In regards to failure phenomena

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Karda said:
Whos not accepting responsibility? Have not issues been taken care of to the best of Aunties ability? Even Questionable ones?
That begs the question.... should Auntie really be held liable for failures of designs submitted by forumites?
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Yes. If you choose to accept the design and market it, then you are responsible for the failure and production of the design. If I send a design to Chevrolet for a cool new car, it turns out it is unsafe and causes failure/crashes/whatever, are they not liable for it?

I bought knives from Uncle Bill back in the old days. He was famous for his no-nonsense no BS unlimited warranty. Stood 100% behind his knives, unbreakable. Break a chiruwa AK and he'd give you TWO. That's how HI made their reputation. Somehow manage to break a knife, he'd replace it with a laugh and offer you some heineken for your feat. That's when this forum was a bustling hub, the people attracted and sales made by that iron clad guarantee far outstripped the costs of the knives he might've replaced behind the scenes.

When he passed, the management passed on to some very protective forum members, and the business was infected with what it never had before: apologists.

Despite their best intentions to protect the brand they loved, their efforts have ironically done the exact opposite, in trying to protect HI from abuse they have in fact damaged the brand irreparably. Traffic and sales are not a quarter of what they used to be; there is no denying this. Clearly an example why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists. People who have blade failures are subjected to careful scrutiny, trying to find out what they did wrong so they can write it off as a failure on the part of the user and attempt to stay any change in the opinion of HI.

Early HI: Almost no heard of failures, encouraged to beat the crud out of it, unlimited no-BS iron clad warrantee, huge membership and busiest bustling fan community on BF
Modern HI: Rashes of blade failures, switch to limited warrantee and weighted down with plenty of BS, careful use encouraged, dead fan community
Can anyone really try to deny that HI has gone downhill?

Clearly an study on why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists.
 
Eric_425 said:
Yes. If you choose to accept the design and market it, then you are responsible for the failure and production of the design. If I send a design to Chevrolet for a cool new car, it turns out it is unsafe and causes failure/crashes/whatever, are they not liable for it?

I bought knives from Uncle Bill back in the old days. He was famous for his no-nonsense no BS unlimited warranty. Stood 100% behind his knives, unbreakable. Break a chiruwa AK and he'd give you TWO. That's how HI made their reputation. Somehow manage to break a knife, he'd replace it with a laugh and offer you some heineken for your feat. That's when this forum was a bustling hub, the people attracted and sales made by that iron clad guarantee far outstripped the costs of the knives he might've replaced behind the scenes.

When he passed, the management passed on to some very protective forum members, and the business was infected with what it never had before: apologists.

Despite their best intentions to protect the brand they loved, their efforts have ironically done the exact opposite, in trying to protect HI from abuse they have in fact damaged the brand irreparably. Traffic and sales are not a quarter of what they used to be; there is no denying this. Clearly an example why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists. People who have blade failures are subjected to careful scrutiny, trying to find out what they did wrong so they can write it off as a failure on the part of the user and attempt to stay any change in the opinion of HI.

Early HI: Almost no heard of failures, encouraged to beat the crud out of it, unlimited no-BS iron clad warrantee, huge membership and busiest bustling fan community on BF
Modern HI: Rashes of blade failures, switch to limited warrantee and weighted down with plenty of BS, careful use encouraged, dead fan community
Can anyone really try to deny that HI has gone downhill?

Clearly an study on why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists.
Click to expand...


You seem to think you know quite a bit about how this company is run, how much business it does and how many abused knives were warranted under the old warranty. Remember... you are speaking to someone whos done plenty of research and spoken to the people whom actually know and is not speaking from rumors. Also know that i was a member and customer, same as everyone else, until becoming involved in this side of things. So i can speak from both sides of the coin and know the reality of the situation.
The heresay and speculation is really the problem. I surmise it is coming from people disgruntled by the fact that they must be responsible in their usage now, instead of chopping whatever they please with the knowledge that if they mess up H.I. will bear the cost of their mistake.
If you read the archives and compare them to today and talk to people whom were there actually in the trenches you would find my previous statements to be true. The quality is on par with what it used to be and there are really no more failures than in the past.
If you really want to blame someone, blame those who do things with their khukuri that you really shouldnt do with any knife and then want it replaced for free when they actually abuse it enough to break it. To me this is taking advantage of H.I's good nature and Uncle Bill's original intentions. Don't blame Auntie Yangdu and Pala for finally standing up and changing the warranty to protect the business from these people.
The decision was made to modify the warranty instead of raising the prices to cover the cost of unrealistic expectation and stupidity. If you would like the original warranty replaced, i'm afraid that the cost of the khukuri will have to be raised substantially.
Like it or not. Himalayan Imports still stands behind it's products and still carries the best warranty in the khukuri business.
 
