A couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to get a birth-year Slim (yeah, I'm old) replated. And the first place that caught my eye was Razor Emporium. They had a gorgeous website that promised stellar results for a very reasonable price.

So I Googled a bit more, and found a disturbing history of customer service complaints. Failure to communicate, failure to ship on time, failure to keep promises, etc. Plus some more serious stuff - really poor-quality work being shipped out, refusal to accept responsibility for it, blaming it on subcontractors, and then agreeing to re-do the work with only marginally better results.

There's also the fact that Matt (the owner) flagrantly abused the rules over at B&B. Not that the moderation over there is reasonable, but to keep changing user names in order to earn five different lifetime bans? And to flaunt the fact that he wouldn't comply with the rules? That seems a little extreme.

Then there were the complaints about outright fraud. Selling the same razor to multiple customers, or taking an heirloom razor in for refurb and selling it to a third party, and then denying that any of it had ever happened. I have a problem with that.

The low point was when I saw a post from Matt flaming somebody for complaining about these things.

Now I'm seeing multiple posts on w_e where a newb is thinking about buying a kit from Razor Emporium (whose kits are now prominently mentioned on the sidebar there). Meanwhile, Tiffany was briefly teaming up with Douglas (of HTGAM fame) to promote their businesses on Against_The_Grain (I'm shocked ... shocked). And of course, they always seem willing to give high-profile folks like Leisureguy or mantic59 a handjob in exchange for a favorable mention.

And then today - there aren't just a couple of newb posts on w_e suggesting a Razor Emporium starter kit, but there's also a question here about a USPS package containing a Slim that may or may not have been delivered to them for replating.

I've been more than (okay, somewhat) willing to give Matt and Tiffany the benefit of the doubt that the problems of the past have been corrected, and maybe the package that went missing today will turn up tomorrow, but at what point do people just need to decide that a vendor is not worth the hassle of dealing with, and start spreading the word that they're poison?

I've been recommending caution when dealing with this company for more than a year, but we've got a well-known user here who either didn't see those suggestions or chose to ignore them. I may be totally off-base. The starter kits on the sidebar at w_e may be the best deal going. And /u/RaggedClaws may have his razor show up tomorrow and get it back replated in the best possible fashion.

But seriously - where do people draw the line???