Fed Up With Moleskin Bashing

[Lefthand_Smudge]

I'm really fed up with the general "no negativity" attitude....

 

 

I couldn't agree with you more. Negative comments are actually quite useful. If a product is bad I would like to know about it before I buy. Negative comments help me avoid the error of buying something not fit for my purpose. It's one of the things that makes FPN useful. Otherwise it would be overly sycophantic.

 

If you have a bad experience with a business or product it helps if you tell people about it. Specific statements of fact suffice, light embellishments for colour is passable too.

 

Are moleskines good with fountain pens? Generally no. They don't like wet pens, nor do they like feathery inks. They do function without issue but only with the right pen and ink combinations. There are better options at the same price.

[Lloyd]

Beak (the OP) wasn't complaining about negative comments. He was complaining about the negative comments that lacked a reason for the user's dislike of the product. E.g.,:

 

Good: "I don't like Moleskine because my preferred pen/ink combinations excessively feather."

Bad: " I hate Moleskine notebooks. It's lame."

[jor412]

Beak (the OP) wasn't complaining about negative comments. He was complaining about the negative comments that lacked a reason for the user's dislike of the product. E.g.,:

 

Good: "I don't like Moleskine because my preferred pen/ink combinations excessively feather."

Bad: " I hate Moleskine notebooks. It's lame."

 

+1 Was about to say the same.

[DAYoung]

Just backing up Lloyd (and Beak) here. The important phrase is this: If you don't like MS, fine - say so. But please give reasons and examples in preference to mere insults.

[ethernautrix]

Moleskine is boring.

 

I'm kidding. I like Moleskine. I use the cheaper lookalike for my journal, but I like Moleskine. I'm using a Moleskine Diary, for instance.

 

I've always browsed notebooks in stationery, office supplies, and book stores, and the first time I saw a Moleskine was in an independent book store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Of course. (I mean, in hindsight, of course. Williamsburg is a hipster breeding ground, and I say that with affectionate bemusement.)

 

I was excited because of the narrow rule and the inside pocket. I hadn't seen a notebook with those features before. The cost was steep, so I didn't buy it. Until maybe a week later. I had to go back and get it. I had never heard of the brand, and I don't know if it was already a hipster signifier back then (2002).

 

I also unashamedly and unironicallly and unapologetically drink caffe lattes from Starbucks and regular coffee from Peet's and don't have any Apple products (but for practical reasons, not emotional ones). I don't eat at McDonald's (et al.), because that's not food.

 

But... yeah...

[beak]

Edited September 18, 2011 by beak

[beak]

My beef with Moleskin is simply cost vs quality. ...............

 

Now that bit (cost) I can agree with; here my habitual 8x5 gridded reporter costs about $32. I know that I can hunt around on line and save something on that, but I never seem to get round to it, and just pick up another one locally; they are easy to find here. I would expect the thing to cost no more than $15, but you get used to the idea of paying a little too much for imported things here - they have such a long way to come!

[danalcantara]

I've never had any real issues with Moleskine. Noticed that occasionally the ink would just sort of... not seem to write on the paper but that also applied to gel pens.

 

The only reason why I'm looking elsewhere is that I tried Rhodia paper for the first time a couple months ago and fell in love.

[79spitfire]

My beef with Moleskin is simply cost vs quality. ...............

 

Now that bit (cost) I can agree with; here my habitual 8x5 gridded reporter costs about $32. I know that I can hunt around on line and save something on that, but I never seem to get round to it, and just pick up another one locally; they are easy to find here. I would expect the thing to cost no more than $15, but you get used to the idea of paying a little too much for imported things here - they have such a long way to come!

 

When I refer to quality, I mean the paper it self. Some pages feather, and some don't with the same pen/ink combo. With the Rhodia, the papers are more consistent. If it feathers on one page, if feathers on them all :roflmho:

 

The blotter is a great idea I have several from Richard Binder, I'll have to slip one into each of my notebooks, I wish I had thought of it myself...

[Lloyd]

The blotter is a great idea I have several from Richard Binder, I'll have to slip one into each of my notebooks, I wish I had thought of it myself...

 

 

Pretend...I won't divulge your secret.

 

 

What I don't understand, Beak, is why this gripe about bashing is being directed at negative Moleskine comments as opposed to negative comments on all things in these forums?

[beak]

..........

 

What I don't understand, Beak, is why this gripe about bashing is being directed at negative Moleskine comments as opposed to negative comments on all things in these forums?

 

Sure - you're right. This particular target just happened to be very noticeable to me recently, but it applies all round, as you say.

[JefferyS]

I regret ever complaining about MontBlanc as my issue was with a few people, not the pen. Complaining about a few employees helps nobody here.

[dapv]

I was born with the gift of being able to be piccyune [sp] about any product. So, I can find fault with almost every journal, etc. And, as my friend Monk would say: "it's a blessing and a curse". For example, while I've been a long time Moleskine user in the past, I haven't been since they moved production to China, and kept their prices high. This also holds true for Cross pens. I have nothing against China, but I prefer Cross keep their production, etc in Rhode Island, and Moleskine keep their business in Italy.

