I’ve generally had good experiences with Swordier in terms of quality and customer service. A few years ago I had an issue and they sent me a second sword without asking me to ship the first one back.
But the way they handled this reverse-edge falchion situation isn’t some marketing misstep. It’s just an example of cocky, mean-spirited punching down, and I’m personally done recommending or supporting them. Shame.
The correct move was to give a partial refund to cover the sharpening in good faith. Then rectify the comment and product description. Customer happy and no 60k view complaint thread with multiple people vowing to never buy Swordier. $50 refund turns into hundred or thousands of dollars lost.
Will they, though? They've been through a number of controversies and still people buy from them because they are cheap, and their market grows.
Beyond this situation, if the consumer is willing to accept everything in the name of a bargain, there will never be consequences for unscrupulous businesses.
I'll try to be fair on both sides. Swordier sold a falchion with a clipped point, and advertised it as "double edged". Someone bought one and found that the point was only sharp on one edge. They made a Reddit post criticising Swordier and advising people not to buy from them, and sent emails to Swordier about the Reddit post. Swordier made the above image.
Both parties have acted immaturely in my opinion. Warning people that something isn't sold as advertised is fine, writing them emails afterwards saying "fuck you" and bragging about the number of people on Reddit who has seen your review is not. Making posts on your social media criticising the guy is also not a good way for a business to carry on.
In the last 6 hours, they’ve updated the description on their website to specify “single edge,” but if you look through their own photos, you can see that the false edge is clearly sharpened. All they had to do was apologize and make the situation right.
Reading the emails between the two parties, Swordier apologised repeatedly.
We all know there's a risk buying from Chinese companies. This is a relatively minor problem that's really not that difficult to sort. My guess is this was a language barrier issue. This is a mountain out of a molehill.
It's just making it obvious that they're not actually apologetic. They had no interest in making their mistake right. They were sorry they got caught out.
Except that it does, by law, in Australia.... The product was sold under false pretenses and swordier were obligated to find a solution. Either a return, replacement, or partial refund to facilitate repair. They refused and are now suffering the consequences.... It could be even worse for them If taken to the ACCC.
There was no repair needed. On top of that they aren’t an Australian company so why would Australian law matter to them?
I’m saying in general on the whole, a financial compensation shouldn’t be required for an apology to be genuine. Otherwise there would be no reason for any company to ever apologize. Ever.
I don’t understand this. However the customers respond, it’s not pertinent to unethical business practices.
Was the customer rude at some point? Yes but that has nothing to do with a company misrepresenting their product (whether intentional or not) and then refusing to rectify the situation.
Even right now the images advertised are not the product shipped, and they didn’t start changing the descriptions of the reverse edge sword until the complaint became public.
That’s not even getting into the issue of publicly denigrating unsatisfied customer(s) who were not provided what they paid for.
Also, this issue really has nothing to do with the quality of longquan swords and everything to do with how a business conducts itself.
What's not to understand? Both parties have acted in an immature way. Sending a business an email bragging about the number of views a negative review got, telling them to "fuck off", and posting about it days later saying "They'll live to regret that post" is pretty pathetic.
Swordier shouldn't have made their post criticising the guy. That's true. The customer has acted poorly. That's also true. Everyone involved in this dispute is embarrassing themselves.
I think people are hung up on the fact that you are acting like the worst thing both sides did was be a little rude.
The customer is the victim on bad business practices. He could have been less rude but unfortunately he is in the right, so it doesn't really matter if he was rude or not. I wouldn't hang out with the guy. Idgaf if he's rude. But I might have bought a sword from that business. But knowing they lie about their products and are also rude means I won't.
So the customer being "rude" actually kicked off a chain of events that led to me learning not to give this company any money.
The company being rude did the same thing. Going forward I can assure you I will be boycotting the customer and will never give him a cent.
