Sometimes...

Recently I did a review of the Hi-Tec-C Coleto Lumio 4 Multi pen.  One of the inserts that I put in mine was a 0.3 mm pencil.  Avid readers of this blog are well aware of my fondness for 0.3 mm drafting pencils, so I was stoked to have a 0.3 mm pencil in a multi pen.  My write up was rather glowing, and perhaps a bit premature!  As you can see it proved to be a bit fragile!  The pencil refused to advance lead when I tried to use it the other day so I removed it from the Coleto body to see if I could find the problem.  my investigation proved fatal for the poor fragile pencil.  It broke at the swivel point where the plastic push button meets the metal body.

Now as to why the pencil stopped working I'm not 100% sure, but my guess is static electricity!  0.3 mm pencils often have this problem, probably due to the fact that the lead is so small in diameter that there is not enough weight to break the lead free of the adjoining pieces.  It could be any number of problems, but the fact is I have had quite a few 0.3 mm pencils fail to feed over the years and I have had to tear them down and clean them out before they will feed again.  I guess it's the nature of the beast.

I wrote to jetpens.com to inform them of the breakage and to say that I should have bought a 0.5 mm pencil instead, believing them to be less susceptible to feeding problems.  Lo and Behold, I received and email informing me that I was being sent, free of charge a 0.5 mm insert as a replacement for the broken 0.3 mm insert!  Wow!  That was unexpected!  But I guess I really should have expected something like that to happen considering my past dealings with JetPens.

Sometimes it's not about the sales, or the product being sold, sometimes it's all about the service after the sale.  Sometimes it's all about the Customer Service.  If JetPens is about nothing else it's about customer service!  Not lip service, but real, honest, "the customer is always right" Customer Service!  I have dealt with all kinds of customer service personal with all kinds of companies, both small and giant, both via phone and email but I can count on one hand how many of them have been as customer oriented as the people at JetPens!  Everyone I have dealt with at JetPens, from employee to co-owner has treated me with the utmost kindness and respect!  They treat me as if I matter to them, and I believe that I do, as all their customers do to them, I'm sure!

It's not that I received a freebie from JetPens (which is a heck of a lot more than I've often got from companies 10 to 1000 times their fiscal size), instead it's about how I was treated, how I am genuinely thought of as an important customer to JetPens, even though I am sure I am not one of their most prolific customers!  But I am treated as one!  As if I buy high ticket items in quantity all the time!  It's the type of customer service lots of companies reserve for such "important" clients!  But JetPens gives out such customer service to each and every customer they have!

Sometimes it's not about what you buy, it's about who you buy it from!  Sometimes it's all about the people behind the counter, or in this case across cyberspace, that matter.  If all Customer Services personnel across the world were like the Customer Service personnel at JetPens then this would be a much nicer world.  So guys and gals at JetPens, take a bow, you've earned it!

Attention Readers.  I would very much like to read about your experiences with JetPens customer service.  So please leave a comment or drop me an email about your experience with JetPens customer service.  I'll pass along the comments I get to JetPen.

Please check out all the latest items JetPens has to offer by visiting jetpens.com.

Pacific Arc DP-03 0.3 mm Drafting Pencil

The regular readers of my blog know that I have a fondness for 0.3 mm drafting pencils.  I have a particularly keenness for the Pentel 0.3 mm P203, which some years back I discovered was discontinued... "Discontinue!  No discontinue, Stephenie!".  Pardon my "Short Circuit" parody, bit I just couldn't help it!...  Well I could help it, I just didn't!  When I inquired about why the response from Pentel was that it was being discontinued due to a lack of sales!  What?  A lack of sales?  I did not believe it then and I do not believe it now!  The pencil sold for about $4.00back then, now they are $10.00, when you can find them!  As far as I am concerned Pentel made one of the biggest mistakes the company has ever made when they discontinued the P203!  The P200 series pencils have been one of the most copied and cloned and modified mechanical pencils in history!  Case in point the Pacific Arc DP-03, 0.3 mm Mechanical Pencil.

When I saw the pencil I was intrigued.  A P203 clone or copy (clone - all parts are interchangeable with a Pentel P200 series pencil.  Copy - they are not all interchangeable, though some might).  The DP-03 0.3 mm mechanical is a copy.  I discovered this when I disassembled the pencil, along with a P203 and tried to interchange some of the parts! The tips, erasers and push buttons exchange but the non-tapered Pentel mechanism would not fit into the Pacific Arc body, though the Pacific Arc mechanism did fit the Pentel body.  The parts look similar but there are subtle differences such as the shape of the metal tip.

The 2 pencils are very close in size and balance, but the Pentel is slightly heavier at 11 grams verses 9 grams for the Pacific Arc.  The feel of the Pacific Arc is also different due to the slight difference and slightly more forward balance.  It also sounds less solid, more clunky when the push button is used to advance lead.  Lockup of the lead is as solid as with any such pencil but there were 2 things I didn't like about the Pacific Arc DP-03.  One is that a single 'click' does not quite advance enough lead to write with, for me any way, but a second advances too much!  With the Pentel the advancements are in very small increments which means it takes at least 3 'clicks' to advance enough lead to write with.

The second is that the the lead protruding from the tip of the Pacific Arc pencil has considerable lead shake.  That means that the interior of the lead sleeve is slightly over sized inside the tube.  Thus the lead does not fight as tightly in the tube as does the Pentel!  This, along with the over extended lead meant that there was considerable lead breakage when I used the pencil.  Now I was using the Pacific Arc lead at the time, so I replaced it with Pentel lead and got about the same amount of breakage!  The Pacific Arc lead is a high polymer and comes 24 pieces per tube. 2 tubes per package, for only $2.00 as of Saturday, February 1, 2011, from Hobby Lobby.  While I like the price what I don't like is that the pour spout is recessed into the mouth of the cap so it has to be removed by hand and inserted into the lead reservoir.  No direct pouring of lead into the lead reservoir from the container!

I had high hopes for the Pacific Arc DP-03.  I was hoping that I had found a low cost ($3) alternative  to the Pentel P203.  While I did find a bargain in the lead, the pencil is another matter.  Aside from the lead breakage/enlarged lead sleeve the product seems to be more cheaply made than I thought!  As I was disassembling the pencil for photographic reasons, the lead retainer fell out of the tip!  This is never good!  Now I have some experience replacing lead retainers so I tried to replace it.  Dang if I somehow didn't loose it!  I don't know how, but when I went to see if it was in the tip, it wasn't!

For most people this would be a lost cause and no matter how little or how much (I've had a similar problem with an $80.00 pencil) the pencil cost, it would now be rendered useless.  Without a lead retainer the lead falls straight through the pencil when you try and advance the lead!  But for me, it proved a challenge, nothing more.  After some searching I found a piece of small gage wire where the sheath was an adequate substitute.  With some work I got the pencil to function properly once more.  Hooray for me!

But the bottom line is, while I really like the shape and feel of the pencil, I can not and do not recommend the pencil for any reason.  Yeah, it's only $3.00, but one can do better by buying a different style pencil from jetpens.com.  Or if you must have a Pentel P203, than $10.00 on the net.  So my advice is to avoid the Pacific Arc DP-03 0.3 mm pencil, at least for now.  However the lead is another story.  It seems of good quality and the price is unbeatable.