Grendel AR Bolt.......Anyone.....?

[bwaites]

Kohoki, the easiest way for me to answer is inserting answers directly after your comments. I've done it in bold red so it is easy to figure out.

@bwaites

Thank you very much for the explanation, I didn´t knew that the situation is this bad in the US. Furthermore I am not angry about them due to long delivery times, it´s more that they don´t tell the customer what delivery times to expect. They leave the customer with the statement: "All products subject to backorder."
They don´t tell potential customers the delivery time because of the potential loss of customers as soon as they tell them:

"All products subject to backorder, it can take up to a year and more until we process your order."

In the past, AA would give lead times and probable delivery times, and almost invariably they were criticized because those times were often postponed because their supplier wouldn't get parts to them on time. AA was having to constantly deal with customers who would say, "but you said 8 weeks!" and then it would take twice that. Not because AA didn't want to ship the part, but because they simply couldn't control delivery times from the supplier. The AR market is so hot that suppliers don't have to worry very much about selling stuff if someone cancels an order because it was late, they have lots of people waiting in line to buy it. Since the only thing unique to the Grendel and Beowulf are the barrels and bolts, all the other pieces are in demand from lots of other places. The .17 HMR uses all the same exterior pieces, too, so even it is affected. If you can't get forearms, or latch pins, or door springs, etc. you can't build and ship an upper. Because the relative volume of barrels and bolts is low compared to 5.56, they are always on the back burner in comparison.

One fundamental in industrial economics is the triangle of: Quality - Schedule - Cost, A manufacturer/seller has to meet the customers expectations in all three segments in order to be successful on the market, otherwise another manufacturer will take over the business. It is possible to focus on two segments and have a compromise at the remaining. Ignoring the remaining, in this case AA ignores the need of the customer to know/estimate a date of delivery, results in unsatisfied or requires frugal customers.

I certainly agree. Unfortunately, since the 2nd election of Barack Obama, the American public has gone on a gun buying and ammunition buying spree that is completely unprecedented. No one predicted it would be like this, and no one was prepared for it. There are still critical shortages of some types of ammunition, with .22 long rifle essentially non-existant on the shelves. In the last month we have begun to see rifles and pistols start to catch up, but parts for self builders are still rare. I have parts to build two more rifles, but haven't found lower parts kits (or upper parts kits for that matter!) at a price that isn't gouging. They are starting to show up, though, which was not the case even six weeks ago. At NO time in the past has ammunition been in such short supply. No one can remember not being able to walk into any outdoors store and not be able to buy .22 long rifle. 5.56, 9mm, .45 and .308 are only marginally better. Those calibers have started to show up in the last 4-6 weeks, but .22LR is still lost.

AA is in the same boat. In normal times, they would be roundly criticized, but ALL the boutique manufacturers are in the same situation, so people wait and wait, happy that they are at least on the list!


I am not writing this to offend AA, I am just seeing analogies to the German weapon manufacturer market. In both of our countries you need to be a very very patient customer when you ordered something from a gunsmith!