Derby Blades and the shower scene from Psycho.

[pawel]

In the past I found that Derby extra blades worked for me. They gave me very smooth hassle free shaves. Recently I bought a carton of 100 blades here in Sydney, Australia and my shaving routine has been thrown into disarray. I have opened over 10 packets at random and each blade performs the same with a scraping motion frequently catching hairs which leaves my face a bloody mess. I have used 4 different razors each with the same results. I should note that these are the supposedly good 'horizontal' Derbys as well.

I sent an email to Derby outlining my concerns and listing the batch number on the box. I really hope they are serious about rectifying this situation. I understand that this hasn't happened to every user but like I said I used to be a big fan of Derby's. I don't think I was unlucky to get a dud batch. It seems that many wetshavers have experienced the same issues and that Derby does have a serious quality control problem. Hopefully Derby will do something to restore the goodwill that once existed for some of it's customers. I don't claim to speak for all Derby users as obviously they can make an excellent blade. I just wish I never bought 100 of their bad ones.

 

[NatJag]

On reading this my first reaction was vertical , then you mentioned you had the horizontal box. Sorry to hear you've got a duff batch. I think on reading this, I wont get any large batches off blades, just incase.

 

[KWyKJJ]

Cork them up with styrofoam. It worked wonders for mine. It's a sad thing when such a good blade becomes useless. But if you cork them they work just like they are supposed to. Good luck.

 

[Joe Sterling]

Damn. I bought a 100 pack of derbys. All have the vertical label. I concur: Derby is not what it used to be. Unfortunately, i have never tried the "good" derbys. I thought it was my technique, but then i put in w wilkinson sword blade and received almost zero knicks after multiple passes.

Derby feels smoother, but it cuts me much more than wilkinson. Also, derby gives me razor burn. I wish derby would get it together, and replace our unopened blades with corrected ones but . . . .

 

[craig87c]

I got a bad batch of horizontals about a year ago. Good for a shave, then turns into garbage.

 

[njpaddy]

Weird that there doesn't seem to be any logical pattern between the good and bad ones. I bought 50 vertical Derbys 5 months ago and haven't really had an issue with them (yet anyway). I don't use Derbys as much anymore since I discovered Red Personna, but I used a Derby last nite in a ball-end Tech and got a nice irritation-free shave. I even forgot to palm-strop it before I put it in.

 

[mblakele]

There is no reason for a change in blade manufacturing to synchronize with a change in packaging. There may be bad blades out there with either label style.

To introduce another possibility, has anyone considered that the bad blades might be counterfeit? I'm thinking of the "They Might Be Lords" business (http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?p=860914).