House of Staunton - 2015

This thread is to discuss the current House of Staunton with Scott as the manager.  He has been the manager for not quite 2 years and has worked to increase the customer service.

wiscmike has written now about 2 separate issues he has had with sets from HoS.  I will note that both sets he is complaining of are clearance sale items with the prices reduced by approximately half.

The Collector Series set that he got had some cracks in a number of pieces.  I believe those pieces were replaced.  Mike does mention a problem with color matching the replacement pieces to the existing set.  I spoke with Scott about this and he told me that he, personally, searched for a number of hours to find a piece that matched the broken one.  He told me that he sent Mike 2 pieces that were the best he could find.  Now the original set was made some time ago and finding an exact match of the pieces left was nigh impossible.  This was a clearance set at less than half the price of the original.  You also have to realize they are working with wood and the various shades will differ with each batch of finishing as well as aging of the piece and finish.

Mike makes mention that a $50 credit would be nice.  Well, did he mention that to them?  I don't know the answer to that question, but I gently remind him that it is a clearance set.  I personally would have talked with them to return the set and have it replaced by one of their other clearance sets.

The second issue that Mike now brings up is the weight of a Renegade set, which also was on clearance.  This time the dispute is with the advertised, on the web page, weight of the set.  Scott told me that this was the last of the "older" Renegade made sets they had.  This particular set was of an older make the its weight was from that older time.  I remember buying a Liberty Series set when I gave my original one to a student.  The newer set was more robust and "thicker" than the old one.  I called HoS and asked about this.  They told me that Shawn had found a new manufacturer/supplier for chess sets because the previous one had slipped in quality.  The new supplier was making the sets much nicer and better than the previous ones.  I would kindly suggest that this Renegade set that was on clearance might be from the previous maker and therefore weighs less than the newer ones.  By the way, Frank Camaratta was still the owner when this previous maker was selling to them, as well.

I have purchased 5 wood sets from the House of Staunton in the last 6 months.  Only one of those sets arrived with problems.  The Championship Series Rosewood set that I bought to replace the one I had sold came with a White Queen that had a chipped off crenelation.  I called HoS upon opening it and they sent a replacement piece immediately that arrived only 2 days later.

I bought a clearance Marshall Series Rosewood set that is stil in perfect shape.  I also bought another Liberty Series Rosewood set at the ridiculously low price of $60 for a backup.  It too is in perfect shape.

I bought a Players Series Rosewood set in December and it is great.  I still say this set is very under rated and if people would buy it they would never want to part with it.

I bought a York Series set also because i liked the looks of it and it was so inexpensive.  That set was ebonized and the only one I owned that was not some type of Rosewood or Walnut.  I sold that set to make room for the BCE black set I bought.  That set is exquisite and when I asked Scott about getting one in Rosewood, his response was that this was a one-off make and they didn't expect any more to be made.  Well, I hope he is wrong about that.

I have talked with Scott at HoS a few times now and he and the guys that work with him strive for satisfaction from their customers.

Yes, they have their sets made in India.  And they do have quality control statutes in effect with the companies that supply them.  The products they sell are of high quality, even their lower priced options.  I say this from owning and playing with a lot of their sets. 

We wtinessed a problem that another company had with their sets a few months ago.  That company's "solution" to their customers, including wiscmike, was to give them 30% off the price of another set the customer would purchase.  I personally would want more from such a situation.

When presented with a problem of design or manufacture, I have experienced the HoS giving me a complete and no charge replacement, even if the defective product was no longer of the same batch or make.

No company can provide 100% problem free chess sets, especially those made of wood.  All we can hope for is a realistic answer and solution to problems when they arise.  As I have said about doctors and the procedures they accomplish:  A good doctor still has things that go wrong.  It is the mark of a good doctor with what he/she does when things go wrong.

Mike, I never, ever said or implied the things you said I did.  Please do not put words in my mouth or say I wrote things I did not.

You are apparently angry with me for pointing out the positives of The House of Staunton and their service under the management of Scott.  I certainly did not mean to say you were wrong at all.  I just pointed out what you said they did and what Scott agreed with what you said.

You can certainly disagree with me.  I have no problem with that.  You can also call me names, as you have.  It's too bad you had to lower yourself to that level.  I certainly do not take this personally.

I never said you were happy with CB.  I pointed out the problem they had and how they handled it to compare what I believe HoS would do in a similar situation.

This thread is about HoS service at this time.  If you want to discuss what they have or have not done, that is fine by me.

I have to say that I find it extremely odd for someone to contact a retailer to discuss with them issues that someone else had with one of their chess sets and then to come here and create a thread essentially defending that retailer.

But, if the point of the thread is meant to be HoS’s customer service, I am not impressed that HoS would discuss a customer’s issue with an unconnected party. Sure, we’re not talking doctor—patient or lawyer–client privilege here, but common courtesy should have come into play and the manager should simply have said that this was an issue between the customer and him and that it was not Eyechess’s concern.

Andy, it wasn't all that serious.  I happened to be talking with Scott about an order I had made.  I mentioned to him that a fellow had talked about this problem on the discussion forum.  He replied in one or a few sentences that he thought he knew which fellow it was as he recalled the issue.  He then told me he worked on it himself to fix the problem.

I got most of the information from previous posts Mike himself made on this discussion forum.

So, I did not call HoS about wiscmike's complaint or complaints at all.  When I did speak with the manager of HoS he told me generally that he recalled the problem because they have very few problems to deal with.  Before you climb all over that, he didn't say it in those words, just the impression I got.

The vast majority of the details I had were gleaned from posts wiscmike made on these forums himself.  I also have just put the logic of dealing with natural, wood products and chess pieces together from my own experiences.

