Laube Litening Clipper - Customer Service Help Requested

Some of you might remember in one of my post's about my open house, I told of the problem I was having with a very expensive set of Laube Cordless Litening Clippers. Some of you commented that I should give the company the opportunity to make this situation right.

Here is the letter that I sent to the president of the company, Kim Laube, and to customer service as well.

Sept 14, 2007


Kim Laube and Co, Inc
2221 Statham Blvd
Oxnard, CA 93033

Cc: CEO Kim Laube


In late 2005 I purchased a brand new set of Laube Litening Clippers from a retailer on line, Sharpwright 1625 County Highway 10 Sprink Lake Park, MN 55432.

At the time I received the clippers and tried to charge the battery packs per the enclosed instructions. However, I had problems with the battery packs charging, even though I closely followed the instructions. The attempts resulted in an uncharged battery pack and a melted area in the case of the charger.

The entire unit was authorized to be sent to your service department, Laube Service Dept 2221 Statham Blvd, Oxnard, CA 93033, which I did. When they returned the clippers to me, there was no charger included. We did, however, get that cleared up and a charger was sent to me.

While I still had a problem with the amount of time it took to charge the battery packs, I had no idea how long it should have taken to charge these lithium batteries. That information is not included in the literature. I just remember thinking this had taken longer than I recalled with the first set of clippers that I broke in for a friend.

With the clippers charged, I tried using them on one horse and thought everything was fine. Unfortunately that is not the case. I have had nothing but problems with these clippers and their charge.

At first when the clippers didn’t work, I thought it was because they lose their charge over a period of time just sitting. Then I thought it was because they lose their charge in the cold. Since I do not use my clippers regularly, my warranty time was rapidly dwindling but I was chalking my problems with them up to me, not the clippers. I did not even suspect there was an issue with them.

It was not until I got ready for my open house this year and the one-year warranty was up that I really realized that there is something wrong with the lithium batteries or the clippers. I don’t really know which. All I know for sure is I have clippers that I paid a lot of money for and have never really gotten any use out of. I think they only clipped successfully for me in one session.

Granted in that one session, I think I clipped the bridle paths and muzzles on ten or so horses before I had a dead battery. That was the one and only time, I was successful clipping with them..

Because the warranty was up, I figured I just had to take this loss. I probably should have been more diligent following through on discovering if the clippers would work after the charge. I was relying on the integrity of the company and my past experience with the product. I just assumed that all was well only to find out too late, because I don’t use clippers here often, that something is still defective.

When I realized the clippers were defective, I was posting on my horse blog, MiKael’s Mania – Arabian Horses, about my preparations for my annual open house. As part of those posts I included my dilemma with these clippers and the problems I have had.

My regular readers thought that even though the warranty was up, I should write to you and tell you of my problems with your product. They thought that I should give you the opportunity to decide if you want to help me with them instead of just assuming that you would do nothing because the warranty time has expired.

I decided that they have a point. It is unfair for me to just assume that your company would not fix this problem which has obviously been there since I purchased the clippers. I do realize that you are within your rights to just write me off because the warranty is up. But I also realize that it is possible that since you have documentation in house that these clippers have been a problem, and that you have a long time reputation in the industry that you might decide to help me, for which I would be most grateful. I know my readership is very interested in hearing how this is all resolved.

I am enclosing a copy of the original letter I sent to you when I returned these clippers the first time and a copy of the portion of the blog post about my problems with these clippers. Also here is the link to that blog post in case you would like to verify that I did indeed post about your clippers. The references are farther down the page. If you follow that down to the bottom and click on the comments link, it will show you how people have responded to my post as well. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


As you can see from the date of this letter, it has been a month and I have heard nothing from customer service or the company's president, Kim Laube. My guess is that I probably will not.

When I originally sent this letter out I mistakenly sent it to the Wahl Clipper Corp because when I did a search on the internet to get the address for Laube, it came back with information that Wahl had purchased the Laube Co several years ago. Within a few days of when I sent out the original letter to Wahl, I had a phone call from the secretary of Wahl's CEO. She wanted me to know that they had received my letter and that if it had been within their power to replace my clippers, they would do so. However, Laube had been sold back to the original owner before I even bought these clippers. Wahl provided me with the contact information for the Laube Company and wished me well.

So it looks to me like Wahl's customer service and their reputation is a lot more important to them than that of Laube. Unfortunately, that is what my perception was of Laube in the first place from my experience in working in a tack store. Had I not had the opportunity to try out a pair of these Laube Litening clippers in the first place, I never would have considered purchasing a pair becuase I didn't trust them to stand behind their warranty, let alone do something in the interest of good customer service. If anything changes, meaning I hear from Laube, I will let you know. But for now, I'd say I'm out my $500 and have a useless pair of clippers.


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