Greedy nib meisters?

[Karmachanic]

I've never asked a nib grinder to finess a feed.  Never occurred to me that they would.  Are there individuals that do?

[Lithium466]

3 hours ago, Paul-in-SF said:

 

I see nothing in the OP to suggest that they do live in "America" (why the scare quotes, one wonders) nor that the experts they tried to consult are here either. 

No scare quotes intended, but "America" is wide with many different cultures  I don't pretend to have experienced them all, just a few of them.

 

As a side note, I didn't deal much with nibmeisters, but when that was the case always got prompt and polite answers, hence my surprise with the lack of response to the OP.

 

 

Edit: as of why I mentioned "America", simply because in my line of business that's usually from there that we get the least responsiveness from vendors. As you already mentioned, YMMV, it's just my own experience, in something  completely unrelated to pens/nibmeisters, etc.

I suppose I'm guilty of having let myself be sidetracked by unrelated past experiences.

 

[Ron Z]

There are as many different feeds as there are fountain pens.  Most modern pens have plastic feeds.  There are so many variables that you usually can't just stick a hard rubber feed into a modern cartridge/converter pen unless the manufacturer made them for that pen, and you can get your hands on one.  You'll likely have flow issues if you try to put a vintage feed in a modern C/C pen - if it fits and writes at all.  I would likely shy away from that if asked.

[LoveBigPensAndCannotLie]

Greedy seems like a bad word to use here, maybe unresponsive would be better?

 

I've only dealt with one nibmeister but I've had good experiences with him. He fixed up one of my pens whose nib I took way too much tipping off of, and on a separate occasion I sent him a question about pen restorations and he informed me he doesn't do any but gave me a really good recommendation. That's something he had absolutely no obligation to do.

 

It seems to me that a lot of the nib people are very busy, so that may account for lack of response. Most of the ones I know of have at least a 2 or 3 month wait time, although some have an option for "rush work" for an additional fee. They seem like a hardworking bunch.

 

Now, some other people in the fountain pen industry, I've been disappointed by one or two. Not going to name names, but if you can't respond to emails in a timely matter (i.e., within a week, I think that's reasonable - or at all for that matter), that's kind of bad. Communicating with your customers is a part of doing business in the 21st century and if you can't do that, I question what you are doing. This is kind of a niche hobby and because of that some people get away with having bad service because there are literally no alternatives. Feels bad being held hostage if you want certain things for vintage pens...

 

  

20 hours ago, txomsy said:

I do not say one cannot complain. I fully understand one sometimes wants to vent one's own frustration. And that is OK, sane, healthy and necessary in all human relations. By all means, do complain when you feel offended, do vent our your frustration. But try to seek a constructive way to air your peeves, and always try to consider that the other side may have their own reasons and vital circumstances.

 

Or come to the Pen Rant thread in Chatter for senseless ranting and venting. 😁

[Waltz For Zizi]

On 7/30/2023 at 7:30 PM, Forsberg said:

Thanks guys. To make it clear - I have written more or less with details what the problem was, what I suspect and what I expect. Can't be simpler and straightforward.
If I lose my time to elaborate at least 20 sentences to describe the issue and my expectations, I would expect at least a reply "no thank you I don't do such things".
Whether it is pen for 2 dollar or 2000 dollar it is my decision if I go for service which could be for 50 dollar. So I doubt it is related to price.
I think they found that changing a feed to ebonite, adjusting it to the nib is not worth of their "time". So my conlusion is as I stated before - too greedy/not worth their "precious" time for cheap pens.

I may visit someone face to face and give up online "experts" who have even no dignity for any reply, it would be the best.
The French site Lithium466 suggested may be a good start, I may be around France later this year.

Or you can learn it to do it yourself. I did it because in my country there is only one person that does nib work and pen repair that I know of and my experience with him with a pen was horrible. Zero communication, he even sent my pen back half repaired without even a simple notice. I don't know the prices in other places but he is asking 50$ for a nib grind, so i did the sensible thing and bought myself a 5$ grinding pads set and now I do my own architects, italics/stubs, obliques. I couldn't be happier with my own work.

