AA Status

[bwaites]

While I appreciate what you're saying, and understand more about AA and what they offer now, there are some simple facts that the marketplace demands for a company to sustain long term sucess. I have studied companies, seen many seemingly successful companies go belly up, worked customer service from selling guns and anything else, to buying for a $2 million/week company. I love what AA has brought to the market, offering quality and innovation. While demand is high, as it is right now, anybody can succeed by just satisfying 75% of their customers, or even less. But it's how a company takes care of their customers during these times that determines how many return customers they have and how they will succeed in leaner times. I don't care if it's Internet or telegraph, I have dealt with few companies in which you give them your money, and weeks later you do not know if they have the product or not, when they plan to ship the product, or if they've just taken an extended vacation. Customers are demanding people when they fork over their hard earned money, as well they should be. I don't mind waiting, I'm waiting on a Les Baer pistol that will probably be 30 weeks from when I ordered it. But when I call, email, or send a carrier pigeon, they have a way to answer me and acknowledge that they took my money and are taking care of their end of the bargain, and there's a good chance you can talk to Les himself if you have a problem or question. Unemployment is high, and there are quality people out there not working. If somebody is so busy they can't answer the phone, they should be making enough money to hire somebody to answer the phone, no??

I'm not judging AA or saying they aren't aware and working on these issues and certainly not flaming them, and I'm now more aware of the problems they've had with weather and power outages, but I do disagree with your assumption that because somebody wants to know something about what they ordered, they are somehow a product of the new age instant gratification. Not so. I believe it's a simple matter of customer service, which is more old school than new age.

In the past AA never took money until they were about to ship product, and when I recently ordered some parts, they actually called to double check right before the order shipped, and to double check my billing information. I haven't heard that they have changed that policy, so if they have, I'm surprised, it doesn't fit my experience.

I certainly don't disagree with your feelings on customer service. Bill Alexander and I have talked about it many times, and he is 100% in agreement too. The facts, though, are that growing companies experience these problems and they are frustrating on both ends. AA doesn't make money until it sells something, and they WANT to sell stuff, trust me!

They ARE tiny, especially in comparison to many of the companies mentioned. I'll bet that Midway, Brownells, etc. have more shipping supervisors than AA has employees!

That's no excuse, but the experience is that AA will eventually get back to you, as soon as they can. I do know that they recently changed their policy regarding phone messages, and that they now check the machine first thing in the morning and work through the messages trying to answer them all by days end. I'm betting that the last 10 days or two weeks have been crazy there, (there was also another incident on the Arsenal site that I'm not at liberty to make public, it involved AA only in that no one could go onto the site, period. That meant that no one could even go into work that day.) So..... storm, electrical issue, then Arsenal issue, then holiday. I'll talk with Bill and see where they are at in the next 24 hours and post that information here.