Oh Dear! Montblanc Elixir Pourpre ink

[Chrissy]

This is a bit of a long story that I will try to compress as much as I can.

I made a personal decision to not buy any of the Montblanc Elixir inks, because I decided they were too expensive. However, my Montblanc WE Woolf had to go to Montblanc Hamburg because it leaked my Montblanc Hitchcock ink at the threads.

It had to have a complete new barrel and piston etc and came to a total cost of £360. However, due to a misunderstanding about the fact that it would be a level 1 service and it turned out to be a level 2 service, my regular boutique paid the level 1 service fee and I had to pay £300 for the parts.

Very sadly, when my Woolf arrived home it had a different looking nib than when it left. The tines were spread apart quite badly. Because I didn't want to go to the trouble of sending it back yet again, I very carefully crossed the tines over themselves a few times, and it looked much better. It didn't write exactly like it had written before, but it was close enough.

I did feel aggrieved enough to compose an email to the Montblanc CEO and complain about the way my pen nib looked when my pen was returned to me.

A very nice man replied on his behalf, refunded half of my original payment, and after failing to find me any remnants of Montblanc Hitchcock ink, asked me to choose any bottle of ink from their range in place of that one. I talked with the person at the boutique about whether I should choose an Elixir Pourpre as I really liked the look of the colour. He said I should definitely choose that ink.

So my sealed bottle of Elixir Pourpre ink arrived. Sent directly from Hamburg.

I uncapped my Woolf and filled it with that ink, straight into it's brand new barrel, feed, piston etc. It wrote beautifully and I loved it. I wrote a couple of letters with it.

Four weeks later I uncapped it to write with it again. It had a huge bloom of purple mould all over the nib and feed. It looked like it had been growing for ages.

Of course, I fired off an email to my new friend at Montblanc. He sent me special UPS packaging to return the pen and ink to him. UPS collected it from my home. Simple.

The result is in. The Elixir Pourpre ink bottle contains contaminated pigments, that have contaminated my pen. My pen has been fixed free of charge, with replacement parts.

He wants to know which ink I would prefer to have to replace the Elixir Pourpre.

Just in case you are considering buying Elixir Pourpre ink, you have now been given information that maybe you didn't have before.