You guys are scaring me

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bladeboss

Joined
Mar 6, 2012
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ive been reading on here just how iffy Cold Steel's warranty is. that mini AK-47 i sent out was my favorite knife. i hope they dont screw ME around with my warranty work....
so what are your experiences? tell me even if it IS bad...
 
bladeboss said:
ive been reading on here just how iffy Cold Steel's warranty is. that mini AK-47 i sent out was my favorite knife. i hope they dont screw ME around with my warranty work....
so what are your experiences? tell me even if it IS bad...
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Doesn't that answer your own question? You get 1 year warranty, if you have the reciept. I consider most of their folders throw away knives. If they break or something, just buy another.
 
They will honor the warranty (if you can prove it it's still under warranty) but since most of their products are made oversea, it is thus not always up to American quality of workmanship despite Cold Steel's reassuring the customers that they hold all manufacturing shops to the highest quality control. I even spend my Spartan to them to have it replaced due to excessive clicking, they send me back a new one with a clicking in a different place. That made me ask customer services to provide video or photo proof of the work area in Taiwan and China. The representative replied back with a wall of text about how they uphold standards without even showing me actual proof of said standards, just words. So my Spartan is still in it's box all wrapped up in plastic and I'm not even sure if I want to send it back again or not...

So yeah, I don't trust them. I could be very unpolitically correct and say that Cold Steel as a company is just a money making machine for Lynn to play around in and go stab various animals around the world. In fact, one of the knife convention pictures on Facebook from Germany this year where Cold Steel went to, the audience was very mundane and quiet while watching Cold Steel demonstrating their products. I pointed that out and the Facebook Representative promptly deleted it and afterwards made the cold steel's reception at the convention sound all colorful and wonderful.

They became another mass producing corporation that lost sense of humanity in my eyes.
 
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If you have the receipt and its within a year you should be ok.

I had a fixed blade that I had an issue with and just wanted them to take a look at it. Nope, but I could send it in with $20 bucks to have it sharpened and shipped back.
 
sent in my older style medium voyager. the story:

i got it perfect in pretty much every way. within a few (4) weeks, it developed side to side and up and down play...bad. sent it to them. they said it was within spec...wow. but they said they would sharpen it for me if i paid a few bucks. no thanks. never bought a cold steel after that.
 
CSBV (Cold Steel Bashing Virus) is like the flu. It mutates and rages at irregular intervals. Some people are more susceptible than others.
 
I've never had any issues with my Cold Steel knives, so I've never had any concerns about warranty. Also, the budget stuff is generally so inexpensive and such good performers that I could just buy a replacement. Doesn't seem like much of a concern.
 
philwar said:
CSBV (Cold Steel Bashing Virus) is like the flu. It mutates and rages at irregular intervals. Some people are more susceptible than others.
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If you went through actual experiences yourself about Cold Steel, you would change your mind afterwards. It's funny how people try so hard to discourage folks from standing up and speaking out against low quality workmanship/a company's mediocre customer services among various things.
 
Not necessarily true. Just because YOU had a bad experience doesn't mean everyone else will. Like any company, they've got their lemons and other issues. But they wouldn't be as successful as they are, especially with their high visibility, if they had the universally low quality you seem to think they have.

I own 15 Cold Steel products. They're all very well made for the price point, in many cases way better than I would have expected for the price point, and you can find numerous examples of people who are VERY satisfied with their purchases. The Voyager series, for instance, is excellent. Their line of machetes is great. There are TONS of people who love their tomahawks. The spears are pretty excellent, etc. I don't know what experience you had, but in MY experience, most of the people that do the bashing either don't own a product, or didn't even bother going through the motions if they got a lemon to have the experience rectified. They're far from my favorite company, but a little perspective doesn't hurt. You may have had a bad experience, and you should absolutely share it. But don't make it more than it is. If I had to put my money down, I'd wager that their satisfied customers far outweigh their unsatisfied ones.

Not to mention, they DID send you another knife. That suggests that they'd probably still take care of you. The fact that you haven't tried doesn't detract from their customer service in the slightest in my eyes. And SERIOUSLY, you asked for video evidence of their factory in another country? If some random person who sent their knife back asked YOU to drop everything and fly to another country to take a short video for them, would you do it? I sure as heck wouldn't. Customer service only goes so far. They responded back and answered your question. Maybe it wasn't what you wanted, but at least you GOT a response that attempted to resolve your concerns. Considering how many companies don't even bother to respond (and even the good ones miss sometimes--I've been waiting for months for a response to a couple questions I sent in to Spyderco, and they're usually pretty good), that to my eyes speaks pretty highly of their customer service.
 
1. Look at Phil's bashing of people who stood up to a quality that they were not happy about.

In my case, I stated it exactly as it happened. I've owned about 7 different cold steel products and I sold them all off due to various issues with them. Reason why I'm not sure if I want to bother sending back the spartan is because of past experiences with them that demotivated me to even bother trying anymore. Why keep doing the same thing with Cold Steel expecting different results?

