they are permanently unavailable in the distribution channels.

Our system is to accept orders and fill them. If we can't fill them, we email the customer. Then the customer can cancel or change the order or wait. We don't charge the credit cards until we ship so there is no financial pain for anyone.

Apparently, you didn't get your email so I'm paying a price for that. I'm not going to get into a discourse on why we do what we do because you don't really want to hear it. But I can tell you that our system works for many people. I know that because we have 10's of thousands of customers who have used it repeatedly over the years. It doesn't work for you. I got it. Take care.
 
This will be my last response about this.
Call it what ever you want to, the fact remains that you can't always deliver what you offer, and by listing it on your site you are saying in effect that you can. If there were some indication on your site that this was the fact it would be different. Are you a dropshipper?

I've ordered knives from at least five other online sites (not Ebay) and on those sites if an item is out of stock or back ordered they are either removed from the listing or listed as such.

If you sent an e-mail (and I now believe you did), your address is not descriptive enough to identify you as "Knife Outlet". webmarketing@kconline.com is far from being descriptive and I don't open unknown e-mails from "webmarking@anything.com", especially those that are in my spam folder. The one I did get from you said re: order #xxxx in the title line which caught my attention.
 
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