Folks, I removed my prior post on this subject. Here's the situation. There was a good faith disagreement with a customer over a cosmetically damaged razor, which I had discounted by 30%. I had initially refused a refund, but changed my mind quickly. Quickly, as in, an hour or two.
I screwed up. The photos were generic, and the razor had blemishes other than as depicted or described. There was *never* any intent to deceive. The Chief and I are cool now, and so are the customer and I. In fact, he's keeping the refund *and* the razor, which is not a bad deal! I even refunded shipping.
FWIW, I reasoned that 30% is a very deep discount, and blemished is blemished. Wrong way to look at it. If I ever sell blemished razors again, it's got to be "sight unseen." Even if I had time to take photos of individual razors (which I do not), photos can look different from the object, because of lighting, camera angle, etc. I pulled a bunch out a bunch of razors that I deemed unsuitable even for sale in blemished condition, and naturally I inspected them all. Things can look very different with the eye and with a camera close up.
Hand polishing is over at Paradigm. It's fantastically time consuming, and unless I significantly increased prices, error prone. We will never, however, sell a razor in "as machined" condition. I just don't care for the look. There are a number of good mass finishing processes available, and we'll figure out something that leaves a good finish, consistently.
Hope this answers any questions on this subject. That's kind of a deep dive into my thought process, so thanks for reading through.