I purchased a butterfly knife from Direct Knife Sales, which is apparently owned and operated by Richard Keeton, to give to my son as a birthday present. After my son received it, he told me it is defective. Mr. Keeton refused to allow me to return or exchange it, citing the company's five-day return policy, which is buried in their shipping terms page.

That page on their web site also says, 'we check our knives before they go out the door for imperfections. We do guarantee our knives. if you have any problems with them just let us know and we will fix the problem.'

They must not have checked this knife, or at least not well enough to discover the problem, and they certainly did NOT fix the problem. Here are the email exchanges over this:

9/3/08:
Richard,
Hi, we bought this butterfly knife as a birthday gift for our son. He tells us that it is defective (the blade sticks in one of the handles, exposing the sharp side of the blade, and not moving freely out of that handle, making it dangerous for the type of tricks or exercises he likes to do.

Can we return it for another knife? He says he'd also prefer one with a shorter blade, like 3.5 or 4 inches.
Thanks.
Brent

9/4/08:
our return policy is that you can return your knife as long as its within 5 days of you recieving it. thank you

9/4/08:
Well, it has obviously been more than five days, since we bought it well in advance of our son's birthday.
Are you saying we're out of luck even though you shipped us a defective knive?

It's not a case of just changing our mind. You'd be able to see the problem with this one right away, and we'd be willing to trade for a different one.
Brent

9/5/08:
if its past 5 days of you receiving it, then we cannot help you on that. you should have known within those 5 days if it was good or not. we have to keep our policy for everyone not just the few. thank you

9/5/08:
Richard,
You set the policy, and the fact that you set your policy with such an arbitrarily short return deadline (far shorter than any reasonable retail standard), even in cases of defective merchandise, obviously allows you to sell defective merchandise, keep the money, and then tell the innocent customer/victim, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, that's just our policy.'

Practices like that are what give online merchants a bad name, and it says a lot about your character.

Brent
Denver, Colorado
U.S.A.

I ordered 12 out the front knives from this company which were supposed to come with sheaths. There were no sheathes in my order. After a month of trying to get ahold of someone to talk to me I have given up and will never order anything from them again. I would warn anyone who wants to order a knive that there are a lot of reputable companies to order from and this isn't one of them. After they get your money they don't care about you. Order your knife from somewhere else. I am a knife seller and had a lot of business In mind, but there lack of service ruined that for me and them.