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Bad Survive! Deserves A Permanent Post In The Hall Of Shame

After putting it off for years I finally pulled the trigger and put an order in for one yesterday... almost $383 CAD later. Now reading through all these threads, I'd be lying if I said my hope for having it by November hasn't dwindled :|

Tomorrow would have been a year since I placed an order for a 3.5 with a 90 day delivery window. I got lucky and got a hold of them on Instagram and I got my money back. There’s an excuse every time you talk to them.
 
The excuses have been constant on have only varied slightly over the last SEVEN YEARS. There are S!K orders from 2015 that have not yet been completed. Despite what they S!K has claimed, the BBB complaints from this year show that they are still not responding to calls and emails, and not processing refunds in a timely manner.

I posted this back on page #1 of this thread, but it is worth repeating...

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Here is a post the owner of S!K (Guy) made in 2014 after having issues delivering knives in 2013.

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads...t-here-reopened.1129652/page-26#post-13220475

"...We are getting on top of things and quickly...

...All I want is for you to have high quality tools, that you can use and enjoy for a lifetime, not wait a lifetime to get them...

...This is a new year and we're putting our best foot forward. I'm not saying that we won't experience growing pains in the future but the worst is certainly behind us. We have lots of exciting stuff on the production schedule and we're kicking the standard up even higher....

...Beginning with the new site launch, you will only be able to order things on the site that are in the shop and ready for immediate build or finished items that are boxed and ready to ship. We aren't doing any more preorder promotions of any kind. Ever. Production delays should be our frustration, not yours..."

The bolding and underlining are mine.
 
Ha! No. That is far from the worst case scenario.

I'll never understand why people waist time trying to deal with known scam artists in order to own their stuff?

At some point you just have to call it what it is: "Well, it sucks for those other guys, but maybe they're all just wrong. After all, it certainly won't happen to ME, right?" :rolleyes:

Also, there are plenty of knives in that exact wheelhouse elsewhere on the market.
 
Guy Seiferd of Survive!Knives said this in 2014. 6 years later they have been doing this every year since then and yet they still have some models that are 5 YEARS late in getting delivered. Here's HIS OWN WORDS ...Beginning with the new site launch, you will only be able to order things on the site that are in the shop and ready for immediate build or finished items that are boxed and ready to ship. We aren't doing any more preorder promotions of any kind. Ever. Production delays should be our frustration, not yours..."
 
At some point you just have to call it what it is: "Well, it sucks for those other guys, but maybe they're all just wrong. After all, it certainly won't happen to ME, right?" :rolleyes:

Also, there are plenty of knives in that exact wheelhouse elsewhere on the market.
This is nearly word for word what I came to post. The number of people that can watch a completely consistent pattern of negative results and still stick their hand into the bear trap, confident that they're going to be special is always both astounding and depressing to me.
 
I already waited almost 5 years before deciding to purchase one
You could of paid for it 5 years ago and you'd still be in the same boat- No Knife.

The good news is someone who paid for a knife years ago might get one- Now that you've paid them some money.
 
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After putting it off for years I finally pulled the trigger and put an order in for one yesterday... almost $383 CAD later. Now reading through all these threads, I'd be lying if I said my hope for having it by November hasn't dwindled :|

If you really want a Survive! you would be far better getting a refund and getting one on the secondary market. Plenty change hands here and elsewhere in the $200 mid $200 range. I would not give money up front for what could easily be a 5 year or longer wait and the longer their issues go on the more likely it seems to me that the whole thing may come crashing down.
 
I wouldn’t buy one off the secondary market either. If there was ever a warranty issue, could you trust SURVIVE! too honor it given their history.

Very true, I would have to consider it an "as is, forever" purchase. I have already seen a story of a fellow who returned one for edge issues and were told there are no replacement blades so had to go on the wait list for a free replacement "somewhere" in the future. At the very least if I were Survive! I would give them their pick of whatever was on the bench now (of course as kind as that sounds they would now be basically taking a knife from someone else who has waited). A considerate business may have even set aside extra blades/scales just in case of warranty needs but understand many do need to sell everything they have to stay afloat.

That said even CRK was limiting Sebenza 21 blade replacements and at some point will run out but I am sure CRK would likely offer a 31 as an immediate replacement.
 
