Penfriend started as a repair centre in 1950 when Ivan Mason, longstanding employee and authorized service agent for the Parker Company established a pen repair outlet. Originally it had offered a fast, while you wait repair service for Parker pens, employing skilled mechanics at its workshop at Newbury Street, Barbican. Over the years the company expanded its services to most brands of fountain pens.
Today we offer you the following services:
- If your pen is less than 10-15 years old there is a chance that your pen can be repaired by the manufacturer. We will liaise with them in the first place.
- For older pens or those that manufacturers can’t repair, we do have a vast array of parts and we work with other repairers worldwide.
The Repair process
Please contact us explaining what pen you have and what is wrong with it. If you don’t know the model/brand please email us a couple of pictures so we can ascertain the brand and model.
With this information we should be able to give you an indication of the whether the pen can be repaired and also a cost estimate. Please note that without seeing the pen we cannot give you a firm quote and so at this stage the quote given is just a rough estimate.
If you decide that you want to go ahead, please send the pen with your details and a short explanation of what is wrong to:
Penfriend (London) Ltd - Repairs
PO Box 119
8 Duncan Street
London N1 8BW
UNITED KINGDOM
It is the responsibility of the sender to ensure we receive the products. We regret we cannot be responsible for lost or damaged in transit goods. As such we recommend you to send us the goods via recorded/special delivery and email us your tracking reference. We will email you as soon as the goods have been received.
Once our technician has examined the pen we will email you / call you. At this stage we will tell you:
- Whether the pen can be repaired
- Whether we will do it ourselves or whether we are sending it to the manufacturer
- The estimate time to complete the repair.
- The cost for repairing the pen and sending it back to you. (When the pen goes to the manufacturer we need to wait to get a quote from them so this part ofprocess might be completed a few weeks later)
If you decide you want to go ahead we will take your payment details and proceed with the repair.
If you don’t want to go ahead we will only need payment to send your pen back to you.
Sometimes the cost of repairing old pens might exceed the price of the pen. We will always advise you on this.
Repairs Guarantees
Most manufacturers’ repairs come with a year guarantee. If the pen needs to be sent back to the manufacturer we will need to have all the details of the previous repair to avoid additional charges.
Our internal repairs are also guaranteed for a year.
If your pen is faulty during the guarantee period we will reimburse your postage up to the cost of 1st class recorded Royal Mail for UK deliveries and up to the same amount as what you paid, for International deliveries.
If there is a problem with your pen once we send it to you please do contact us as soon as possible.
Taking care of your fountain pen
Quite often our customers contact us saying they have not used their fountain pen for a while and now it is not working. In most cases those pens only need a little bit of TLC (tender and loving care).
If you have not used your pen for a while, please remove any cartridges or empty any ink in its reservoirs. Flash the pen with cold water or leave the nib to soak overnight. Keep changing the water, the cleaner the water, the cleaner the pen!
If after doing all this, the pen is still misbehaving, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will try to help you.
Ideally you should be cleaning your pen every 3 or 4 refills. If you know you are not going to use your pen for a while please leave the pen without ink and give it a rinse.