Not what they used to be

I used a Parker roller ball for five years before using other pens, so I had pretty extensive experience with the refills.

For a while, the refills matched the perfect quality writing line that I needed; it was my favorite pen, and I bought refills that continued to give me a fantastic, smooth, consistent, effortless line that passed the smudge test (draw a line and try to smudge it) with flying colors.

About four years after I started using the Parker roller ball, I bought a refill that felt scratchy, inconsistent, and cheap. Mind you, it still cost almost $3, which will buy you one to three brand-new cheaper pens, or a whole dogpack of ballpoints. I chalked it up to a manufacturing defect and struggled through the life of the refill, disliking the writing quality for its scratchiness, but having confidence that my next refill would return to its former quality.

Unfortunately, it did not. Purchasing another refill at a different store produced the same results. Apparently, the quality of the manufacture of the refill had changed at some point, and now the expensive refills wrote like a quill plucked from a goose's back.

Sad to say, the only way I salvaged the pen was buy taking a Parker ballpoint refill, stuffing a piece of plastic in the pen body to make it fit for length, and using the pen as a ball point. Since most ballpoints don't write as smoothly as a roller ball or gel pen (see some qualifications below), I just don't use it that much any more.

Side note--you can get a good ballpoint in a Pilot EasyTouch, the harder-but-smooth Pentel RSVP, or a Cross Pen. If you plan to get a Cross Pen, get ready to shell out real dollars for the pen and refills for that high-quality line.

Long story short--don't bother with the Parker or its refills until they resume their former quality. I would not buy them again without being able to use a display model and prove that the line is as good as it once was.