[mke]

I wrote to a famous nibmeister in the country I live - in his language - but got no answer. One month later, I repeated my question. No answer. 

Actually, he is inviting questions - even in English - on his homepage. Waited another 2 months and asked on IG where he is "active". No answer.

 

I can understand the mood of the OP.

 

My mails were always polite. I also would like to say a lot of bad words about this "no answer" attitude. If one has a business, then one should answer latest after a week.

 

It would have been a $300→400 grinding order. 

 

I would send my nibs to the US were there not the $100+ two-way shipping cost involved.

 

 

 

[nibtip]

1 hour ago, mke said:

I wrote to a famous nibmeister in the country I live - in his language - but got no answer. One month later, I repeated my question. No answer. 

Actually, he is inviting questions - even in English - on his homepage. Waited another 2 months and asked on IG where he is "active". No answer.

 

I can understand the mood of the OP.

 

My mails were always polite. I also would like to say a lot of bad words about this "no answer" attitude. If one has a business, then one should answer latest after a week.

 

It would have been a $300→400 grinding order. 

 

I would send my nibs to the US were there not the $100+ two-way shipping cost involved.

 

 

 

Perhaps A problem of ego hypertrophy. Or a misanthropic person. In which case he should delete his homepage.

No excuse for being without manners.

In recent years or even decades, many have started to behave uppish.

[nibtip]

On 7/28/2023 at 11:53 AM, Forsberg said:

Hello,

 

I am a fan of fountain pens and decided to use some help of nib masters - I have some issues with a feeder and a flex nib – they need to be adjusted to provide a stable ink flow.
I have emailed 5 so called nib masters explaining the problem. After initial contact no any answer, no any reply – are those people so narrow-minded they fix only luxury pens for 1000 euro so they don't bother with anything cheap? I can understand a one person, but none of 5 replied with the acceptance of the job and price for it.
That gives the impression of really closed minds of people who do it as a job.... I am disappointed in this - at least in the Europe.

I don't think Nib grinders are greedy.

For sure they are submerged, overwhelmed with work.

How many are they? like 10, 12, 15? 

 

My intuition is that it is burdensome to accept some challenging cases. Once bitten, twice shy.

 

On the other hand, replying a request should be mandatory if you are running a business.

Mike Masuyama always responds. 

So does Appelboom.

 

Shipping costs, handling and organisation costs. Skilfulness and masterfulness has a justified cost.

 

Greed: Bankers businessmen and lawyers all the way yes and they are confortable with it.

Nibmeisters, mere mortals.

 

Being a nibmeister has nothing to do with butchering your 2 cent Chinese nibs on the altar of micromesh.

[mke]

44 minutes ago, nibtip said:

Perhaps A problem of ego hypertrophy. Or a misanthropic person

 

It has probably more to do with being a foreigner. A number of companies here ignore mail from people with foreign names, even when written in the local language. I am living here since over 30 years and have a good experience in being ignored. Usually, I then let a colleague write the request again from his mail address. Boom, an hour later he got the answer.

The English on his homepage is probably just an added coolness factor for his compatriotes. You find this often too.

 

It is really frustrating.

 

 

[nibtip]

It has probably more to do with being a foreigner. A number of companies here ignore mail from people with foreign names, even when written in the local language. I am living here since over 30 years and have a good experience in being ignored. Usually, I then let a colleague write the request again from his mail address. Boom, an hour later he got the answer.

The English on his homepage is probably just an added coolness factor for his compatriotes. You find this often too.

 

It is really frustrating.

 

I am shocked.

My wife travelled in Japan some years ago and she had an overwhelming experience. Especially outside the cities.

But sadly the xenophobia of the Japanese is    unequivocal and proverbial.

This may explain their reluctance to seriously take in consideration the foreign market, instead of iterating ad vitam aeternam the same pens (inks of course) in different colors (Sailor) for featherbrained newcomers.

Since the average number of colours we can distinguish is around a million, I don't worry about them.

