bemedThis. ^^
Beautiful pens, crappy QC. I get fooled by them every now and then, only to curse myself : "Why did I fall for it again?".
The only trouble-free Visconti I have is a beautiful Celluloid Limited Edition Wall Street that doesn't have the gimmicky soft palladium nib but an honest 14K *and* the previous owner took the hit for having it tuned by a nibmeister.
And despite all this of course I keep gawking at the pen, because I find the design very attractive.
bemedAh, but if you get lucky... I'm not sure how purchasing through this site affects warranty etc, but I'm thinking you could send it back to Italy for free regardless. Of course there's the hassle, the wait, and no guarantee it won't need to go back once more. All I can say in order to present the flip side of your totally reasonable and important concern (there is really no excuse for a pen at this price point to have these issues) is that of my entire collection, the pen I enjoy writing with the most is a Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age with a broad nib. Completely impractical for most work, but an absolute joy to use. The nib makes my gold Pelikans and Montblancs feel like complete garbage... the only noteworthy downside being the absurd amount of ink that the wide and extremely wet nib lays down. The decently-sized power-fill chamber is depleted in no time. The unusual material is also not the easiest to maintain, but you wouldn't be dealing with that in this model. And of course this model uses a converter, which I don't mind at all. It is actually my preference in a pen where I would like to change ink frequently.
bemedI'll also add that I would NOT buy this pen here, for a few reasons including confidence in warranty legitimacy. It's tough because Visconti needs to be pressured to improve consistency (having only owned a couple of their models, and not ones that were manufactured recently, I have essentially no anecdotal experience with this) but they are making some of the most remarkable pens out there, and people deserve to get their hands on them. Really, my only minor gripes with my "favorite" pen are irrelevant here... too heavy to post (this pen is acrylic instead) and the inability to view ink levels in the two chambers (this pen is CC, not vac).