A tale from Moleskine...

My wife and I are great fans of the Moleskine notebooks. And I know what you might be thinking. They are too expensive. The quality of construction has gone down somewhat. We are being manipulated by clever marketing. But we are fans nonetheless, as these notebooks seem to provide inspiration that few other paper products match. My personal belief is that this motivation is clearly based on the apparent sense of waste of not using such a luxury item, but I could be wrong.

One of the things that I had read online pertaining to Moleskine, was their policy regarding the replacement of any defective product. My wife unwrapped her new Moleskine watercolour sketchbook the other day, and lo and behold, a big air bubble on the cover, hidden by the label. It doesn't really change anything about the notebook itself, but we both believe that it is entirely normal to expect a manufacturer to have some pride in the quality of their product, and any apparent flaws don't really reflect that pride. And for the price, these books should be flawless!

You can imagine my wife's disappointment, especially considering the price of the notebook. At that point, I remembered the policy and suggested that she take some pictures of the damage and send them to Moleskine. And that is exactly what she did; two days later, she received a response from Moleskine, with apologies and possible explanations of the source of the problem, as well as a promise to send a new replacement a soon as possible.

Today, a parcel came in for my wife, mailed from Italy no less. And in it, a perfect, brand new watercolour sketchbook. So thank you Moleskine, for being true to your promise.