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Bad Smoky Mountain Knife Works - Bad Experience/Website orders not being honored

K.B. Knifeworks

K.B. Knifeworks

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Feedback: 60 / 0 / 0
Joined
Jul 2, 2009
Messages
1,167
Hey all - beware with SMKW that they seem to have an internal system issue that is mixing up the SKU numbers on the website. Over the holidays I ordered a g10 20cv mini grip and was sent a standard base model mini grip in the mail. My order confirmation and paypal fully reflects the g10 20cv mini grip, but SMKW wont honor the order even though they show that the incorrect item was shipped. CS is also less than helpful. Item is being returned but thought I would post up a fair warning to others. Stick with DLT, KSF and others that have good feedback posted.
 
I remember seeing that deal posted... Not sure if it was here, or reddit, or elsewhere.

I am pretty sure they just made a price mistake - listed the wrong model at the lower value model's price.

If they actually shipped the more expensive one it would be a good deal, but if they did not honor the mistake I would not exactly hold it against them either. Return shipping can be a pain though, so I feel you there.
 
jeffsenpai said:
I remember seeing that deal posted... Not sure if it was here, or reddit, or elsewhere.

I am pretty sure they just made a price mistake - listed the wrong model at the lower value model's price.

If they actually shipped the more expensive one it would be a good deal, but if they did not honor the mistake I would not exactly hold it against them either. Return shipping can be a pain though, so I feel you there.
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I am with the OPs thought on this. Why? Because they sent the lower priced knife in place of the one the op ordered. Now had they sent the OP a courtesy email stating what happened and why they cannot honor it that would be different. That at least would be making an effort to inform the buyer of said mistake.
 
Just to get it all out there, was the PRICE indicative of the G10 20CV model or a normal grip? If this was, what amounts to, a typo on their website accidentally advertising one for the price of the other I don't blame them at all for not sending a significantly more expensive knife.
 
remanaz said:
I am with the OPs thought on this. Why? Because they sent the lower priced knife in place of the one the op ordered. Now had they sent the OP a courtesy email stating what happened and why they cannot honor it that would be different. That at least would be making an effort to inform the buyer of said mistake.
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Exactly. Its an internal SMKW SKU number issue on the back end that the customer would not know. Everything outside of the SKU number reflects the knife I ordered (photo/description/details). Even the confirmation email and paypal description. The problem was that this was posted in there end of year clearance and really looked like a legit sale. During that time this knife was heavy discounted on lots of sites and I missed out because of this. My real issue is mostly with how customer service handled the issue. When I called the first time I was looking at the page in real time as the (20cv grip was still listed) and told customer service about the issue. The CS rep looked at the order, page and escalated the issue. When she called me back about 30min to a hour later to tell me they would not honor the order they had updated the page to reflect the base model. Just felt a little like a bate and switch. I emailed the SMKW help email twice to escalate the issue and received no response. It was not until I gave a one star rating on the site that someone re-contacted me and said they wont honor the order and I can return the base model mini grip if I don't like it.
 
Insipid Moniker said:
Just to get it all out there, was the PRICE indicative of the G10 20CV model or a normal grip? If this was, what amounts to, a typo on their website accidentally advertising one for the price of the other I don't blame them at all for not sending a significantly more expensive knife.
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Not just a typo - advertised on the front page as part of the end of the year blow out sale for like 15 days. See my response above on how they handled it. I get it - errors happen. But if the company makes an error at least own it and re-reimburse shipping or send a pre-labled return box like other sites.
 
Same thing happened when they listed the Spyderco Caly Jr Superblue spint. A bunch of people tried to jump on the "deal," only to get denied, with some waiting a long time for a refund.

They are one of my least favorite retailers, partly because the search engine on their site is awful. But I do recommend stopping in their store sometime if you're ever in the area. It's weird experience, with piles and piles of junk intermingled with amazing historical displays and high end pieces. You can spend hours in there. And then when you see how they carry just about everything ever made on planet earth that has an edge, it will help explain how these mixups happen. ;)
 
I saw this deal also. They should have either honored the deal or explain to people that purchased it that it was a mistake, not send out the normal mini Grip. Doing that made it a bait and switch they were probably fully aware of at the time of fulfillment.
 
