What Was Your Last Impulsive Pen Acquisition?

[AmandaW]

15 minutes ago, Misfit said:

In general, with any of my online shopping, if an item goes in the cart it is in stock

 

I have had many bad experiences over the past two years of "In Stock" proving to be incorrect after ordering and paying. The first few times, I waited patiently, sometimes for months. Then stopped buying from the frequent offenders.

 

It was particularly noticeable late last year, previously reliable sellers doing it too, I got mad and every time it happened I cancelled the whole order. (And then wait a week or more to get the money back. Why does that happen? It goes out of my account instantly when ordering.) Christmas shopping was a mess even though I started in September.

 

Is it a rort? Or are they all using incompetent software or stock systems? It's happening a lot with ebay sellers too and they blame the postal system when they haven't actually sent the thing! Just applying for a tracking number isn't "shipped".

 

Many sellers are now on my "be wary" list. I guess if I was interested in something they listed I would email to check if it's true before ordering. What other options are there?

[OldTravelingShoe]

I won't name now the sellers in Europe with whom I've experienced buying and then receiving an email "sorry, actually not in stock, want something else or to wait <x> months". These delay-emails seem to me rather common. 

 

Update: Looks like my post intersected @AmandaW's. I second that post. 

 

Rant starts.

But I can relate the experience from just this morning. I received a wonderful suggestion to give the Sailor Manyo Nekoyanagi ink as a gift to someone dear (many thanks, @Chi, for this suggestion). I tried several sellers in and around the Netherlands, and the only one who said they had it was Seller X; a bit more expensive, but worth it if I could gift it in time. This morning, several days after the actual order, in came the delay-email. (Worse, now my entire order will be delayed until the Sailor ink is back in stock. They did not assume responsibility for this delay and offer to ship what they have in stock from my order.) 

 

I don't find all this a big deal, it's for a hobby after all and we're in a pandemic, but I think (1) we should learn delays are to be expected and (2) perhaps these sellers could improve their inventory management.

 

Comments and suggestions are welcome.  

 

Rant over. Sorry if this was too off-topic.

Edited February 12, 2022 by OldTravelingShoe
Update due to another relevant message being posted as I was writing thism

[AmandaW]

54 minutes ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Worse, now my entire order will be delayed until the Sailor ink is back in stock. They did not assume responsibility for this delay and offer to ship what they have in stock from my order.) 

 

Nope. I would cancel the whole order. If we, as buyers, let them get away with this shoddy treatment it will continue to occur.

[Chi]

@OldTravelingShoe I am so sorry that happened!! 
 

in a discussion about trying to create sheen monster combo, Pelikan pens was recommended to me as a very wet pen even in Extra-fine and Fine nibs.

Ever since I fell in love with vintage pens, I stop purchasing current market pens that are over $100 usd.

however, for my sheen monster project I decided to give Pelikan a try… after strategically searching, I bought a M120 with medium nib that’s on sale about two weeks ago.

 

only took me 2 days after it arrived to order another Pelikan M400.

 

as of today, I have placed another order for M600…

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 hour ago, Chi said:

after strategically searching, I bought a M120 with medium nib that’s on sale about two weeks ago.

 

only took me 2 days after it arrived to order another Pelikan M400.

 

as of today, I have placed another order for M600…

Ooo, @Chi, soon you will have a flock of these Pelikans... They may try to hatch more 😄 

I like Pelikans very much as well, and found especially the vintage to be very expressive (here, with very different nibs and wetness). Also nice that their 120, 200, 400, and 600 series seem to enable nib exchanges. 

 

But, the real question: what is your monster sheen project? 

[MarcoA63]

A Remington sysringe filler 🙂

Transparent barrel, 14K plated nib. It is a very smooth writer. Couldn't believe it

M

[Chi]

 

This post is to answer question, not related to the thread.

 

3 hours ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Ooo, @Chi, soon you will have a flock of these Pelikans... They may try to hatch more 😄 

I like Pelikans very much as well, and found especially the vintage to be very expressive (here, with very different nibs and wetness). Also nice that their 120, 200, 400, and 600 series seem to enable nib exchanges. 

 

But, the real question: what is your monster sheen project? 

 

@OldTravelingShoeI have not yet found a vintage Pelikan I like but maybe it will show up in the future.

The consistent wet flow is a great delight to pair them with sheen and shading inks.