Let me help you understand why you need a refund. You are not going to get your knife and they will give a lie to as why you don't need to cancel. Real soon they will fold up and run and as a LLC you won't get anything back. It states in their agreement they don't have to send you anything or they can refund without warning. The only reason they give a refund now is to keep the Police off their backs. They are raking in millions with these massive orders. You can contact
Carothers Knives and I got mine custom in 10 days to my door. If you want a great knife look for William Collins Knives they are in AEB-L or O1 and sometimes Nitro-V and his heat treat makes it something else. I can hack a deer bone in half with AEB-L and not chip. He knows his stuff. I just got me the FK 2 from Carothers and it is a wonder blade indeed in Delta 3v and let me say the handle is comfortable. The hype about is Survive is total BS and their warranty means nothing as they only cover cutting chores they say and it is up to them. They don't have anything to replace it with. A man sent his knife in for repairs and never got it back or a new one. The whole SK line those fanboys stoked up never even were produced and they were to speed things up and now you got all those knives need producing before the one you just ordered. If you wait till Nov then ask for the $ back and say no penalty because you failed to send it. They have not even produced the GSO 6 they took orders from in 2015. I ordered a GSO 5.1 in May of 2016 and they have not even started. Part of their scam is to get people to send money in knowing they will wait about 2 years or more and then ask for their money back. They earn money on your money and they know they don't have to make those knives. I ordered a GSO 7/7 in Jan 2016 and waited 28 months and still canceled because their business is set up to fail some day. They are giving you the heads up saying at the end of the year they are taking off and then make an excuse. That Facebook page they had is gone and the private one is total garbage as you can't ask if they are soon to be made. Elle kicked me off for no reason because their fanboys scour the net looking for people to kick off. They don't want their secret to get out. The day you are late you need to file with the BBB, FTC, and call the State AG in your state and theirs.
 
I wouldn’t buy one off the secondary market either. If there was ever a warranty issue, could you trust SURVIVE! too honor it given their history.

They wont honor the warranty as they only fix if it is a cutting issue. You can't chop or pry with it and they don't have the stock to replace it with. A man sent his in and never got it back or an answer to if he would. Read their warranty and you will see they are not going to do anything for anyone.
 
To be honest their knives are over-rated and don't do anything that well. They were built like a tank and a few knife guys on youtube promoted them to a status of super blades. They don't cut well, carve well, or prepare game well and if you want a knife that splits wood then get a hatchet and sharpen it and it will be better than a Survive knife. I would take a LT in A2 into the woods with more confidence than the 3V that you can't get. Super Steels are nice but not all that needed in real life. A man with skills can take a LT Wright, Fiddleback Forge, or even a Mora Garberg into the bush and have great memories instead of dealing with the Lies from Survive Knives Crew. Listen to them they are worried about Covid when it was just the 2 of them and they share the same bed but that was the hold up. There was a time 3V was hard to get but everyone has it now. You want a good 3V bushcraft Knife the get the LT Wright Illuminous 5 for 260 with a sheath or 220 without. If you haven't tried their AEB-L then you haven't seen a slicer yet. I get custom 3v knives with desert ironwood for what Survive charges yep the same one DBK use sometimes on their show. M390 or Cruwear will serve you well too. I want a knife that I can sharpen in a few minutes as toughness is over rated for most jobs.
 
Business as usual at S!K. There is always an excuse...

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This is a conversation from their Instagram on 10/5/2020:

Customer - Hi,did you start shipping the 5.1?

S!K - Not yet. We currently getting the last GSO-3.5 orders out and finishing up GSO-6 and GSO-12 knives. We're also getting GSO-4.5 and GSO-10 blades ready for bevel grinding. The GSO-8 and GSO-5.1 will be finishing pretty close to one another.

Customer - ok,because they were supposed to be shipped in October... I ordered a year ago starting to get a little anxious

S!K - We'll be able to give better delivery estimates once our new Blanchard grinder hits our floor. As was stated in previous updates, we've had a hard time getting back on schedule after the lost time associated with all the Covid-19 stuff. Grinding has been our only bottleneck, so the new grinder should get us back on track with no trouble.
 
Here is another great display of the customer care you can expect from S!K...

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This is a conversation from their Instagram on 10/5/2020:

Customer - Have you considered doing anything for people who backed you for the Starter run and ended up waiting 5-6 years instead of the 6 month original estimate? Even something like a $10 off per knife would go a long way towards showing appreciation for the customers who stuck through the “dark times” and take some of that bad taste away.

S!K - We do understand the frustration with the wait. The Starter campaign was never supposed to go down like it did, so it has been very frustrating for us as well. Receiving bad work from service providers, paying for that bad work, lost time fixing the bad work, lost income and opportunities because of the delays, moving the entire business, making huge investments in improving production so we can be good on promises we made... This entire thing has been pretty frustrating for us as well. The wait aside, those discounted Starter order prices are a pretty screaming deal, especially compared to our new pricing. We can't give you any more discounts for the wait but we can promise that you'll be getting a much better knife than what you paid for. All of the process improvements along the way are one of the few silver linings to the delays and setbacks.
 
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