HappyDaddy said:
Correct response: "Our apologies. We should have caught our mistake and communicated with you before shipping a knife you hadn't ordered. Watch your email for a link to a prepaid return label."
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This exactly. First, they should have caught the error and not shipped anything. Second, since they didn't catch their error and shipped an item the customer did not buy, they should have sent a return shipping label.

Very poor handling of a very easy to rectify situation. This is not the first time I have heard of errors on their website. Happened to me years ago. After my negative experience with them I decided I wouldn't be doing business with them again.
 
mb> said:
Same thing happened when they listed the Spyderco Caly Jr Superblue spint. A bunch of people tried to jump on the "deal," only to get denied, with some waiting a long time for a refund.

They are one of my least favorite retailers, partly because the search engine on their site is awful. But I do recommend stopping in their store sometime if you're ever in the area. It's weird experience, with piles and piles of junk intermingled with amazing historical displays and high end pieces. You can spend hours in there. And then when you see how they carry just about everything ever made on planet earth that has an edge, it will help explain how these mixups happen. ;)
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That's how House of Blades is, some super high end stuff (CRK, MSC/DDC etc), two cases of high end production (Spyderco, ZT, BM full lines) then total junk (MTech etc)...sadly it always seems like zombie green garbage moves out the doors faster than anything else.

Back to SMKW, so they charged the OP a fair price for what they shipped him but he thought he was getting a steal of a deal and didn't, they blamed it on a screw up in their system? I think the fault lies with them BUT it also makes me think of the whole "if it seems too good to be true" adage.
 
craytab said:
This exactly. First, they should have caught the error and not shipped anything. Second, since they didn't catch their error and shipped an item the customer did not buy, they should have sent a return shipping label.

Very poor handling of a very easy to rectify situation. This is not the first time I have heard of errors on their website. Happened to me years ago. After my negative experience with them I decided I wouldn't be doing business with them again.
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The fact they shipped the other version means that they did in fact catch their mistake. If they had not caught their mistake then the op would have received what he ordered. Just saying.
 
I agree with the OP. You should not be out of pocket whatsoever for a mistake made by the dealer. Poor customer service doesnt help either. Everyone makes mistakes but its how you handle them that matters most. As far as im concerned those 2 models are not even in the same league. Its like buying a lexus and getting a toyota. I also dont think its fair to imply the buyer should have assumed the deal was too good to be true. Not from a retailer anyway. Its plausible that that price was a legit sale price. Just my opinion.
 
remanaz said:
The fact they shipped the other version means that they did in fact catch their mistake. If they had not caught their mistake then the op would have received what he ordered. Just saying.
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No, it means that they caught the mistake, realized what was ordered, but sent what they should have originally advertised without contacting the customer first.

What they should have done was immediately refunded the order and sent an email explaining why. That still would be mildly crappy, but at least it wouldn’t necessitate the customer having to go through an entire additional runaround and return shipping.

Someone at SMKW is just passive aggressive and didn’t want to deal with it. I get why the OP would be annoyed for sure.
 
remanaz said:
The fact they shipped the other version means that they did in fact catch their mistake. If they had not caught their mistake then the op would have received what he ordered. Just saying.
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The "mistake" to which I was referring was the mistake in advertising a price on a knife that they didn't intend to offer for that price.
 
remanaz said:
The fact they shipped the other version means that they did in fact catch their mistake. If they had not caught their mistake then the op would have received what he ordered. Just saying.
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I believe they were just going by the sku #, which was correct on the website but the entire rest of the description was wrong. The person shipping the knife probably just grabbed the box that matched the sku and shipped it. I don't believe they caught anything. They did make big mistake though and they should take care of return shipping, apologize, and maybe through in a discount on a future purchase for the hassle. That is what a good business would do.
 
Maybe I missed it somewhere in this, but are you saying that they told you they would not accept the return? Or are they telling you they would not refund your full amount? Would they pay for return shipping?
Just trying to ascertain whether or not they are making you whole in the deal here.
 
I recently returned an expensive knife (I told them I didn’t like it) and a cheap knife (defective) in a package to SMKW. They did reimburse me for the return shipping as part of the refund. Their rep told me that they will reimburse return shipping in my specific case and they did.

If SMKW paid return shipping to the folks who purchased the “mistaken” grip, I wouldn’t blame SMKW. Based on my experience, I’d think SMKW is open to doing reimbursement.
 
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