 

I tried very hard to make my Lamy azurite to sheen consistently. (Refer to This thread )

It becomes a project to find a good pen and paper combo to make my sheen inks shine.

There were a series of tryouts. 

Pelikan pen was one of the variables involved.

 

 

 

[essayfaire]

12 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

EndlessPens does.

 

Pen Chalet does, or did, and I'm not sure whether it's only when there are errors in its stock count. The retailer has done that to me more than twice.

 

Amazon does.

I've had Pen Chalet let me order out of stock/coming soon items, but it was clearly marked on the page prior to placing an order.  I've never ordered something to find out after the fact that it wasn't immediately available.  I'm quite surprised you've had the problem twice.

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 hour ago, Chi said:

have not yet found a vintage Pelikan I like but maybe it will show up in the future.

The consistent wet flow is a great delight to pair them with sheen and shading inks

@Chi, very nice project. Not sure if it helps, but I saw recently on offer many Pelikan 400NNs with (O)B and even (O)BB nibs; they seem a bit expensive for my taste at ~150€, but perhaps one won't be too much or you may be able to find one much cheaper. Wouldn't they produce enough flow for sheen?

 

I also saw the 1950s Geha had excellent flow. A 605 or the likes would be cheaper than the top of the line of that time. 

 

Sorry for the off-topic, folks, but this may generate an impulse buy 😉

[Chi]

1 hour ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Sorry for the off-topic, folks, but this may generate an impulse buy 😉

ha ha ha ha, so true! 

 

1 hour ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

@Chi, very nice project. Not sure if it helps, but I saw recently on offer many Pelikan 400NNs with (O)B and even (O)BB nibs; they seem a bit expensive for my taste at ~150€, but perhaps one won't be too much or you may be able to find one much cheaper. Wouldn't they produce enough flow for sheen?

Actually even with Fine nib, the flow is pretty awesome. I suspect the case of Azurite, might be the ink itself that is making it challenging. 

[como]

I thought of a solution to tame impulse purchase: every time you conquer the desire of impulse purchase, you put x amount of money in a reward account. Then you are left with a big balance after, say, six months. You can buy something very nice with it. What a nice idea! The one problem is that, you use this big balance to impulsively buy a dud pen, urggg. Ok, it's late, and my mind starts to wander off... 

[brokenclay]

40 minutes ago, como said:

I thought of a solution to tame impulse purchase:

 

And now instead of having spent x on pens, you've spent 2x.

[OldTravelingShoe]

16 minutes ago, brokenclay said:

And now instead of having spent x on pens, you've spent 2x.

I took @como's approach to mean spending only x, because to add to x one would need to 'conquer the desire of impulse purchase' (so, not spend that time). A large x, accumulated over six months... 😄

[brokenclay]

9 minutes ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

I took @como's approach to mean spending only x, because to add to x one would need to 'conquer the desire of impulse purchase' (so, not spend that time). A large x, accumulated over six months... 😄

 

Ah, I stand corrected. Thank you!

[OldTravelingShoe]

19 hours ago, AmandaW said:

Nope. I would cancel the whole order. If we, as buyers, let them get away with this shoddy treatment it will continue to occur.

I will consider doing this in the future. This seller is in my view not even the worst offender here, in the Netherlands.

 

I have another, more important, reason: I see so many sellers have closed doors that I feel I should try to understand and support them. So, on the one hand, I have my momentary discomfort, and, on the other, I see the community benefit these sellers can still bring. (This may be too dramatic, but it is one of the reasons for which I prefer to wait for longer than the A*n Prime, if I have a local option.) 

[DvdRiet]

23 hours ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

I won't name now the sellers in Europe with whom I've experienced buying and then receiving an email "sorry, actually not in stock, want something else or to wait <x> months". These delay-emails seem to me rather common. 

 

Update: Looks like my post intersected @AmandaW's. I second that post. 

 

Rant starts.

But I can relate the experience from just this morning. I received a wonderful suggestion to give the Sailor Manyo Nekoyanagi ink as a gift to someone dear (many thanks, @Chi, for this suggestion). I tried several sellers in and around the Netherlands, and the only one who said they had it was Seller X; a bit more expensive, but worth it if I could gift it in time. This morning, several days after the actual order, in came the delay-email. (Worse, now my entire order will be delayed until the Sailor ink is back in stock. They did not assume responsibility for this delay and offer to ship what they have in stock from my order.) 

