A few days ago I got my lighter back from the “Zippo Repair Clinic”.
I bought it about three years ago. The flint wheel was getting a little worn down, and it finally became completely useless when the hinge broke.
I went to the website, filled out a form, and a few days later got an envelope in which to return it, along with a couple of complimentary flints. I sent the lighter in, and got it back in less than two weeks.
They put brand new guts inside, replaced the hinge assembly, and returned it, along with another two flints.
All this for a $12 lighter that I bought three years ago.
It’s really nice to know that there are companies out there who really mean it when they offer a lifetime guarantee.
I tip my hat to the fine folks at Zippo in Bradford, PA.
I’ve never dealt with them personally, but the little tag you get when you purchase one that says something along the lines of “We repair any Zippo, from anyone, anytime, in any condition, free of charge. Millions of Zippo lighters sold, never a dime spent on repair.”
My friend dug one out of the dirt by some rail road tracks. Looked to be ancient, and was pretty rusty. He sent it in, they had removed the rust, fixed the chroming (or whatever it is), replaced the flint, wick, and guts, and filled it up.
Hell, I don’t even SMOKE anymore, and I still consider my Zippo an essential. Great product with great support. Incidentally, a book that came out about two years ago, that collected the photographs of photographers who had been killed in the Vietnam-USA Conflict, had as the back cover photo a Zippo with a bullet hole in it that that been in the breast pocket of one of the editors. Lighter saved his life that day (though he was lucky that it didn’t set on fire).
Amen. Sears/Craftsman tools take it seriously too–you break a wrench/ratchet/etc, just take it to the store and they replace it for free, no questions asked, even if the tool was obviously used in a manner inconsistent with its labeling (i.e. using a wrench as a prybar and/or hammer)
I love Zippo lighters and have one of the editions they put out in the 1960s celebrating the moon landing. I happened to be looking through E-bay when the same style of Zippo came up for auction, so I kept track of it. 5 days later, it sold for $153.00!!
I hate all of these plastic gas lighters that either refuse to light half of the time or refuse to light if there is a slight breeze or drain out in your pocket if they have no child safe device. {I remove all of the child safe devices from mine with a set of pliers.} I’m going to crank out my old zippo and start using it again.
Not to mention the fact that Zippo is reusable – you pitch those plastic ones out, something the recycling and ecology people seem to have forgotten. I find the damn things all over the beach, on the road, in parking lots and in ditches!
I remember waking up before dawn when I was a little kid. I could hear my parents chatting in the kithchen. And I’d hear the distinctive “click” of a Zippo. Very nostalgic, that click.
I have 5 Zippo lighters. I bought one of them because I’d lost the first lighter. I bought a replacement… and promptly found the first one. One I bought because I wanted a different colour. The other two belonged to dad. One is in a frame with his medals. It was presented to him when he retired from the Navy. The other has the ship’s mascot from one of the ships he was on, on it.
As it happens, I have a couple of Zippo knock-offs. Fill them up with fluid and they last about a day. Where’s the fluid going? I don’t know. It seems odd that they wouldn’t work as well as a real Zippo. I don’t care, though; the copies were free. And I still have the genuine article.
I’m afraid they didn’t do that for my brother-in-law. He attempted to return a plier that had been discontinued, but the clerk refused to “break a pack” to replace it with a newer equivalent plier.
My dad told me a c.1960s story about his brother and Sears. My uncle had “torqued” the blade of a large screwdriver. He liked Craftsman tools and was angry that one would fail. He marched into the Sears tool deparment, holding the screwdriver like a torch and looking angry. A salesman saw him coming and quickly grabbed a duplicate screwdriver. They met in the aisle and exchanged the tool… but not words. The transaction was silent.
I’ve had a Zippo since 1977. My first one was a standard brushed chrome, cost me $3.50 back then. I had it until 1990, lost it, consoled myself by buying two: another brushed chrome from a Powell Street tobacconist in San Francisco in 1990, and a brass case with decorative diagonal creases from a tobacconist on Sixth Avenue here in NYC in 1991.
The only downside I can think of is that sickening feeling you get when you forget to refill on time…you’re trying to light your latest nail on a windy street, and there’s that dry spark and feeling of emptiness and impotence. Nothing more depressing than a limp wick.
A few years ago, I came across my grandfather’s 1962 Zippo. He died in '64, and I never met him. But I was named after him.
So it’s understandable that I have a sentimental attachment to this particular lighter. Unfortunately, the wheel won’t turn. I’ve been reluctant to send it in, because I don’t know if they would fix the original guts (as I want them to), or if they’d just replace them.
Does anybody know if I could request straight repair? Or would they slip in new guts no matter what I ask?
I’ve sent in lighters for repair; they just come back with new guts. I’m impressed enough that they do free repairs…I really don’t expect them to provide picturesque German watchmaker-types to fix existing rusted-out innards.
We have three Zippos, two happen to be AWOL right now but they will show up.
A friend of mine is a welder and was looking at an acid tank he was due to repair, it is his habit to play with his Zippo even if he’s not smoking and on this day he dropped his Zippo into the tank of highly concentrated acid.
He got to the tank about a month later and after the tank was drained he found his Zippo lying on the bottom. it was in remarkably good condition with the body fairly intact although pitted. The packing and the wick had been totally dissolved.
He sent it to Zippo with a letter describing what had happened. They replied asking if he would like a new Zippo so that they might keep this one for their archives and museum. With a new wick and packing his old Zippo would have still given a lifetimes worth of service.
He got a new Zippo.
It’s been decades since I played around with my dad’s lighter when I was a kid, but I recall that when the flint is used up, the metal spring-loaded “flint-piston” rubs directly against the wheel, making it nearly impossible to spin.