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Three points: First, if one sends a cool car design request to Chevrolet...to make this analogy work, let's say you send in a design for a superlight high-performance racing type car, think like a Lotus. Then, you take it hard-core off-roading and screw up its frame, etc. You took your own SPECIALIZED design, that YOU wanted custom-built for, at least ostensibly, a particular purpose, and then applied it for something vasly different. I submit you are responsible for the damage to it, the damage to you, and the damage to anyone else.

If you use your superduperpooper car for its proper purpose, for what you had in mind, and it malfunctions during regular use of that type, then you have a legitimate beef with the maker. This general concept of proper use has kinship with the products liability law (common law and statutory) in mine and many other, if not most, jurisdictions.

Second, I agree that craftsman (and women) need to be businesspersons to a degree, BUT the MBA, grind out for a profit mentality has detrimentally impacted goods and thus consumer confidence. Want a quick example? Think about recent umbrella corporation actions in firearms markets in recent years and the resultant quality decline. My point: Adding insulating layers of MBAs (or that type) between production and consumer is not a cure-all, and is sometimes a bad thing. Again, I concede all producers should embrace some business acumen, but the closer relationship with the source and the user, cutting out all the intervening profit-mongering and such, is a nice paradigm for a consumer. I do agree with you that the entity involved needs to not only systematically address complaints AND systematically preclude them as much and as early as possible

Last, I make no opinion regarding quality trends-I have only 2 of the blades in question and have been involved for a short time. As stated in days past, I am happy with my items so far, and hope for continued satisfaction with them.cwd
 
Since I have not yet used an HI blade (although one is on the way!), I can not testify to the quality of them, although I do notice that the forums are filled with people who own many HI products and appear tremendously happy with them. I think that there is nothing wrong with the limited warranty, and I don't know why people are complaining about it. The warranty is still far better than most warranties today. I think that it only makes sense that it is limited because it protects HI from people who would intentionally misuse the blade, just to try and get a replacement. The warranty is fine as long as you are properly using the knife, and, anyways, why would you want to use an HI product for something it shouldn't be? The new warranty leads people to be more careful with their khuks, and I'm fairly certain that few other companies that produce knives have warranties that are nearly as good. HI is a business, and its not right that they should have to pay for people who are not correctly using their knives. And face it, nowadays, it is hard for a company with a no-questions asked kind of warranty to be able to survive, just because people will abuse those types of warranties.

It definitely doesn't appear to me that HI has a limited following; it appears that there are many people who enjoy HI products. I decided to purchase from HI because of all of the good things that I heard about them. I hadn't heard about the few problems with the blades, but it doesn't seem as serious to me as people are making it out to be. All of HI's products are handmade, so you are bound to have a couple problems, and I'm fairly certain that the HI's competition has at least as many failures, if not more.
 
Do the HI products come with instructions on how to use them "correctly" to help to avoid any misuse?
 
Eric_425 said:
Yes. If you choose to accept the design and market it, then you are responsible for the failure and production of the design. If I send a design to Chevrolet for a cool new car, it turns out it is unsafe and causes failure/crashes/whatever, are they not liable for it?

I bought knives from Uncle Bill back in the old days. He was famous for his no-nonsense no BS unlimited warranty. Stood 100% behind his knives, unbreakable. Break a chiruwa AK and he'd give you TWO. That's how HI made their reputation. Somehow manage to break a knife, he'd replace it with a laugh and offer you some heineken for your feat. That's when this forum was a bustling hub, the people attracted and sales made by that iron clad guarantee far outstripped the costs of the knives he might've replaced behind the scenes.

When he passed, the management passed on to some very protective forum members, and the business was infected with what it never had before: apologists.

Despite their best intentions to protect the brand they loved, their efforts have ironically done the exact opposite, in trying to protect HI from abuse they have in fact damaged the brand irreparably. Traffic and sales are not a quarter of what they used to be; there is no denying this. Clearly an example why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists. People who have blade failures are subjected to careful scrutiny, trying to find out what they did wrong so they can write it off as a failure on the part of the user and attempt to stay any change in the opinion of HI.

Early HI: Almost no heard of failures, encouraged to beat the crud out of it, unlimited no-BS iron clad warrantee, huge membership and busiest bustling fan community on BF
Modern HI: Rashes of blade failures, switch to limited warrantee and weighted down with plenty of BS, careful use encouraged, dead fan community
Can anyone really try to deny that HI has gone downhill?

Clearly an study on why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists.
Click to expand...

I understand your frustration with how you perceive the situation. I can't really rectify that as both Karda and I (apologists that we are) have been trying to convey the simple fact that HI quality is the exact same as it ALWAYS has been. The warranty hasn't been changed to reflect any issues in the knives. The warranty has changed because idiot scumbags found a loophole and fleeced HI and innocent well-meaning customers sometimes used the wrong tool for the job and bend their khuks. Do you remember Tom Holt (I believe that was his name. This has been years ago)? Tom was a good poster from way back who used a 25" Kobra for farm work. Uncle Bill suggested he use something else but Tom really liked the Kobra and used it until it broke. He understood it was his own fault and (I believe) just bought another one because even though it was the wrong tool for the job he really preferred it.