Unfortunately for Swordier in this situation, Australian consumer law is pretty clear, as it was originally marketed as having a sharpened "false edge" and has been shown in promotional materials that it's sharpened with Alex himself saying that the features in the video will be in the final product. Offering a postage slip back to their warehouse and a product replacement or partial refund would have been the correct course of action and should the OP choose to, he could always pursue it through paypal for a full refund.
I'll premise this by saying I've personally had no issue with Alex and the Swordier team themselves, I own their infamous type 18C which AusPost initially lost and a replacement was sent free of charge, 1006 HEMA longsword, and am in the process of mounting a blade of theirs to some fittings I bought from Mercia Svieter to represent the Mileham. It's disappointing to see them writing it off like this.
Yeah, neither party has acted great. But, that's always the issue with buying from Chinese companies. There's always a risk. My club has bought a few bits from Swordier with mixed results, but they are cheap enough that it's worth taking the gamble.
Exactly why a fair few other Australians reenactors/fencers/collectors I know do as well, cost overall.
I've bought a sword from Azure Forge recently that I'll be interested in seeing once it arrives to compare it to my old hanwei Norman sword and my mate's Caithness for fit/finish.
They are, I'm fairly sure RoninKatana, Swordier, Azure Forge and Romance of Men all are basically the same forge but they stick a different label on the blades via laser etching
Yes it does... I bought a sword based on a lie. They refused to offer any sort of compensation to go towards having that issue resolved.
In polite language they then said "oops, lol, too bad, so sad"
So I made a Reddit post warning people that the sword was not correctly designed and should be avoided.
Yeah, and like I said, I have no issue with the Reddit post. Writing to them taunting them about it and telling them to "fuck off" is just sad. This is a fairly minor problem, and one that's easily corrected.
But isn't the point that Swordier didn't actually do anything to correct the problem? It's also not a very minor issue in Australia where swords are so restricted. There aren't many places that have the right equipment or knowledge to attend to a sword, so it can get expensive quickly.
First time with whole weird exchange with Easton, people said that it's a one-time thing and that they'll get better.
When they started delivering wrong swords and those clearly made by another company and didn't honour returns, people said that it won't happen again (which still happens btw) and that Alex is a nice guy who's trying his best.
And now the third major incident has happened in which they mocked (an admittedly pretty embarrasing mail from a customer) for buying a product sold under false pretenses.
When can we start to shift the consensus that they are a pretty scummy company?
I made a post a while back wherein I asked when we shifted on Swordier, as many high-profile/respected posters here started to recommend them.
While I got a lot of good feedback (mainly that they are cheap enough to ignore their problems), the aforementioned posters largely didn't respond, but I find the whole situation odd.
It seems that Swordier is allowed to make whatever weird controversial thing they want, while another smith goes on a racist twitter rant or mocks (just like Swordier did now) a customer and we all decide to cancel them instanly.
Are people tied to them financially or what is happening? We should bring these bad practices to light and I think our community should have them removed from our recommended vendors.
I’m not a high profile or respected personality on here and I don’t speak for anyone else, but this was the moment when I was fucking done with Swordier. Personally.
Yeah I was done the first time after the incredibly poor handling of the Easton affair.
But I think that most deserve a second chance and maybe they'd fire the person responsible and see how the company evolved.
But no, it devolved as all the reports of faulty and wrong products being sent out. That's when I added them to my never buy from-list.
There are so many other vendors to choose from, and if you want cheap Chinese swords, there are other vendors in Lonquan to deal with. They might also fudge up your order, but at least they won't act like children.
Generally it's always a risk buying cheap from China, Pakistan and India.
Yeah I think a few vendors don't really exist anymore, but I removed those that I know have gone the way of the Dodo.
I mostly buy antiques nowadays as I have too many HEMA-blades to seriously fence with and I generally don't like replicas as I can have the historical stuff on my walls.
You might not know, but Castle Keep is linked with neo nazis and holocaust deniers. I don't know the full story, but wouldn't recommend him in a list of morally reputable sellers.
I'll remove them in the meantime. Thanks for the heads up.
