I don't see any other recourse for my issue other than to post my findings and warn other knife enthusiasts out there.
TLDR - Purchased a $500 production knife and have been jerked around by Reate for 3 months. Last week they finally informed me that they can't find the parts for the repair and then a couple of days later said that the tip of the knife was broken. It was unbroken when I mailed it so now they are investigating that damage. Never again will I purchase a knife from them.
I purchased this knife a couple of years ago and I have loved it. It had wonderful action and I loved the size and proportion of the thing as well as the blade geometry. Here's a picture of it:
It's been my EDC for about two years and last spring I noticed that it was no longer locking up securely. I looked closely at the lock bar and noticed that the lock bar steel insert had deformed the titanium on the bar:
I reached out to Reate warranty on 6/22/21 and after confiming my purchase from Blade HQ I asked if they could help with this issue and I sent them that picture as well as this video:
Now the one good thing I can say about their support is that they respond to the emails. They told me to mail the knife to their US agent (Crane Cutlery) and they would try to fix it for a $10 repair charge and if they couldn't fix it they would have to ship it to China which would incur a $50 charge. I agreed to that and shipped the knife.
After 6 weeks of emailing them every 10 days or so I was informed that Cranes was unable to do the repair and the knife had to be shipped to China.
Now, 3 months into this thing, they informed me that they were having trouble finding parts for this knife and weren't sure they could repair the lock bar. They also informed me that they were unable to repair the broken tip. Here's the email:
On Sep 14, 2021, at 10:42 PM, warranty@reateknives.com wrote:
Hi Tim,
We just had someone who was free to resharpen the blade, but the tip couldn't solve, we need to find other way to make it better.
What we can do is just to make the tip look not so bad.
For the lock problem, we need some time to find if we have any lockbar available that could help to solve it.
Because this is our very early model, we can't guarantee whether there are any hardware.
Very sorry to have taken up so much of your time to wait for this knife, please note that you sent this knife to Cranes on July, and they also needed some time to inspect it and sent it back to our factory for repair.
Hope you can understand.
And very appreciate for your patience.
<Catch.jpg>
Thanks & Best regards
Sandy Song
Broken tip? What broken tip? It wasn't broken when I shipped it to them. Here's the picture they sent of the tip:
Here's that picture again that I pulled from the video of the lock up issue:
So now that's what I'm dealing with in what is becoming a joke of an experience. They told me they needed to reach out to Crane Cutlery to investigate my assertion that the tip wasn't broken when I shipped . . . .
So that's the story. I thought I'd let people know what a headache this purchase has been for me. I'm looking for a new knife and it has made me VERY hesitant to deal with a manufacturer outside of the US where they aren't subject to the scrutiny of Google or Yelp reviews or the BBB. I spent the first couple of months thinking I just needed to be patient. Now I'm feeling like this is a deliberate test of my will and they are hoping I'll just go away.
Best of luck with your knife purchases all.
Tim G.
TLDR - Purchased a $500 production knife and have been jerked around by Reate for 3 months. Last week they finally informed me that they can't find the parts for the repair and then a couple of days later said that the tip of the knife was broken. It was unbroken when I mailed it so now they are investigating that damage. Never again will I purchase a knife from them.
I purchased this knife a couple of years ago and I have loved it. It had wonderful action and I loved the size and proportion of the thing as well as the blade geometry. Here's a picture of it:
It's been my EDC for about two years and last spring I noticed that it was no longer locking up securely. I looked closely at the lock bar and noticed that the lock bar steel insert had deformed the titanium on the bar:
I reached out to Reate warranty on 6/22/21 and after confiming my purchase from Blade HQ I asked if they could help with this issue and I sent them that picture as well as this video:
Now the one good thing I can say about their support is that they respond to the emails. They told me to mail the knife to their US agent (Crane Cutlery) and they would try to fix it for a $10 repair charge and if they couldn't fix it they would have to ship it to China which would incur a $50 charge. I agreed to that and shipped the knife.
After 6 weeks of emailing them every 10 days or so I was informed that Cranes was unable to do the repair and the knife had to be shipped to China.
Now, 3 months into this thing, they informed me that they were having trouble finding parts for this knife and weren't sure they could repair the lock bar. They also informed me that they were unable to repair the broken tip. Here's the email:
On Sep 14, 2021, at 10:42 PM, warranty@reateknives.com wrote:
Hi Tim,
We just had someone who was free to resharpen the blade, but the tip couldn't solve, we need to find other way to make it better.
What we can do is just to make the tip look not so bad.
For the lock problem, we need some time to find if we have any lockbar available that could help to solve it.
Because this is our very early model, we can't guarantee whether there are any hardware.
Very sorry to have taken up so much of your time to wait for this knife, please note that you sent this knife to Cranes on July, and they also needed some time to inspect it and sent it back to our factory for repair.
Hope you can understand.
And very appreciate for your patience.
<Catch.jpg>
Thanks & Best regards
Sandy Song
Broken tip? What broken tip? It wasn't broken when I shipped it to them. Here's the picture they sent of the tip:
Here's that picture again that I pulled from the video of the lock up issue:
So now that's what I'm dealing with in what is becoming a joke of an experience. They told me they needed to reach out to Crane Cutlery to investigate my assertion that the tip wasn't broken when I shipped . . . .
So that's the story. I thought I'd let people know what a headache this purchase has been for me. I'm looking for a new knife and it has made me VERY hesitant to deal with a manufacturer outside of the US where they aren't subject to the scrutiny of Google or Yelp reviews or the BBB. I spent the first couple of months thinking I just needed to be patient. Now I'm feeling like this is a deliberate test of my will and they are hoping I'll just go away.
Best of luck with your knife purchases all.
Tim G.
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