I got this pen today

[cat74]

Received an Esterbrook M2 in the mail today! I know the colour is "olive" but it reminds me of the avocado green fridge and stove we had growing up!!

[inkstainedruth]

Hah!  I think we may have had a similar stove and fridge in the house where I grew up....  

At least it wasn't "Harvest Gold" -- the other late 1960s appliance color.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

[USG]

10 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

👍  Nice haul. Impressive layout. 🙂👍

 

Ha ha, I wrote this from  my iPad and couldn't read the small print.  I see now that you're complaining.  Nevertheless, you got a lot of nice stuff, the ink didn't leak and nothing seems broken.

[Lithium466]

7 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Disappointing but my recent Cultpens order had a distinct "lack of care" in the packaging, that wasn't there a few years ago. I can't really order single colour pencils now as they often arrive poorly packaged with the tip brocken

 

That said, that Opus 88 looks very nice.

[GHgirl]

Can someone help me? I am totally stupid on how to participate in a forum. I have a cross fountain pen I’m trying to identify. What am I supposed to do?

[Mark from Yorkshire]

Post it here and in the cross page and ask for help identifying. I’m sure one of our knowledgeable brethren will be able to help you out

[Mark from Yorkshire]

It looks like a special edition possibly based on the century ii or the century classic as a rough guess 

[A Smug Dill]

10 hours ago, USG said:

I see now that you're complaining.

 

Actually, I was sharing my ‘New Pen Day’ experience, and also presenting some illustration (backed by ‘evidence’) of what I consider to be sloppy work by a commercial supplier. It's just storytelling, for lack of a better term.

 

When I complain, it would — and, in this case, will, in view of the below — be directly to the retailer, with whom I have the commercial relationship on account of this transaction (as well as an extensive order history). I don't post on social media to engage business entities with whom I have a problem with products or items they made and/or sold to me, I don't expect them to be prowling the Internet looking for grievances expressed by individual customers of theirs, and my intent would not to be elicit responses from others in relation to my complaints. Nevertheless, I suppose one could call “old man yells at cloud” a form of complaining.

 

10 hours ago, USG said:

Nevertheless, you got a lot of nice stuff, the ink didn't leak and nothing seems broken.

 

 

Whoever at Cult Pens, or Global-e performing order fulfilment on its behalf, swapped an EF nib onto this LAMY AL-star in Petrol (which was factory-fitted with an M nib) to fulfil my pre-order, in all likelihood was also the person who put scratches on the grip section of the new pen while he/she was at it.

[AmandaW]

18 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

scratches on the grip section

That's not good! I do hope they replace it for you. My experience with a Cult oops was less happy - they refunded instead of replacing which put me back where I had begun 6 weeks earlier - money back, no gift and no time left to get one online (which meant shopping locally at greater expense and few choices).

 

But... do you like the colour of the Petrol?

[A Smug Dill]

LAMY's idea and rendition of the ‘Petrol’ colour is OK. Very like Sailor Shikiori Miruai.

 

As for Cult Pens, I don't think it'll replace either the pen or the grip section me, with or without my returning the pen or just the arrived-scratched component to it in the UK; and I don't actually need or even want it to. An acknowledgement by Cult Pens that it was sloppy work and poor handling of my pre-order, and an awareness that it triggered a few “me too” responses in social media, would be enough for me.

 

I went ahead and flushed the grip section (and, dang, I was surprised by the amount of blue ink in the feed, which took me ages to get completely cleaned out), and then largely polished out the scratches on both flat aspects of the grip section with Novus polishing liquids. While I was at it, I noticed — and this isn't Cult Pens's fault, or even its lapse in quality control to let it pass undetected — the bottom edges of the flat aspects, especially near the nib end, are kinda sharp. I'd say they were poorly finished enough by LAMY that the microscopically jagged edges would likely have lacerated the top layer of skin, if my fingertips were somewhat calloused. A dozen passes with the 6000-grit side of a nail buffer stick weren't enough to eradicate that sharpness, and I ended up have to use the 300-grit side to smoothen those edges (before re-polishing with Novus).

[Misfit]

@A Smug Dill it’s a pity your order wasn’t treated better. 
 

Do you plan on reviewing the Diamine wonders inks?  I hope so.

[A Smug Dill]

41 minutes ago, Misfit said:

Do you plan on reviewing the Diamine wonders inks?  I hope so.

 

Probably not in the immediate future, although I did use Chichen Itza just now to dip-test the AL-star Petrol. That ink comes across as much like Robert Oster Chicago, so I might do a head-to-head between those two, when I have nothing else better to do.

 

The EF nib Cult Pens (or Global-e) fitted onto my AL-star Petrol is actually the first LAMY Z50 polished steel EF nib that isn't scratchy (without requiring my intervention), so even though I hadn't really intended on inking up the pen with a converter and put it to use, I probably will now, just to see if it writes finely. (Dip-testing without a converter attached, the lines come out a bit broader that what I was expecting on an EF nib, but then it is quite apt to happen when there is nothing on the other end of the feed regulating the ink-air exchange.)

[USG]

4 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

I was sharing my ‘New Pen Day’ experience, and also presenting some illustration (backed by ‘evidence’) of what I consider to be sloppy work by a commercial supplier. It's just storytelling, for lack of a better term.

