Story of a Mastro Livi razor and customer service.
First, just to be clear, I have NO relations to either the maker or vendor I am going to mention in any way except of being a customer, this is not ment to be any sort of advertising, it is simply my personal experience of customer service that I find worthy to mention.
A few weeks ago I bought first Mastro Livi razors, a 6/8 regrind from 1Barber in Belgium, the razor arrived quickly and the correspondance with the vendor was just like what I guess most of us is used to with most vendors we deal with, very good.
Before it was sent from Belgium I was told by the vendor that Mastro Livi only set the bevel, and I would need to finish the honing process myself, no problem, I have honed quite a few razors, and are getting good results, man I was wrong.....
To make a long story short it turned out that it had some serious grinding issues, the stabilisers on both sides of the blade caused the heel end of the blade not to touch the hone at all, it had a "Gold Dollar problem." If I had been smart I would have stopped here, but I thought it wasn't that bad, and should be fixed easily, so I went on. It took quite a bit work on a DMT 325 before I could take it to the 1K and set a bevel, but I got it honed and it took a very nice edge, but basicly the razor was ruined.
I e-mailed the vendor about the issue, just to let him know in case there was others of the razors he had in stock that had the same issues. As I was aware of that I had broken the terms of return by doing the work I had done on the razor I did not make a complaint trying to get it replaced or get a refund.
While I waited for his reply I spoke to a couple board members about it, and they were both clear on that this was an unacceptable issue, and that I should demand a full refund, but before I got to e-mail the vendor again I recieved a reply where told me to send him some photos, and he would look at it, and send it to Mr. Livi, so I did. Unfortunatly I have deleted the both the pics and the e-mail, so I have nothing to show you, sorry.
The next morning I got an a-mail telling me he had spoken to Mr. Livi about it and sent him the photos and that he saw this as a unaccetable QC issue, and that I should send the razor in return, and he would send me new one as soon as they recieved the one I had, and that before I sent it back I HAD to shave with it first, so I at least got one shave with it before I sent it back.
I had a great shave with it, and sent it back to the vendor. Unfortunatly it got stuck in customs both here and in Belgium, so it took over two weeks before the vendor recieved it.
But when he first got it things went pretty fast, and today, around noon, I got a phonecall: "Hi, its *** from DHL, I'm at your address, I got a package from Italy for you, are you at home?"
I jumped into my car and drove home to pick it up, and there it was my brand new Mastro Livi razor, sent from Italy yesterday!
I usually don't see a reason to mention a vendor or maker doing his/her job, but in this case I think both 1Barber and Mastro Livi deserves a big thumb up, they have both given me an extraordinary experience in customer service in every way possible, specially considered that none of them really had needed to take any responsibility since I had done the work I did on the razor before contacting the vendor.
