[Image description: A white fountain pen with a silver clip on the cap and a silver zebra stripe band around the middle lies on a blue dotted grid desk pad.]
I impulse bought a Pilot Metropolitan (F) about a month ago and have had the worst experience so far. First it took 3 days of experimenting (squeezing the cartridge, flushing, cleaning, shaking, incessant scribbling) to get it to write at all. Then I noticed the nib was a bit off-center in the feed so I aligned it and it wrote pretty well for a while. This morning I grabbed it to take some notes and it won't start, even after a flush with water and re-seating the cartridge. This isn't my first fountain pen (not even my first Pilot!) but I'm really disappointed because the Metro seems to be such a popular recommendation as a solid, inexpensive starter pen. Did I get a dud?
The problem with Amazon is that they sometimes just combine all of a single item, say the pilot metropolitan, from all sellers, including Amazon, together in one place in the warehouse. If some sellers send fakes and others genuine product, when you order, you can get a dud from a reputable seller and genuine product from the counterfeit seller.
Sorry about the long sentences!