2. You're pretty judging for someone that doesn't know the whole story and neither did you ask to explore other people's experiences.

Cold Steel very firmly informed me that they routinely fly to those mentioned countries to personally check each of those shops monthly. That's when I asked them for photographic or video proofs since they are a media loving company. They sidestepped it by stating something else entirely that was not even remotely related to my questions. (That is, keep in mind, among other things that was in correspondence with them which I am not going to write them all on here)

3. I would also wager that there are more inexperienced Cold Steel knife owners than there are experienced, attentive to quality, etc knife Cold Steel knife owners.

I have met many people that avoided Cold Steel for the same reasons as me as well as their own quality standard reasons and they advised me not to get Cold steel. I ignored them but in the end I realized they were right. What I've learned is that yes, the knives will do their jobs...to a point. As evident here, a point has been crossed for some folks in here and Cold Steel wont honor it no longer.

There are more to the big pictures than bashing or misjudging those who decides to stand up to a company's quality of service or product. I'm just not in the mood right now to go in it any deeper. Will I own any future Cold Steel knives? If I must, I will. If I am given a free one by a friend, I'll accept it gracefully before beating the crap out of the knife in a user but not abuser fashion.
 
crimsonfalcon07 said:
I've never had any issues with my Cold Steel knives, so I've never had any concerns about warranty. Also, the budget stuff is generally so inexpensive and such good performers that I could just buy a replacement. Doesn't seem like much of a concern.
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+1 never had any issues with any of the cold steel knives I used to own, I cant say that about any other knife brand ive owned
 
OldeWolf said:
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I'm not trying to put you or your experience down, or deny that you didn't like your experience. But you should realize that your experience isn't everyone's experience, and yours doesn't immediately make for an overall generalization. Even your experience can be interpreted as positive by another viewer, absent your own biases. The fact that you are so defensive about it doesn't help either. My main issue was this comment:

OldeWolf said:
If you went through actual experiences yourself about Cold Steel, you would change your mind afterwards. It's funny how people try so hard to discourage folks from standing up and speaking out against low quality workmanship/a company's mediocre customer services among various things.
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See, you're drawing from your negative experience an overall need to bash the entire company and all of their products. I haven't had any such issues, and there are plenty of other people who are in the same boat. And, for that matter, their swords and a lot of their more expensive products, I don't really like.

But the fact of the matter is, they're cheap products. I don't expect the same kind of F&F from Cold Steel's inexpensive products that I do from a $100 Spyderco or Benchmade or ZT or something, and there's always people that get lemons, or otherwise have unreasonable expectations.

The point is that you're intent on hating, and for all your complaints, you've been much more aggressive about insisting that nobody else can possibly have a good experience with Cold Steel, and that is patently false, unlike philwar's comment. He just pointed out that Cold Steel bashing is very common, often has very little actual basis, and for those few past owners with negative experiences, there seems to be a tendency to turn that into a generalization about the company as a whole, or some sort of hit on LCT. Many Cold Steel haters very rarely can just leave it by saying "I had a bad experience, and I PERSONALLY would not recommend the company." Your first post was okay in my mind, because it stuck to your own opinion. The second one was where I take issue, because it's contrary to my personal experience.

As far as the rest of it, all we can get from your experience is what you give us, and your propensity for leaving out evidently important details, and changing your story (for instance, in your first post, you said: "The representative replied back with a wall of text about how they uphold standards without even showing me actual proof of said standards, just words." That is, to my eyes, clearly a response to your question about said standards, and then you seem to change your story somewhat: "They sidestepped it by stating something else entirely that was not even remotely related to my questions." That's very different from responding to your question but not providing you with the evidence you asked for (which still seems over the top to me, and not something that a responsible company would just send out willy nilly to some random person emailing them). I'm not trying to say that you're lying. Just that FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE, your experiences can be taken as something completely different, and it's worth thinking about that before you try to bash the company as a whole and LCT in particular.

You don't have to buy from them, and its absolutely helpful to share your negative experiences. But don't discount the fact that there are easily thousands of satisfied customers who have plenty of good things to say as well. Every company has it's share of detractors. Cold Steel detractors just tend to be noticeably more vehement than detractors from more established companies, such as Spyderco or Kershaw, from what I and philwar have seen.

Again, I don't mean to detract from your experiences at all. They're worthy of consideration. But as several of us have pointed out, neither should you claim that everyone who has had a positive experience is lying, or just inexperienced, or not paying attention to detail, which is what you seem to be claiming. As they say, "physician, heal thyself."
 
I have owned CS for decades.

I have only really had one issue with a product. (Black Rhino folder, bought on close out). Within a day, the locking spring moved about 1/4 inch forward on the locking bar. This created two separate issues. The blade hit the locking spring. And the lock was no longer solid. It developed forward to rear play (lineal blade play).

I sent it back. They sent me another new knife. Within a day, it also developed the same issue. I counted that a lost cause at that point. The lock spring issue would be a very very simple fix. It simply needs a small hump on the locking bar to keep the lock spring "captured".

