mweinik wrote:That was until a week ago one of their hybrid bogota picks, which is guaranteed for 10 years broke and the other pick in the set bend quite noticeably.
Given the horror stories I've heard about the company and their picks here, on reddit and keypicking, as well as some not so nice words from Bosnianbill of all people, why do people continue to order from Storm picks? It's an honest question, I'm genuinely & truly curious about this phenomena in general. Do they order without reading anything about them beforehand, and then when they start encountering some issues or problems, go searching for more information about the company and find forums like these? (that would be my guess) Or do they order knowing about the problems, but because they're extremely fancy looking picks and the website is equally attractive, they just decide to risk it and order anyways?
I'm not going to say I'm innocent of the above because I'm not, I've done both myself. But when it comes to lock picks, I've finally decided I don't care how a pick looks. I want it to do two things for me; I want it to perform (feedback, utility, etc) and I want it to last (durability, dependability, resilience, etc). That's it. The better the pick is at both of those things, the more desirable it is to me and the more I will pay for it. I don't care if it looks like crap.
That said, I'm currently favoring Peterson picks. I have a set of SouthOrd's slimline and I can't use them more than a few minutes with my fingers hurting due to the handles (even though I like the tips). I just picked up Sparrows SSDeV set (with thermo handles) and haven't had much of a chance to use them much, but the little that I did, I was impressed with their strength for such small/thin shafts and tips. I'm going to place a larger order for some hooks and their tension wrenches next week to see how they stack up to my Peterson's.
The best pick I ever owned, however, was a small hook made by a local locksmith here in Ohio. I used it
extremely hard for like 6 years before it finally succumbed. It had amazing feedback and I have yet to have a pick withstand that kind of abuse. It wasn't a pretty pick though, a plastic handle would have done wonders... I've been trying to get him to make more of them to share or sell online but he's kind of shy. He used some special HSLA metal that he special orders from somewhere. It's supposedly very expensive (relatively speaking), perhaps that's why he's reluctant to sell them or make them in bulk.