[Paul-in-SF]

4 hours ago, nibtip said:

the xenophobia of the Japanese is    unequivocal and proverbial.

 

I think this is way overstated. In my experience, what foreigners experience is much less about dislike or fear, but about Japanese shyness and diffidence about their actual ability to communicate in English (or any foreign language). Japanese are taught English in middle and high school, but that is mostly reading and writing, and there are very few native English speakers around to help them learn how to speak it -- and how to understand it when it is spoken by a native speaker. And if they don't continue their education in English, what they did learn is likely to atrophy, so the effect is likely to be more pronounced among older people. 

 

Of course, businesses that are not comfortable conducting business in English should not have English web pages on their site. And I am not supposing there there is no element of xenophobia in the incidents related here, only that the scope of xenophobia is not nearly as large as it has been portrayed. 

[mke]

5 hours ago, Paul-in-SF said:

Japanese are taught English in middle and high school, but that is mostly reading and writing

 

That is not correct. Time has changed - since many years now.

 

Japanese and why they are typically not able/willing to speak/communicate in English is MUCH more complex than just school. 

 

That some are not even able to  communicate in Japanese with foreigners cannot be explained by poor English teaching in school.

 

Please do not replicate so quickly what you read in foreign newspapers about Japanese topics. These stories are often written by some foreigners who lived in Japan for a year or so and want to make money of that. These stories are often just scratching the surface or are even simply wrong.

 

And if the stories appear in Japanese newspapers, written by foreigners, consider that they might want to write more articles. So touching certain things is a taboo.

 

at everyone

Let's not discuss that topic here any further. This would be like opening a Pandora box.

 

 

[Waltz For Zizi]

12 hours ago, nibtip said:

Being a nibmeister has nothing to do with butchering your 2 cent Chinese nibs on the altar of micromesh.

I disagree

[Paul-in-SF]

5 hours ago, mke said:

These stories are often written by some foreigners who lived in Japan for a year or so

 

That would be me. Plus 40 years of living with Japanese people here in the states. I readily admit my information about English teaching in schools is probably out of date, and I should have said from how long ago it was derived.

 

But you don't own the topic, nor the thread. If it needs to be discussed further, it will be. 

[txomsy]

And then it will be like opening Pandora's box.

 

The way I see it, and I am most likely wrong, most people wants to do the "right thing". However, what is right or wrong, or even if right or wrong do exist, is a cultural subject, so we should be open to many a surprise.

 

Even wanting to do something does not mean one can do it. Maybe it is lack of skills, or lack of time, or an infinity of reasons.

 

Even wanting not to do something does not mean one can avoid it. You may be forced by circumstances: for instance, many a company would rather not have a web page, or not in this or that language, but they may feel coerced or even be actually required to by investors, clients, marketing, expectations, circumstances, whatever.

 

Even if they did and wanted and succeeded, it might be they no longer want to but cannot go back. Many a company in distress starts a new strategy, then succeeds, outperforms, cannot cope and falls to their own success.

 

Does anyone else remember when Troublemaker Inks suddenly stopped taking orders because of their fast huge success, which led them to supplies, personnel, resources, distribution shortages, that they couldn't solve -but tried hard for a long time until they realized they couldn't cope and changed their strategy? In the mean time there was lots of frustration, even though they were doing the best they could.

 

Plus, nowadays it seems that if you do not have a presence in all social networks you cannot succeed, and if you do, just by being there, some magic will happen and lead you to success... even if you are a small local B&M shop that only sells directly to known people in the close neighborhood. Many a business will receive the visit of salesmen telling them how important it is they get in the Net and how easy and cheap it will be if they let them build a web page for them. Even customers may ask why they are not in the Net.

 

What I am trying to get at is that there can be many, many reasons, cultural, personal, external, perceived, real, expected and so on that can lead one to do something (anything) even if one does not need to or even wants to.

 

After all, how many of us do need as many pens, inks or paper as we have? You, I do not claim to know. Me, not, of that I am sure. No wonder some people even have an e-mail they will never read because 'they have to'. Which I do not claim to be the case.