 

 

Illustrating.  That's what I meant. 🙂

[jchch1950]

When you buy a pen or any other thing from a seller abroad and you have to send the article back for an exchange you have to pay double import taxes. The first when the original item arrive and then when the substitution one is received.

[A Smug Dill]

37 minutes ago, jchch1950 said:

When you buy a pen or any other thing from a seller abroad and you have to send the article back for an exchange you have to pay double import taxes.

 

I haven't found that to be true, not when I'd returned pens to 1. (now-defunct) La Couronne du Comte in the Netherlands, 2. Iguana Sell in Spain, 3. Santini Italia in Italy, and 4. (just last week) Amazon Japan.

 

LCdC never added the 10% (Australian) GST to my orders, perhaps because it didn't sell ≥A$75,000 to customers with delivery addresses in Australia within any rolling 12-month period 🤔; Iguana Sell sent me the paperwork for re-import, and ultimately refunded the defective item in full; Santini Italia, in both instances, sent me the paperwork I needed to include, reimbursed me for shipping the item back, fixed my pen (component), and returned it to me at its expense; and I'm still sorting out the argy-bargy with Amazon Japan, but (import) taxes and duties weren't one of the issues.

[Lithium466]

7 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

The EF nib Cult Pens (or Global-e) fitted onto my AL-star Petrol is actually the first LAMY Z50 polished steel EF nib that isn't scratchy (without requiring my intervention)

That is excellent news, hopefully not a one off but a sign of improvement. Yes I want to be naive and believe in that!

So far I never had much luck with Z50 EF, only with Z52/53/55...

[A Smug Dill]

On 2/10/2023 at 1:00 PM, A Smug Dill said:

When I complain, it would — and, in this case, will, in view of the below — be directly to the retailer,

On 2/10/2023 at 1:15 PM, AmandaW said:

I do hope they replace it for you. My experience with a Cult oops was less happy

 

Cult Pens replied to tell me that LAMY does not supply pens factory-fitted with EF nibs to retailers, only “standard sizes F, M, and B”, so they have to perform nib swapping in-house in order to make a widest range of nib options for customers to order. Really? I've never heard that one before.

• I could probably believe it for the Left-Handed nib, which is an option on all of the LAMY AL-star fountain pens currently listed by Cult Pens… except for the Cosmic colourway, which isn't even on clearance. If it's just a matter of Cult Pens fitting whichever nib width grade the customer wanted, then why is the AL-star Cosmic only available with a Fine nib? (I'll also note that Medium is absent as a nib option for Cult Pen's current listing of the LAMY Safari Mango.)
• Cult Pens also stock and sell LAMY Z50 steel nibs in 1.1, 1.5, 1.9, and A types; but they are not listed as nib options for the AL-star (or Safari, Scala, etc.).
• I pointed out that, in the same order, there is a LAMY Al-star in Black-Purple that has an EF nib on it; and the text on the barcode labels, on both the pen cap and the silver cardboard box in which the pen came, correctly identifies the nib width grade as printed. Furthermore, the article number on those labels is 1221731, which is what LAMY uses for the Al-star in Black-Purple specifically with EF nib (which, by the way, can be ordered through LAMY's own online shop), as opposed to Cult Pens's product code (LM15559-EF); and the prices on the label are given in EUR and CHF but not GBP. That leaves me no doubt that the labels are LAMY's. In reply, Cult Pens told me that LAMY supplies those sticky labels for retailers to apply when they do sell units of the AL-star fitted with EF nibs. Yet Cult Pens did not apply a LAMY barcode label corresponding to a Al-star in Petrol specifically with EF nib to my pre-order, and had to cover it up with a label with F printed on it, then write E with a ballpoint pen in front of the printed F; and fail to slip the pen back into a silver cardboard box, with or without an appropriate sticky label, after doing the nib swap.

Yeah, that all makes so much sense, and credibility is not being stretched.

 

For what it's worth, Cult Pens did offer, “if you would prefer to return any for a refund if they are not as expected please do so.” However, there was no mention of who pays for return international shipping from Australia to the UK.

[inkstainedruth]

3 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Cult Pens replied to tell me that LAMY does not supply pens factory-fitted with EF nibs to retailers, only “standard sizes F, M, and B”, so they have to perform nib swapping in-house in order to make a widest range of nib options for customers to order. Really? I've never heard that one before.

When I went to order this year's Lilac al-Star a couple of weeks ago, most of the US retailers (Cult Pens hadn't gotten them in yet, but I looked at them as well) were listing them as coming in EF, F or M.  The only one that didn't was Vanness, who gave me the option of them installing my choice of nib (assuming said nib was in stock).  I did end up just going for an M nib, but considered whether or not to get something a little more exotic, like a 1.5 mm stub.

As for the label?  Cult Pens could have just been out of stock of the "correct" one for the pen you ordered -- I'm sure that Lamy doesn't just print out dozens of extras for "just in case" instances.

But yeah, I'd be unhappy if something bought new arrived damaged.  And I'd insist that they foot the bill for the return shipping in a case like yours....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[AmandaW]

3 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

LAMY does not supply pens factory-fitted with EF nibs to retailers, only “standard sizes F, M, and B”,

Interesting. So why does Pulp charge an extra $3 for all sizes other than M.