Good afternoon everyone,
Still quite mess here but just wanted to do a quick jump here.
First thing is that i will not fight over Brian's demands, he is the customer here is my policy is quite clear as it all has been: i will turn backwards if possible to meet customers expectations. Not only a customer, but a really great customer that even offered to pay me extra on a few knives he owns from me when back in 2023 i had to make some medical exams for a strange pain i was feeling in my guts.
I have reached the international market a couple years and since them i have delivered over 200 customers (probably more) and made over 400 knives, not only to US initially.
I left high school straight to knifemaking full time, back in that time knifemaking as a career was not even a thing, but i just wanted to follow up my passion... you can see by this thread my artistic skills may have created a gap between my logistic/business skills, i apologize for this, im more listening than talking here, but that is the conclusion i reached after thinking how one of my great customers reached this point of frustration after complimenting my work over months, i did really bad!
It somehow challenging to write such text in a different language on a smartphone, i dont want to express myself wrong, but:
Any member with on going orders with me, if you dont trust anymore my work, that is completely ok and i wont fight on it
I have created now this email
fvaztroubleshooting@gmail.com - please contact here if you have order with me and would like to discuss any problems and asking for a refund. It will be honored and it will be fast.
Regarding shipments delay, there were in fact specific delays due DHL using 3th companies in my region. It is important to say i live in the southernmost city on Brazil, LITERALLY, and quite far from the big city which DHL has their gateway. They had used in the past really bad 3th companies that used to make a very long route to make it worth in terms of gas and logistics (very few people in Brazil uses DHL, most of them uses Correios which is an state company) - so to make it worth, they grab packages for many companies, and for such, they attend to multiple interests. Last year we got over 4 cyclones in my region, there are plenty media reports of it and i have shared some of them - there were a lot of queues created in the shipments since 3th uses trucks and honestly, it seems to me that a small business shipping low volume of about 1~2kg packages will be obviously put in low priority compared to bigger companies that bring much more income to DHL as customers. There are public reports of many other customers here in Brazil claiming problems with 3th - this is the reason why im leaving them and starting to use UPS which seems to have a much greater reputation and use also different routes, as well better 3th companies. UPS and fedex seems to be the best by now. A few delays became so bad i even personally visited their warehouse in feb, which i also reported to Brian, because i was not sure it they were lying to me as they are not very helpful via call. It is quite far from me but it was necessary.
It is also important to remember that, posts like this may create a bias that im a horrible person or maker, but in bulk of all the knives i did last year and delivered, more than 150, a very small portion faced problems, i would say with ease less than 10% of the customers - there are in fact a few exceptions as you can see in this post, but i'm only one and making high-end knives is a kid playground compared to dealing with people in a business - this requires tones of skills that you can only develop by trying, as someone with 24 im still a work in progress
Literally by every transaction i usually learn a thing or two - i got customers over all the states of america and sometimes a customer from NY is different from a customer in California, bringing different demands, communication and such. It is a true challenge to adapt to that, but i do my best, most of my customers have a very friendly relationship with me.
Last 2 months i have been very busy assisting my parents in law, which also forced me to slow down my production as they live far from me and sometimes i had to be in their home taking care for days, i didnt even posted any available knives in the forum - my communication become really bad with customers and i also reported that to orders.
If you're a customer and currently are concerned, please feel free to contact me, i can prove every single word I said here, i would love to share anything on my end that could make the transaction smoother or easier, including a refund if you simply dont want to be concerned.
Bladeforums is a great community, made customers and friends here, people taught me a lot, even a few customers reached me back in 24h offering to help and discussed how the situation is towards the customers perspective - this is super important, most of my customers here comes from different generations and more than double my age, is really difficult for me to see how you see but im blessed for the help.
Blues
As of the kingwood i posted in the bladeforums, i mentioned by that time that customs COULD create delays, as sometimes they can create by basically anything, but this is unlike to happen as CITES allows packages of under 10kg as per finished products (such as knife scales) link
https://www.bada.org/resources/business-briefing-cites-restrictions-lifted-certain-rosewoods
10kg is quite a lot of kingwood, probably no one would buy that much.
I will be sharp on my email, but please tolerate longer times to reply back, we are about to be hit anytime from now - my city is in the sea level and all the rain up the states comes here to flows to the ocean, could be something bad or could be something BAD, we dont know yet.
Thank you all, sorry for typos of any kind.
