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Happy endings and a win for Italian spirit

Eight days ago I posted about my ordeal with three less-than-perfect nibs, and how the retailers and brands were working with me to fix the problems.

I wanted to check in and tell you how it went… And to share some positive nib news too.

Let’s start with Nettuno. I can’t rate Nino the CEO highly enough. He showed amazing customer service attitude, and did all the right things: checked in with me frequently, sent me a video of the new nib writing, got me the new nib fast without me having to send the old one back first. I was back writing with a nice smooth nib on the Nettuno first.

I can’t fault Luca at Scribo either, or Scribe (the retailer). Luca stayed in constant contact with me. He worked on my pen quickly, and sent it back by DHL beautifully wrapped with a card and a little bottle of the matching Verde Prato ink. Most importantly, the nib is now just how I expected it, and I love my new pen. It arrived with me the day after the Nettuno, which given I sent it to Bologna first isn’t bad at all.

And now on to the Visconti. La Couronne du Comte organised a DHL collection, and the pen arrived on Monday. I chased them on Tuesday and Wednesday and they replied to me on Thursday. No progress (despite the “greatest urgency”) and I’m genuinely confused about what’s going on.

I am honestly wishing I had just asked for a refund.

Luckily I have more good news from the land of the nib to cheer us up.

The Bock titanium I ordered to go with my new Pony Express was remarkably good out of the box — and I have only about a 50% success rate with Bock Ti nibs, from a sample of about eight. So that roll of the dice went well.

And to cap it all off, the Sailor Naginata Cross Concord. Holy moly, what an incredible writing instrument. I was expecting to be underwhelmed after all the hype, but this complex nib looks perfect under the loupe, and writes both a precise extra fine and a ludicrous wet mega paintbrush on the reverse side. The pen body is totally forgettable, but this has instantly become one of my favourite nibs.

So Italian passion saved two of my pens (so far), but it was Japanese eccentricity that made the biggest impression!

6 Comments

  1. ruurd

    I don’t know if doing a Karen on LCDC is warranted here. They often are dependent on third parties as a (web)shop so you really cannot blame them. Besides I am happy to tell you they have more than one customer.

    • Peter

      Having ‘more than one customer’ is no excuse for not replying to messages for two days, especially for a luxury retailer. I would be very unimpressed if I were in his position too. They didn’t even answer his question about whether the pen arrived, and provided the barest of non-committal responses, which could have meant more or less anything – is the pen even with the distributor yet? Who knows. It’s their communication which is the real issue here, in my opinion.

      • Anthony

        Thank you, Peter. I don’t think calling people ‘Karen’ is a particularly acceptable behaviour either, so @ruurd do it again and you won’t be welcome back on this blog.

        I was particularly calling out that Nettuno and Scribo both actively messaged me, multiple times, checking how they can help, checking that I received the new pen and what I thought… They have multiple customers too, and they could both have put the onus on the retailer to fix the problems instead of stepping in themselves. But LCDC is just shrugging and pointing the finger at the distributor. There are plenty of other ways they could resolve this problem if they really cared to do so.

  2. Louise

    Nice follow up and good to see that Nettuno and Scribo took on the responsibility for your problems and sorted them in a timely fashion.

  3. Inke

    I find the LCDC tale unfortunately very typical of my personal experiences with them. I ordered (and paid for) a Sailor ProGear Slim at La Couronne du Comte early June 2019. They told me (indeed in very, very formal wording) that they didn’t have it in stock and that they would order it for me. I was fine with that, so I waited, and waited, and waited until I forgot all about it until November when I emailed them for a follow-up. Now honestly this might be partly on me, because I had neglected the issue, but I was quite miffed to find out they had just completely forgotten about my order. This time they did pursue it and I got my pen two weeks later, but still…I was a customer, I had made purchase of almost €200 and I would have expected more diligence from them, especially because they position themselves as a luxury retail store with corresponding customer care.

    • Anthony

      Wow! Well, I’m not waiting until November!

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