JetPens reviews

Wow. This company blows chunks. I am never giving them another dime. They are rude, belittling, and outright petty.

Here's the story:

Several months ago, I ordered a vanishing point stub nib unit. It arrives, no big deal. I put it in, terrible hard starting. I check to make sure that it's not my writing angle, I'm using my standard pilot blue black ink, check with a loupe, baby's bottom.

I email Jetpens, get a woman named Renee. She tells me to go ahead and try tuning the nib. I do some passes with micro mesh and get the worst of the baby's bottom out, but now it's still hard starting less, but following the right tine when it does, giving half width lines and failing on crossstrokes. I check more carefully, there was a defect. There is a polish bite running up the entire side of the left inside tine. I can't fix that without cutting past the tipping and into the gold. I let her know, she sends me a prepaid shipping label. Awesome. She mentions having "our team inspect it" so I include a full page writing sample showing all the problems, circling at least 20 different spots on a page where (after my tuning) it still has issues. I also include a writing sample with a properly tuned pilot stub nib, showing that there is absolutely something wrong with it.

Wait a week, and I get an email. "We couldn't find anything wrong." She said. "Let's mail you back the exact same nib."

I tell her that it's absolutely unacceptable to just return to me a nib I demonstrated was defective. They refund me my payment, along with a little passive aggressive "In our experience this nib seems to write normally, so in the future we would suggest choosing a different pen as other Vanishing Point stub nibs might write similarly." That pissed me off a bit but whatever, I let it slide.

this is my first experience with them as a customer. I have never ordered anything nor returned anything to them prior to this.

Fast forward several months to this week. I need some zebra D1 refills for my new sailor multi pen. Jetpens is the only one that seems to have 'em for a decent price. I still need to clear $25 for free shipping, so I toss in an EF pilot kakuno that I plan to give away.

The next day I get an email from a woman named Emily.

Quote"Thank you for your recent order with us.
Unfortunately as we were previously unable to confirm an issue you previously reported with a Pilot nib, we are concerned that other Pilot pens would not meet your needs either.
We can proceed with any of these options:

Cancel and refund your order.

Ship the order as you placed it if you accept that the Pilot Kakuno in your new order cannot be returned.

Remove and refund the Pilot Kakuno from your order, and ship the remainder of your order."

Okay, number 2 is f**king ridiculous. I returned a STUB, GOLD nib because it was defective, and they go out of their way to flag my name for MONTHS later, that I can never again order a pilot pen without being banned from ever returning it? What. The. F**k. I ordered a kakuno. A $12 pen. They are really going so far as to be this petty over $12? Goulet has lost more than $150 on me as customer in just giving me free stuff when problems arise (often unsolicited. They just threw in a $90 visconti pen case when I had problems with a homo sapiens, in addition to returning and exchanging and testing the new one for me, didn't even tell me they were doing it), and I've returned their generosity with thousands of dollars in business. They treat me right, I give them my money, even when they're a little more expensive. This is deliberate $#*!ishness. But I am reasonably polite.

Quote
I'm confused. I had a problem with a stub nib VP. I do not follow the logic that I couldn't return a kakuno with an extra fine if there was a problem with that pen. The nibs are different materials and literally completely opposite sides of the spectrum on size. I also gave very clear macro photos and writing samples showing that the VP nib was indeed defective, so telling me that I can't return the kakuno if it's defective is more than a little strange. I don't expect there to be a problem with it, I have three pilot penmanship with that nib already.
Do you guys actually want my business? This is not exactly a great way to make a customer feel confident. I've had issues with pens from Goulet but they've been accommodating and I've given them thousands of dollars in business.
If there is a problem with the kakuno's nib, I would like to feel confident that you'll take care of it. No brand is completely immune to failings in quality control.

I responded within an hour during the business day but they wait an entire day to get back to me. Again, pretty sh*t customer service practice, dragging things out like this.

Quote
Thank you for your reply, and I apologize again for any inconvenience.
While we are happy to help in the case of a defective item, we unfortunately weren't able to confirm the issue with your Pilot Vanishing Point nib. As we're concerned that other Pilot pens may also not be to your satisfaction, we can only ship Pilot pens to you if they are not returnable.
We understand if you would prefer to cancel and refund either your order or only the Pilot Kakuno pen, and we would be happy to assist with those options.
Please let us know how you would like to proceed. Thank you for your patience.

Not only a non-answer, but a deliberately petty, pathetic, and passive aggressive non-answer. They can get f**ked sideways with a rake.

My reply was much less nice. I told them to just ship my goddamn order because I need the zebra refills. But they've lost me as a customer forever because of this. It's petty and pathetic and sad. They don't deserve to be in business if they think that a single event with a single customer having a problem that "we couldn't recreate" is grounds from banning them from ever having recourse from defective products ever again. I emailed her back within five minutes and yet again, will not be hearing back until tomorrow at the earliest. Truly garbage service.

This is literally worse than Phil Wang at TWSBI. And that guy is a gigantic douche.

Pathetic. I hope this serves as a warning that Jetpens really doesn't care about us whatsoever. Take your business elsewhere, these people don't seem to want it.

I'm a stationery junkie, with my specialty being notebooks, highlighters and gel/liquid ink pens but a friend got me into fountain pens recently and looking for fountain pen friendly notebooks led me to JetPens. They carry a huge variety of Japanese notebooks (Kokuyo, Maruman) and the beloved Rhodia brand as well as many beginner/student friendly priced fountain pens (Lamy, Pelikan and cheaper Sailors). There are also a ton of other items: pencil cases, inks, mechanical pencils and so forth. They offer free shipping above $25, which is so easy and tempting. The packaging is always fine, no ink bottles broken or notebooks scuffed. Many customers review the items making their product review system extra helpful.