While it is true that the previous owners of the company made stupid decisions to cut costs, I believe that exaggerated claims are being made about the current state of the company.
The fine writing division is only a small part of the Pelikan Group's business and it is not easy to separate its results from those of the other divisions. I think Hameln inspires much more confidence than PICB. In any case, the company has been part of the Malaysian group for more than 20 years and has continued to produce good pens during that time. Everything is changeable, managers can be successful with a company for a while and then things go wrong. In the case of pens, the market shrinks. Sailor has problems and has expressed that changes in writing habits are leading to fewer and fewer pen users. To stem the crisis, they are now launching a pen with a section that is ergonomically adaptable to the user.
I recently bought an M200 blue pastel and I can't see any decline in the quality of the product. I also have an M150 from the 80's. We have to remember that this forum is very limited in terms of information. I can't recall ever reading anything from someone who has worked in the industry. You can learn a lot from the few documentaries about pen companies, I remember one by Waldmann and one by Otto Hutt. It is also interesting to hear the CEO of Kaweco. But that is the exception. It is all conjecture based on very limited information. It seems certain that the nibs of the M1000 are inconsistent. It's a very strange problem, why aren't there problems with the other nibs? On the other hand, these are very silly problems, nib delianeation and baby's bottom. It's impossible that the technical department doesn't know what's going on, why haven't they taken action? It's very strange because I doubt very much that there is no manual check. Such quality control works for all other models.