 

I don't find all this a big deal, it's for a hobby after all and we're in a pandemic, but I think (1) we should learn delays are to be expected and (2) perhaps these sellers could improve their inventory management.

 

Comments and suggestions are welcome.  

 

Rant over. Sorry if this was too off-topic.

Hmmm, I think more than a few of us on here can guess exactly which retailer here in NL you are referring to. Right, @A Smug Dilland @Bikerchick? Inventory management is definitely a problem, but it seems all too often to be blamed on the pandemic supply chain disruptions. 
 

Edit: inventory management issues AND poor, inattentive, solely reactive, communication with customers, to be more precise.

Edited February 13, 2022 by DvdRiet

[A Smug Dill]

23 hours ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

I tried several sellers in and around the Netherlands, and the only one who said they had it was Seller X; a bit more expensive, but worth it if I could gift it in time. This morning, several days after the actual order, in came the delay-email.

4 minutes ago, DvdRiet said:

Hmmm, I think more than a few of us on here can guess exactly which retailer here in NL you are referring to. Right, @A Smug Dilland @Bikerchick?

 

The retailer you have in mind, @DvdRiet, is usually quick to inform that certain (or all of the) items on the accepted (and paid for) order are not currently in stock, within 48 hours; and would usually offer to arrange the dispatch of only what is immediately available. So, I suspect @OldTravelingShoe was in fact referring to a different retailer, that has more of a backorder policy of not shipping anything until the backordered items are all ready to be sent with the rest of the order, which is reasonable enough if the customer was advised prior to placing and paying for the order that one or more of the items are not in stock or ready to be shipped.

 

[DvdRiet]

28 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

The retailer you have in mind, @DvdRiet, is usually quick to inform that certain (or all of the) items on the accepted (and paid for) order are not currently in stock, within 48 hours; and would usually offer to arrange the dispatch of only what is immediately available. So, I suspect @OldTravelingShoe was in fact referring to a different retailer, that has more of a backorder policy of not shipping anything until the backordered items are all ready to be sent with the rest of the order, which is reasonable enough if the customer was advised prior to placing and paying for the order that one or more of the items are not in stock or ready to be shipped.

 

i do think that was previously the case, that available items were shipped. However, my last couple of orders were all held (without notice / proactive communication) until all items had been received. That despite some of the things in my order, like converters, being a question of a padded envelope at cheap local postage rates. Unfortunately.

 

It looked for a while like things had improved, which is why I gave them the benefit of the doubt and placed more orders, but my optimism was short-lived.

[OldTravelingShoe]

Indeed, it's been several days - Wed, Feb 9 through Sat, Feb 12. Not sure if there's an end-of-day or an end-of-week effect; the 48 hours mentioned by @A Smug Dill may still apply.

 

Unfortunately, I've experienced these delay-emails with at least two large retailers in the Netherlands, so perhaps this latest is not about to reveal a particular name 😅

 

[DvdRiet]

3 minutes ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Indeed, it's been several days - Wed, Feb 9 through Sat, Feb 12. Not sure if there's an end-of-day or an end-of-week effect; the 48 hours mentioned by @A Smug Dill may still apply.

 

Unfortunately, I've experienced these delay-emails with at least two large retailers in the Netherlands, so perhaps this latest is not about to reveal a particular name 😅

 

 

Oooh, so now I'm wondering who this second one is, although I think I might actually be able to guess.   I wish things were different with Disappointing Retailer #1 because I would really much rather buy from them than from everyone's favorite, who was quite unnecessarily rude to me when I asked a legitimate question about a product. Their inexplicably curt answer was along the lines of 'you don't know what you're talking about' and no further offer of assistance in finding the answer to my question. Rudeness happens to be the one thing that I will NOT tolerate from any retailer, and believe me, I tend to tolerate quite a lot of things other people wouldn't. Also, DR#1 offers a wider selection because they do sell things they do not have in stock but rely on distributors for.

 

And on that note of reliance on distributors, I can understand that there will be delays, some quite unexpectedly long under current global circumstances, and I am usually willing to wait for the things I want to come in. I can also understand that it is not very advantageous to a company's profitability to pay for multiple postage/shipping per order. (Although still cheaper than losing customers altogether...) Again, I am often willing to wait - if properly informed and given the choice. The waiting does become rather frustrating, however, when the timelines shown on the website are nowhere near reality on a regular basis and then the retailer tops that off with holding both a previous backorder and 95% of the current order to wait for a single, cheap to send item. For over a month.