When she first told me it was giving her trouble, I took it and gave it a good cleaning, but found that indeed it still skipped. So I sent it back to Parker/Sanford with a description of what was wrong. Of course, I tested it when it came back. It seemed to be working well, but even then it felt like a bit of a slow starter. It wouldn't write for the first two or three millimeters after touching the paper, but then as long as I didn't stop writing it seemed fine. If I paused even for 30 seconds or so I'd see that two or three millimeter hesitation again but then it would write well so long as I kept going.
Well, I found out recently that the Sonnet has still been giving her trouble. I took it back again and sure enough, it was skipping unless I pushed on it like I would a ballpoint (which I didn't do for long, of course, I just was trying to see what would make the ink flow). I cleaned it rather thoroughly again (warm water soak with a small amount of soap) and gave it back to her, but it's still not behaving.
Her words:
There are certain letters in particular that it's skipping on consistently - c, o, a, I, T. It seems that in any given word there is a problem with at least one of those, but it's not each letter every single time. Does that make sense? In order to get the ink to flow I have to press down sort of hard, and I know you said I should not be doing that.
I'm at a bit of a loss here, but I suspect that it may be time to send this to a nibmeister so that someone who knows what they are doing can look at it. I have to admit, I expected much more from Parker.