As for the community, yes it has taken a bit of a hit since the death of Uncle Bill. Bill was a charismatic and charming man whom everyone loved to converse with. He could say more with one 3 sentence post than I can with one of my rambling 3 paragraph ones. However, he is no longer with us. There is nothing anyone can do about that. Running HI from stateside went from being a hard two person job to a nearly impossible one person job where Yangdu has to check the forums, check the sales site, the phone calls, answer emails, pack up knives, ship them, converse with Nepal, and somehow keep the kamis on task from half a world away.

So yes, unfortunately the forum isn't quite what it used to be when Bill and Rusty were around. How could it be? We lost two good men within a day of each other. We have also lost at least a half dozen others in the last decade. People come and go. Some people lose interest in the knives, some move on to other things, some people pass away. It is us to the rest of us, the "apologists" and the "hobbyists" to keep the forum going. To teach and pass on what we have learned from those that came before us and TRY to keep the board and community fresh and alive. In short, we can all pine away about the "good ol' days" or we can step up, post, and bring new things to the table.

I've been buying from HI for a decade. If I thought for one second that the quality had slipped, that they were covering up problems, or if there REALLY were some major things going on I would put my time and money elsewhere. You can be sure that I wouldn't have accepted a moderator position as well. You could say that I am passionate about HI, Yangdu, and this community...and you'd be damn right. Frame it any way you like, those of that put in the time and effort into this place do it for one reason...we care and believe in what HI does. Spinning it any other way is disingenuous.
 
I'll give a shiny nickel to the mod who locks this thread, and I'll pay postage.
H.I. today operates under fair and ethical business practices.

Enough already.

:)
 
I'll see your nickel Kismet and raise you a quarter. I quite agree. Best wishes all, use your khukuri in good health. Thanks everyone for your efforts.
 
Eric_425 said:
Yes. If you choose to accept the design and market it, then you are responsible for the failure and production of the design. If I send a design to Chevrolet for a cool new car, it turns out it is unsafe and causes failure/crashes/whatever, are they not liable for it?

I bought knives from Uncle Bill back in the old days. He was famous for his no-nonsense no BS unlimited warranty. Stood 100% behind his knives, unbreakable. Break a chiruwa AK and he'd give you TWO. That's how HI made their reputation. Somehow manage to break a knife, he'd replace it with a laugh and offer you some heineken for your feat. That's when this forum was a bustling hub, the people attracted and sales made by that iron clad guarantee far outstripped the costs of the knives he might've replaced behind the scenes.

When he passed, the management passed on to some very protective forum members, and the business was infected with what it never had before: apologists.

Despite their best intentions to protect the brand they loved, their efforts have ironically done the exact opposite, in trying to protect HI from abuse they have in fact damaged the brand irreparably. Traffic and sales are not a quarter of what they used to be; there is no denying this. Clearly an example why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists. People who have blade failures are subjected to careful scrutiny, trying to find out what they did wrong so they can write it off as a failure on the part of the user and attempt to stay any change in the opinion of HI.

Early HI: Almost no heard of failures, encouraged to beat the crud out of it, unlimited no-BS iron clad warrantee, huge membership and busiest bustling fan community on BF
Modern HI: Rashes of blade failures, switch to limited warrantee and weighted down with plenty of BS, careful use encouraged, dead fan community
Can anyone really try to deny that HI has gone downhill?

Clearly an study on why businesses should be run by businessmen, not hobbyists.
Click to expand...
Wow Eric-You seem to have all the answers.What is the name of your import khukuri manufacturing concern? I thought so. Perhaps the next time HI has a stock holders meeting they will elect you as chairman of the board.How many HI blades do you own that have failed since the changes have occurred in the HI business model? Have you even puchased an HI blade both before and after Bill Martinos passing so you could compare the difference in quality?I own over 20 HI blades,all purchased since Yangdu has been running the operation solo-NONE of them have failed in any way. I am no apologist,and I do not represent HI in any capacity.I am also not nearly as kind as Karda and Jake when responding to foolishness.There are a couple of notable individuals on this forum who seem to take a particular pride in displaying a personal dislike for HI and/or the blades they make.I for one long to see the day those individuals go somewhere else where they would no doubt be happier.Take care.
 
Kismet said:
I'll give a shiny nickel to the mod who locks this thread, and I'll pay postage.
H.I. today operates under fair and ethical business practices.

Enough already.

:)
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Ditto!
Bill was a great person to deal with! Yangdu is great to deal with. Both persons of honor that deserve better than this thread.
Or should I say, what this thread has become.
 
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Kis, AA, and bemo, you are all correct. I'm going to lock this one down for a bit just to let things cool off. Karda or Yangdu can most certainly open it back up if they feel more issues should be aired. I think all the sides have had a fair swing at this pinata. Let's all take a breather and relax.

Please don't take this as a censorship measure. This has turned into a very un-Uncle Bill thread. We can readdress this stuff at a later date, deal?
 
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