Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Pining for a very special utility knife


Now that we have an office and home in NYC, I find that I miss one of those unique buying opportunities you'll see from time on dealnews: The Alltrade Auto-Loading Squeeze Utility Knife. I paid $6.94 for it way back in May of 2006 from Amazon (free shipping via Prime). That's one of the best purchases I've made in my life. I have one for my Huntsville office and one for my Huntsville home, both bought back then.

I open lots and lots of packages ... I get maybe three to four per week, even more when I order FreshDirect, tons more around Christmas. (Yes, I'm an addict.) I use this utility knife like a box cutter. It opens super-fast and retracts with an easy button press, keeping the blade safe. I've retracted it hundreds and hundreds of times, with no reduction in performance. Blade dull? Hit another button and it pulls out easily, replaced automatically.

It's got a comfort grip, it's pump action, auto-loading ... it feels almost like using a gun, but it's okay for liberals! When Jeff, our COO, comes in our office, he usually plays with it absentmindedly while talking. (Cha-chunk! Cha-chunk!) Yeah, that's a little scary.

FWIW, there are a few knives on Froogle that are identical, but not sold from stores I've heard of. I may try one of them, but I'll never get this again for $7 shipped.

Site silliness: LNT & OfficeMax

Have you ever tried to add an item to your cart at Linens 'n Things (LNT.com) or OfficeMax.com, only to be told that you needed to enter a quantity first? We have to investigate a fair number of deals at these sites, and that particular eccentricity has always annoyed me. I mean, how many knife sets or all-in-one printers is a person likely to need? (Me? 6. But I mean normal people. ;)

No doubt there are things about dealnews that annoy people. But my (lame) excuse is, these are far larger enterprises than we are, and you'd think they'd have the resources to fix this quirk that shows up at virtually none of their competitors. Just sayin' is all.

Got a similar annoyance? Post a comment.

Update: The Company Store also has this annoyance, as Jeff Contray spotted, although in a different way.