 

Clearly, certain words bring out the bashing in people, e.g., Rolex, Apple, Moleskine, Monblanc, et al. Look, those companies do charge a premium for their names, but their products perform. If the product was inferior those companies would not be in business. These are some of the most successful companies in the world, and there's a reason ... they do it well, business that is. And, some of us find these names to be fun, and their products useful and good. Is there a premium ... yes, of course, but so what, who cares.

 

I'm no longer a Moleskine user for the aforementioned reasons, but I would like to be a user because their products fit my needs better than the alternatives. But, I decided to draw a line in the sand for my personal reasons, and won't budge, but I'm not going to bash Cross or Moleskine because they've drawn a line in the sand which is their right. So, I vote with my $$$.

 

I agree with the OP, reasons and pics are always more interesting and more helpful, and provide for a better discussion.

[Chrontius]

Moleskines feather with fountain pen ink? I never noticed. :roflmho:

 

Seriously, I lucked into what may be the single best-behaved ink (and possibly best looking) on Moleskine paper just before I bought my first. Add to that the fact that it's basically the single best summer turquoise for off-white paper, and you can see why I evangelize for the stuff.

 

Seriously, how many people actually have trouble with moleskine paper? My problem is the cahier covers delaminate long before the paper runs out, and the books' elastic rarely lasts half as long as the paper in the pocket-notebook role. Granted, that thin paper means there's a lot to go through, and they tend to be slow with discontinuing products, so you can usually find a replacement even years after your first one runs out. Not having to worry about whether you'll have to stock up is incredibly comforting, in my experience - bargain hunting tends to instill that sort of thing in you, since you often end up with clearance products (Target's Rhodia cleanout of last year, I'm looking at you).

[radellaf]

I've only recently used any cahiers, and the covers are getting crease lines from normal handling rather quickly. I have had the elastic get too loose on my most-used regular styple pocket notebook. There any good hacks to fix that that you've seen?

 

But, yes, a lot of us have trouble with bleedthrough on the paper, and my paper is pre-China vintage. A good deal of my pen choices have been aimed at being able to use the majority of inks in moleskines (i.e., fine and/or dry). Some inks bleed through anyway, Concord Grape probably being the most extreme example.

[Dimitrios_P]

MS have better variety of sizes. Sometimes the ink bleeds sometimes not.

 

Rhodia which I prefer is to smooth for others.

[mstone]

Seriously, how many people actually have trouble with moleskine paper? My problem is the cahier covers delaminate long before the paper runs out

 

I've had trouble with inconsistent paper and covers that come apart. There are simply better products out there for the money. People seem to get sucked into moleskines because they're everywhere, and might not ever see some of the better alternatives. OTOH, if they all started spending more money on marketing maybe they'd all have mediocre/inconsistent quality.

[beak]

.............. People seem to get sucked into moleskines .............

 

Who are these 'people' I wonder? None of the contributors above seem to fall into the 'sucked in' category IMO, and speaking for myself (a practice not universal), I have given pretty clear indications of why I decide to use them.

[mstone]

.............. People seem to get sucked into moleskines .............

 

Who are these 'people' I wonder?

 

That would be the people who try and try to find ink and pens that don't feather on their notepads, post here looking for recommendations, etc., and are delighted when they try a recommendation for a different pad and discover it wasn't their ink and pen at all, it was their notepad. We all get that you like you moleskine, that's great and all, but there are an awful lot of people who have gone through this trajectory of getting lousy paper or build quality in a moleskine and then discovering there are other pads which are more consistent for about the same price. (Though they are generally harder to find--around here you can hardly turn around in a store that sells paper products without tripping over a big moleskine display with a bunch of stuff about Hemingway all over it.) And the displays do look nice, and somtimes the pads are fine, and it's a pleasant experience right up until you hit pages that feature or you're partway through a pad and it disintegrates. Maybe yours come from a different distributor or a different factory, or you've just been lucky. Who knows--it's not something I can control, so it's not going to factor into my purchasing decisions. You can call it bashing if you want to, I call it "once bitten, twice shy", with enough people reporting issues that it's more a pattern than an isolated incident or two.

[jor412]

I've always liked the way moleskines looked and the variety of sizes they come in. I've never had them fall apart on me either. I like the built-in pocket. I even like the marketing, even if I know it's marketing. They work great with my gel pens. But not so well with my fountain pens. I've had problems with them bleeding through using an Esterbrook fine nib (9556) and Herbin Lie de The as well as other fine nibs and drier inks. I don't know if this is consistent but the bleeding was worse on the big notebook with graphing paper I had versus the small weekly planner I'm currently using. I had another pocket sized notebook that I used with a Waterman Laureat II medium nib, Waterman black, and had no major bleed through. It may be that different sizes, purposes, and places of origin have something to do with the quality of the paper.