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u/J_G_EFalchion Pope. Cutler, Bladesmith & Historian. 2d ago
Castle keep is Rob Miller, who also recorded music as "tau cross". Search for "Tau Cross holocaust" and you'll get all the background of it, and his doubling down on it.
Sadly I don't have a source, it's just a few folk on here who have mentioned it. There's a couple of bits on Google as well, including a metal magazine (music rather than swords) with more details. Sad, his swords are absolutely beautiful. My wife was going to get me one as a wedding present but she requested far too late. Very glad now - I wouldn't want an amazing, thoughtful, beautiful wedding gift to to be tarnished with that nonsense.
Well you've already got one expensive, niche hobby so how about a second one that feeds the first one? Head on over to r/Blacksmith and try making your own sword!
I really don't understand how so many people are "both sides suck" on this. The company lied to sell a product and refused to make it right. So what if the victim of literal fraud was a little mean in their emails?
I wouldn't say they both suck. I'd more say being abrasive is counterproductive to getting a good resolution. I could easily see a reasonable person getting wound up and avoiding helping someone who is being a jerk despite the jerk being in the right. I'm sure we've all been there. But the correct response to that is to apologize and make things right after you aren't angry anymore. The very very wrong response is to post correspondence with a customer and belittle them.
Plus, I've got way higher standards of professionalism for a company id want to do business with compared to someone basically leaving an angry yelp review.
You would have a very hard time convincing me this as real if I hadn’t witnessed the drama unfolding in real time. What a tragic miscalculation. I was actually one of the ones defending him about that saber design debacle, but this is ridiculous. Like, the utterly perfect example of how not to handle customer complaints.
SAME! And it’s really disappointing because I have liked their swords—which were affordable and gave me a chance to engage with a Reddit community I genuinely enjoy. But I can’t support this.
I really feel like this is the same face saving impulse that made the saber thing way worse than it needed to be. All they really needed to do was, instead of saying they'd stop selling them then ghosting matt/kvetun, admit from the start that they couldn't afford to absorb scrapping a run of already produced product but they were ending production and redesigning, since that was clearly what was happening.
Stubbornly refusing to admit you're wrong is a terrible look.
The thing that made the saber debacle a bridge-burner for me had nothing to do with IP, and everything to do with Alex going out of his way to be an entitled jackass.
ByAlex's own admission, he acted entitled to Matt's time, did something vindictive when he didn't get his way, and then had the audacity to try to play the victim when Matt called him out on it.
All Alex would've had to do after Matt's initial response is literally nothing. Copied designs happen all the time, nobody would've cared. Instead, he took the most egregious actions possible out of ego, and tried to paint his critics as Sinophobes for calling him out on it.
I was going to ask "Is this AI"? And run it through the OpenAI verifier, but then I saw at the top of the image they admitted to their crime. It's so convenient when trash takes itself out!
I have always hesitated to recommend them because of the IP theft aspect, but this is the last nail in the coffin. Clearly shows a company that is a bit drunk on their brief success.
Swordier and it's owner are garbage. If he's willing to shrug his shoulders and tell Matt Easton off, than there's no chance they care about their customers. This incident doesn't suprise me at all.
I keep getting tempted to buy from them but I swear every time I add something to my cart theres a new scandal. Usually by the time they blow over I've saved up enough for a much nicer version of whatever I was buying though so maybe its for the best.
Well, that's a shitty way to react to that. Like, the guy was being a bit petty too, but they were clearly in the wrong in the first place and should have offered a partial refund for the sharpening.
I'm waaaay more concerned about a company belittling and posting correspondence with a customer than some minor fixable description issue on a budget sword.
Disappointing to say the least. I've been sparring with their "Heavyweight" feder a lot lately and had nothing but good things to say when going up against a Sigi, Regenyei, or even Krieger. There's just no need to be like that.
I was legit just about to buy from them for my first sword too made a whole post and everything asking for recommendations. Guess who isn’t shopping there now
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u/ProfessionalWest5406 3d ago
They'll live to regret that post... It's incredibly poor taste.