This issue is not present on my Recon 1 (same style lock, triad lock), because they added a tiny hump on the locking bar.

I tried a couple of fixes (after considering the factory fix option a lost cause). They told me that they do not "fix" the model. They will simply send me another new one, with the same defect. I tried epoxy on the locking spring, to keep it in place. This worked for a few weeks. Then came loose (the constant flexing. JB steel weld might have done the trick).

Then I tried a needle file on the locking bar. This solved the problem of the spring moving forward unchecked until it hit the blade issue.

However, it caused another issue. More blade play. The lock no longer feels solid. The tolerances were so close that the MM or two I removed from the locking bar to make a tiny notch affected the lock up. They do not sell parts for the knife (at least they told me they don't).

So basically, the Black Rhino is a paper weight in my top drawer. I might, some day, take the time to try and make another locking bar, or have a custom maker make one. But it probably won't happen on a knife I only paid $80 for.

The real issue, for me, is that I also bought one as a gift for my father. I had it engraved with his retirement date. He does not carry it (as it is too big for his edc tastes) but I worry the exact same problem will happen with is when or if he ever uses it.


I was more than a bit miffed that they sold a defective product. And then just sent me another one. They know of the defect, but instead of running another batch of locking bars, with a small fix, to retrofit all the defective knives (or at least offer the part for me to do it), they simply sell them off at a discount, without telling me there is a functional, quality affecting issue. It is a defect in design/material, and I would not have bought the knives if I had been informed prior to purchase.
 
bladeboss said:
ive been reading on here just how iffy Cold Steel's warranty is. that mini AK-47 i sent out was my favorite knife. i hope they dont screw ME around with my warranty work....
so what are your experiences? tell me even if it IS bad...
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Well there's not really anything you can do now but find out for yourself. Hopefully it turns out well, but there are many people who have had bad experiences with CS's customer service. They do have one of, if not the, worst customer service and warranty systems in the business (Compare to similarly priced, higher quality Kershaw models with a lifetime, no questions asked warranty. Even if you have an issue with your knife that's your fault, they'll fix it). You've probably figured this out by now, but a lot of Cold Steel threads disintegrate into bickering. Most people will argue that their quality and warranty are well below par for the price, and a few diehard fanboys will argue back that what they think is a stronger lock (even though lock failures on any well made knife are extremely rare) justifies the price. Posting another thread isn't going to change this; you'll just find the exact same information that a search could pull up.
 
I've personally never had to use Cold Steel's warranty, but it's always YMMV with these things. For example the worst CS experiences I've had with a knife company is Spyderco.

One thing to note is that CS has changed the wording of their warranty lately. They used to say 1 year for folders and 5 years for fixed, now they don't mention it.


"We stand behind our knives and swords 100%. We subject them to the highest standards in the industry and strive to make each as perfect as possible. We warrant that our folding knives, fixed blade sheath knives, and swords are free from defects in workmanship and materials.

This warranty does not cover normal wear and tear, re-sharpening of the blade, damage caused by misuse, lack of normal maintenance, or disassembly.

Remember any knife or sword can break or fail if subjected to sufficient abuse, so please do not use our knives and swords inappropriately and remember no knife or sword should be used as an axe, hatchet, screwdriver, or pry bar."
 
OldeWolf said:
If you went through actual experiences yourself about Cold Steel, you would change your mind afterwards. It's funny how people try so hard to discourage folks from standing up and speaking out against low quality workmanship/a company's mediocre customer services among various things.
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I've been buying Cold Steel for over 30 years now. Never had a bad experience. That says nothing about other people, but there's a difference between stating individual bad deals and laughable stuff like this:

since most of their products are made oversea, it is thus not always up to American quality of workmanship
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There are American companies that make crap, and there are Taiwanese companies that are second to none. This has been done to death, fact is that there is nothing uniquely good about American products.

That made me ask customer services to provide video or photo proof of the work area in Taiwan and China.
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You bought a knife and now feel you're entitled to a virtual tour of the factory? Riiiiiight...

I could be very unpolitically correct and say that Cold Steel as a company is just a money making machine for Lynn to play around in and go stab various animals around the world.
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I suspect every owner of every company that turns a profit uses the money to spend his time the way he prefers. But it's different if Lynn Thompson does it, somehow...

They became another mass producing corporation that lost sense of humanity in my eyes.
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I'm sure you only buy from companies that count the Dalai Lama and mother Theresa among their staff. :rolleyes:
 
bladeboss said:
well, this got out of hand. stop using my threads as a fight-forum. i asked a simple question
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looks like you haven't been around here long enough to know there are some things you can't talk about on this forum without causing a fight lol.

just in terms of brands, you usually want to steer clear of any discussions for Cold Steel, Strider, Microtech, Emerson....
 
bladeboss said:
well, this got out of hand. stop using my threads as a fight-forum. i asked a simple question
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Welcome to ARGUMENTFORUMS.COM. Once in a while people talk about knives here.




Just kidding (sort of), I couldn't resist :D
 
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