I posted the original deleted thread. A summary of it:
1. Cold Steel, through their European website
http://cold-steel.de sent a replica Emperor O Tanto sword instead of a genuine one to a dear friend, who unknowingly gave it to me as a birthday present. I was pretty amazed upon inspecting it and decided to inquire further. The sword had brass parts, burred edge and many problems.
2. After contacting Cold Steel Europe, their representative Dirk Brüggendick (a very nice and honest guy, BTW) admitted in an e-mail that the sword is indeed different from Cold Steel's advertising, said they would replace it, but could not, since after he checked it turned out that ALL the swords they had from this batch looked the same as mine. He was worried, didn't know what was happening, acknowledged that this is a serious problem, said that they would immediately change the description on their website to reflect the inferior materials the swords were made of, etc. and that they would discuss this with Cold Steel USA. They did not change anything and kept selling these swords to this day with the same false advertising.
3. Cold Steel USA, after a delay, tried to play this down, with total BS, stating that nickel-silver tarnishes yellow and thus looks like brass, which is not correct at all, and ignored all other mentioned problems with this blade.
4. A Cold Steel moderator in the forum finally appeared and instead of apologizing for a problem which was already admitted in writing by their European representative, tried to distance from them stating that they do not represent them and insulted my character for bringing this up. Seeing that many people were amazed at all this he then deleted the thread.
What became apparent was that CS had produced a whole batch of cheep swords from inferior materials and different alloys, supplied it to their European dealer and hoped to sell them as genuine items. And they still sell them. The replica I received could not cost more than 100$. I collect swords, and have many, cheap and very expensive. Instead they sold this "Emperor O Tanto" for 600$+
and keep selling them. That's it in a nutshell. I have all the post replies in my e-mails but it will be difficult to reconstruct the thread. It was a multi page thread. With just one or two exceptions all posts were very critical to CS for handling this issue the way they did. The thread does exist in some hidden place on the forum, if moved here it would be very informative IMHO.
For those who think that litigation over something like this is a bluff threat, please acquaint yourselves with the EU false advertising and customer protection laws and procedures. With such an obvious case it is very easy to do and costs nothing. It is not like in the US. I could cause a very real problem to their EU dealer but so far I am restraining from doing that, as in fact they were the honest ones and they were just played by Cold Steel USA. But this is beside the point. The point is that Cold Steel are currently selling replica quality swords, got caught both by a customer and by their own EU representative, and instead of being polite and fixing this issue, tried to cover this up. They know the order number and all the details. They acknowledged that they had a batch of replicas. Insisting that a replica sword (admitted by them) is returned to them is ridiculous. If they had a genuine Emperor O Tanto they could just have sent one. They obviously do not have one in Europe, as stated by their EU dealer. That's it.
Here is just one picture of the problem from my opening post. As you can see, even the mold used to make the Tsuba is different, not to mention everything else:
P.S. If a moderator sees fit to split this post as a standalone thread, please do so. I really think this issue should be known.