Am I the jerk here?

Sorry for the length…

I’d like to share my peculiar experience with a well-respected tookmaker/distributor within the community. First and foremost, I have nothing but respect for Rob Cosman. I’ve purchased numerous products from him, and they’ve all been great, but I’m at a bit of a loss over my last purchase (and interactions with customer service) and I’m left wondering, am I just being a picky jerk here? Anyways…

I ordered a ¼ mortise chisel sometime in March. I specifically wanted a mortise chisel with sides square to the back. Please hold the lecture on whether or not this matters, I’m not here for that. These are a selling point for Robs (IBC) mortise chisels and he stresses the importance of squareness.

Received Chisel 1: I received the ¼ chisel about 10 days later after the voyage from Canada. I was disappointed to find the edge beat up and a sideways bow (bend) in the blade totaling about .005 from end to end. You could spin the thing like a top. Does this matter? Not sure, but of all things…a mortise chisel. Sure, I could have reground the edge, as I’ll do many times, but for $150, this is unacceptable. Next business day they accepted the return and send out a replacement 3 or 4 days later. They said they’d take special care to find one that meets my expectations. This rubbed me the wrong way as I don’t think my expectations are anything beyond what’s being advertised. Anyways..

Received Chisel 2: Another 10 days or so, the replacement arrived. Total bust – it was a ¼ bench chisel. Clearly, special care was taken. Sent a less friendly email and a third chisel was on the way, but not before 5 business days. Is my frustration showing? Sorry..

Received Chisel 3: couple weeks since the second chisel arrived, a ¼ mortise chisel arrived. This chisel had an identical bend as first. Ok…whatever I’ll just accept the bend I guess. Then I noticed…both mortise chisels I received don’t have sides square to the back. They’re both identically about .6 degrees out. Rusty trig suggests these chisels are out of square by about .004, double the advertised .002 tolerance. This is easily observed by all my squares.

I reach out to customer service about the identical bend and out of square sides. Though, I mentioned that I’m willing to accept the bend at this point. I didn’t hear back until I reached out over a week later (purple heart class was running, so I guess CS stops. I get that…I guess). My response was that Rob and Jake said the bend isn’t an issue. The chisels being 2x out of square tolerance was not addressed at all in the response. Also, I'll point out that with every communication, I reinforced that I'll be sending back any chisel they want for review or whatever. I made it clear I wasn't trying to hang on to the chisels that were out of spec (or the wrong type...).

I reply that my real issue at this point is them not being square and that if they can’t provide one in spec then I’d like to return all of them for a refund. A few days later I got a return form for all three chisels.

So, I guess that’s that, they’re unwilling or unable to provide a ¼ mortise chisel to the advertised spec.This is disappointing as most of my other chisels are IBC and I really didn’t want an oddball mortise chisel. Am I being a jerk here? Too fussy? I debating just eating crow here and keeping one, but the whole experience really rubs me the wrong way.