It began on a surreal summer season day, once I was known as in to see our editor-in-chief.
He informed me that Ralph Nader, the shopper advocate and former presidential candidate, had reached out to Wirecutter with an issue. And I used to be tasked with investigating it.
Nader informed us that his longtime favourite pens, Paper Mate Aptitude Felt Tip Pens Medium Level (0.7 mm), had began drying out too shortly.
He needed to know why. Nader wanted solutions.
Properly, we didn’t have any. And neither did Paper Mate—Nader stated the corporate waved away his issues with a regular company non-answer about standing behind the pens’ high quality.
(Once I reached out to Paper Mate for remark, a consultant stated in an e-mail, “The Paper Mate staff has not made any modifications to Aptitude’s ink system or design. The model is persistently monitoring product efficiency, and there haven’t been any modifications in manufacturing that might point out a cloth decline within the pen’s writing efficiency.”)
“For years I’ve been utilizing felt pens, principally pink and black however generally purple, to mark up The New York Occasions,” Nader informed me in a cellphone interview final 12 months. “I am going by way of the Occasions each web page, and I mark up totally different articles and ship them to totally different individuals. And I do this with The Washington Publish and Wall Avenue Journal.”
When Nader says years, he means years. We discovered a black-and-white photograph of him utilizing what seems to be a Paper Mate Aptitude in 1972.
He acknowledges that pen high quality is a small-fry challenge. But when your pen frustrates you, it may trigger pointless annoyance to bleed into your day.
“Of all the issues on this planet, that is small, however we’ve got to take care of the small issues, too,” he stated.
We agree with that sentiment (however not in regards to the pen). Our skilled journalists rigorously take a look at 1000’s of merchandise every year, to assist individuals make shopping for selections—each massive and small—that may enhance their on a regular basis lives.
Across the time Nader reached out to us, Wirecutter senior workers author Melanie Pinola had simply completed retesting and rewriting our information to the perfect pens. She reaffirmed that Nader’s most well-liked Paper Mate Aptitude was not a Wirecutter choose. So she provided to ship Nader among the high felt-tip pens from our testing pool, to see whether or not any of them can be an enchancment on his longstanding favourite, the Aptitude.
Nader’s verdict? He discovered our tried-and-tested pens to be inferior to his dearest Aptitude.
