As I looked at the unfolding saga of the collapse of Liberty Optics, I couldn't help but start thingking about the value of customer service and the difficulties with evaluating it.
I am nto going to rehash the whole Liberty Optics business. We talked about in a livestream a couple of days ago anyway. The short version is that Liberty Optics is no more and it did not end well. I still fidn it hard to believe that Scott Berrish who I have known for many years walked off with other people's money, but at this stage the evidence is pretyt overwhelming. If he re-surfaces, he will have a lot of explaining to do.
The interesting part, is that a VP from Vortex (Shamus Terry) showed on an Sniper's Hide thread, gave everyone his personal contact information, and went far above anything reasonable or expected to help people who ended up in this mess. That is bound to generate a lot of good will, so it is a smart thing to do. However, it is a smart thing to do long term. Short term, it is bound to cost Vortex some money.
Vortex' reputation for excellent customer service is well established and, given the above, is not going to be diminished any time soon.
Another company that came to mind is FixIt Sticks. I have talked about their toolkits and have several of them that I use all the time. A few days ago, I pulled one out when mounting a socpe and realized that the All-in-One torque wrench I have went bad on me. It no longer went back to zero. I took a pictuer and sent them an e-mail to see if it can be repaired. I have several of these and I really was not sure if it is under warranty or not. This one is from the Rifle and Optics kit that lives in my drag bag: https://bit.ly/3Q0BhL0
It is a tool and tools wear out. All I was looking for was information on whether it is repairable or whether I should buy a new one. I sent the e-mail on Sunday. Got a reply on Monday morning. He asked the part number of the Torque limiter and for my address. I had a tracking number for a replacement before the end of the day on Monday.
Now, it is possible that they know of me, but it is unlikely. Most optics companies do, but Fix It Stick is not an optics company. I have a feeling that he simply thought that his tools should last, warranty be damned and made sure the issue is rectified.
Here is the part where I could use some help. I try to keep tabs on customer service experience that different optics companies offer. By definition, it is not a particularly scientific way of doing, but anecdotal data is still data.
Customer service is also not a constant and that is why I want to keep tabs on it. For eample, nbck when Nikon made riflescopes, their customer service was crap a long time ago and remained that way until they exited the business.
Burris customer service used to be less than stellar, but improved tremendously starting about 10-12 years ago. To be fair though, I have had a chance to use it back when everyone was complaining and they were exceedingly accomodating. That was before they knew me from Adam.
Now, it is patently useless for me to try to evaluate the quality of the customer service. I have an unusual (for Americans) and easily recognizable name. I could always come up with a fictitious name to use, but it is a hassle. Besides, I still only look at a fairly small number of scopes and they fail rather seldom.
As this community is growing nicely, it occurred to me that I can ask all of you to help. If you happen to use the customer service of a company in the optics or firearns business, if you have a minute to spare, tell me how it went. Leave it as a comment here or make a new post. Just make sure to tag me in it.
I'll start keeping better organized notes by company and I'll make these notes available to everyone here.
I am not really looking for much:
-what was wrong?
-how long did it take to get it resolved?
-did they repair or replace your product?
-were they courteous?
The business of "replace vs repair" is interesting. All of the larger US-based companies have faclities here with some evalutaiton and repair capabiity even when the scopes are made overseas. Vorte, Burris, Primary Arms, Leupold, for example, all have significant facitlities and man power in the US.
For many smaller companies, it becomes a bit of an issues. S&B does have a service center in the US, for example. However, the repair center is not the disrtibutor. I suspect that has something to with the fact that they bid on military contracts, that comes with support requirements.
March does have someone in the US, but I am not sure if they can do much repair here. I suspect most repair happens in Japan. They are are very acocmodating and ump right on it, but it can still take some time.
Delta does not have a repair center in the US, to the best of my knowledge, so they probably send stuff back to Poland. For companies with that level of US presence it is probably more cost effective to just quickly swap scopes out, but as they grow options open up.
Element has some US facilities and they are growing so I am sure there will be more of that. They used to be distributed by FX USA, but now that the guy who was in charge of FX USA was, allegedly, caught embezzling (learned about this a couple of weeks ago https://hardairmagazine.com/news/whats-happening-at-fx-airguns-usa/), Element is likely to do their own thing. I do not doubt FX will get through this fine and Element Optics will probably be better off this way. They way they are growing, it is better if they focus on optics anyway.
For some off shore companies customer service is a challenge. For example, I had an Optolyth monocular that fogged up. They fixed it. It took them two years. I've had some occasional interaction with other small-ish companies in Europe (Kaps, Nickel-AG, Noblex etc) and I never quite know what to make of them. It is not clear they are ready to play in the enormous US market the same way that Delta, for example, clearly is.