 

What I do think is that discussing the underlying motivation of someone else's actions without engaging in a fruitful conversation with them is moot, for the actual reasons could be so many, and our prejudices so strong, that the chances we can reach a realistic conclusion are very limited (if not remote).

 

It gets much worse if we attach pejorative terms to the behavior of others. That is usually a sure way to close most communication channels in human interchanges and to make prejudices into a self-fulfilled prophecy. Not something I would recommend.

 

But this is an open forum and each can discuss the topics they like.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Living in Germany I use Fontainbel/Francis Goossens in Belgium for everything. I'm not going to put up 10 or so pens. Even small repairs on no name pens....oh well...make that 15 or more, just a few of them.

 

He had to make the spindle for this '30's Safety pen, in the lat person who tried to repair it screwed it up with superglue. and put in a new gasket...my original problem.  Cork gaskets only last so long,

The picture by permission of Penboard .de.

These 4---- the brass no name...a new piston cap, because it needed it, and I'd not noticed.

The mottled copper wire lined 1948 Columbus is one of my top 4 for pretty pens. It needed a new gasket.

The MB's...both were beaters...and for the work he put into them...I's sorry I didn't have a picture of the old '48-60 medium-large maxi-semi-flex 146... It had no cap bands....I wanted just to get it to work, and he made it a pride to carry.

Same with the  MB Safety pen, but I do have the ugly pictures of that before.

 

This cheap pen needed a re-build....instead of just the gasket...what the hell, it was mine and the re-build is worth more than the pen, but I don't have repair done to my pens for worth.

It's pretty enough...and needed repair.

This a much abused push button '30's Osmia...and it came back looking ever so good.

Small work has a 'small' price ...some times I pay  a craftsman's wages....for proud work. Lots of times it's just somewhere  in the middle.

Greed, is when someone who is not a craftsman and charges that.

A craftsman did this work.

He did say the polishing took the longest.......I later bought the Parisian  950 emerald eyed snake.

 

[PenchantRx]

On 7/30/2023 at 4:54 PM, Sailor Kenshin said:

 

You seem to have a bad attitude toward those who can do what you can't do yourself.  Expertise costs. 

And you seem to be missing OP's point that most or all of these nibmeisters are ignoring his requests entirely.  Expertise costs have nothing to do with that.  I'd say if he's getting the cold shoulder and those nibmeisters aren't even getting back to him (regardless of whether they're on vacation or not), his attitude is justified.  I've had the same experience in my life many times, and I'm not just talking about fountain pens here.

 

It's just good business practice to take a minute and reply to a potential customer, even if you can't help them with their present problem.  I know if I got a polite "Sorry, your pen would be too hard to repair", etc., I'd be far more likely to go back to that person in the future.  Communication seems to be a lost art these days.

[Sailor Kenshin]

8 minutes ago, PenchantRx said:

And you seem to be missing OP's point that most or all of these nibmeisters are ignoring his requests entirely.  Expertise costs have nothing to do with that.  I'd say if he's getting the cold shoulder and those nibmeisters aren't even getting back to him (regardless of whether they're on vacation or not), his attitude is justified.  I've had the same experience in my life many times, and I'm not just talking about fountain pens here.

 

It's just good business practice to take a minute and reply to a potential customer, even if you can't help them with their present problem.  I know if I got a polite "Sorry, your pen would be too hard to repair", etc., I'd be far more likely to go back to that person in the future.  Communication seems to be a lost art these days.

 

We're hearing only one side.

[PenchantRx]

14 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

 

We're hearing only one side.

That's certainly true, and for all I know OP could be making his story up for reasons not known to us.  But I'm leaning toward believing it based on my own experiences, and I don't think a rational person would take the time to complain about non-responses if that wasn't true.

 

Disclaimer: I've never had an interaction with a nibmeister, though right now I really should be seeking one out.  I bought two vintage pens from FPH that worked for maybe two weeks before the nibs went kablooey. 

[georgeb]

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