Now, do you have a problem with that?

I have to agree with andy.  This thread seems inappropriate.     

Yes, I still have a problem with the way you handled this. If you had replied in the original thread and left out any information you had obtained from HoS’s manager, I would not have had a problem with that. And, if HoS had wanted to reply, they could have done so themselves and I would have had no problem with that.

I feel if someone places an order with any chess retailer & they are not 100% satisfied just do not order from them again. Let your money do the talking.! It is not the HOS but, a couple other retailers that I will never order from again. HOS boards are great & never had a problem with them. I did order a chess set from HOS many years ago when Frank C. was in charge & never had a problem to this day with the pieces. I think that was over 20 years ago.

These type of thread help everyone by letting retailers keep quality up😀

I am glad you cooled down Mike & had a good game at the club.! Wood is wood with different grains running through the chess pieces & I have a few sets where some pieces are slightly darker/lighter. Its just the nature of wood. Its hard to get satisfaction when you cannot view the set in person. Most of my wood sets are well under $ 100.00 so if something should crack or warp, I won't be too upset about it.

Andy, I don't really see what is your point. A costumer make multiple complains about a company, a potential costumer call and ask about this complains, the only thing to do is explain how the problems where addressed in the best possible way. I see you appreciate your privacy, but other people just go to the internet to talk about their problems, and in those cases companies can do a public response of the complains. That is my opinion.

About the clearance ithems they where clearly marked as the same quality of the regular price. All the time it was advertised that this ithems where not damage.

I personally would not complain about the colors of the wood. If people have problems with what the nature produce, honestly, there is plastic sets, plastic will never give this "problems".

Also please consider that cracked wood can be fixed. all it takes is some glue and a clamp. I can talk to my carpenter friend about this if that is something of the interest of this forum.

Maybe people can send me their craked pieces and I make a bussiness restauring chess sets...

All problems with wood have ways to be fixed. What is important to understand is wood as a material, what it does and why, then many of this "problems" will turn out to be just normal.

The picture below shows a magnificent original 1890's BCC No. 1S set (with Xylonite knight heads) that was recently sold on the Decorative Collective website. No sale price was referenced, but a less spectacular BCC Imperial set (also circa 1890's) is being offered on the same site for $4,000 US!

If anyone's interested, here's a link to that website:

http://www.decorativecollective.com/dealers/luke-honey/p/british-chess-company-staunton-chess-set-no-1-s-lh016

BYE BYE, retracting what I typed and taking a sabbitical. Hope the people who can't mind their own business do not belong to the chess collector book FB page. There I will reside and see people like Mac and see my friends at the chess club once a month.   

Never got to show my real sandalwood set I bought from Frank back in the infancy of eBay when the search word chess wouldn't even bring up 100 findings.  I never was too excited about it as it was those tall skinny pieces that are apparantly popular in India, but the wood is georgoeus. 

Again Bye to my freinds will be checking on Carl's new 1849 set and hope it is a sucsess and I think I might just buy a box wood set from him if I can save th emoney up and stop buying all these old chess books!!!!!!!!!

@DAVID you said and I QUOTE  "I personally would not complain about the colors of the wood. If people have problems with what the nature produce, honestly, there is plastic sets, plastic will never give this "problems".

You do not know what you are talking about this collectors set in rosewood waas very unique in color. It looked like a tigers eye color if you can imagine that and had lost & lots of grain showing. The replacement queens they had were dark solid deep red that is why they sent me back my broken one too.  Now maybe you get it, I am not fussy when it comes to slight varations of wood betwixt pieces.

I just had to check this thread as someone is sendiong me  notes every half hour, I hope it stops as I am not even reading them. Just letting you know, lets just go our own ways. That is what the ignore feature is for and I will now use it.  

Have try to fix the cracked up queen?

David, with a piece like a King or Queen do you think using glue and clamping it with a band, string or tape would work?

I have had some pieces get a collar chipped and I have seen a few friends that had their pieces chip or actually break.  In all the cases glue worked perfectly.  In fact the part that was glued was sturdier than other parts.

It would be interesting to see if glue would work on a crack, especially in the base area of a piece.

The hose clamp will need to be the right diameter, but I do think it should give enough pressure to keep the crack closed for gluing.

They also make clamps that consist of a length of fiber "tape".  There is a mechanism that cinches up the tape.  I know that they use these for bigger jobs, like the circumference of chess boards.  I wonder if it might work on a small scale like a chess piece.  It might not be able to give enough force to the crack though.

My views were clearly expressed in my posts. If you have trouble understanding them, then there's not much I can do about that.

As for repairing cracked pieces by gluing and clamping, I do not believe that this is the preferred method used by experienced chess repairers. I know that Alan Dewey fixed cracks in an old set of mine by making a mix of wood glue and fine ebony (or boxwood) sawdust and filling the cracks.

andy277 wrote: htdavidht wrote: Andy, I don't really see what is your point.... Also please consider that cracked wood can be fixed. all it takes is some glue and a clamp. I can talk to my carpenter friend about this if that is something of the interest of this forum.My views were clearly expressed in my posts. If you have trouble understanding them, then there's not much I can do about that.As for repairing cracked pieces by gluing and clamping, I do not believe that this is the preferred method used by experienced chess repairers. I know that Alan Dewey fixed cracks in an old set of mine by making a mix of wood glue and fine ebony (or boxwood) sawdust and filling the cracks. home cook wood filler can do, I guess it all depends on the size of the crack however doing this will mess up the roundness of the piece , so I guess Alan had turn turn it afterwards, or else it is less round than the rest of the set... can you put the base of this piece against the base of other pieces and see it there is noticeable difference on the roundness of it?