Dixie you will get it

[Hawken]

Not that laws seem to matter much of anything anymore, but as a point most, if not all, Merchant's Agreements require that an item is in stock before a credit card can be charged. There is a little wiggle room on this maybe, though not much. I've ran into this in more or less custom or specialty items. Sometimes have to be reasonable. What most people haven't paid much attention to in the past, or didn't much care, is becoming an issue. Because they don't have any inventory.

Ordinary retail stuff, if they don't have it, they aren't supposed to charge your card. Period, the End.

They do have to test the card account at the time you hit "Buy", for one thing to make sure it is a valid account. And if there is going to be a delay of some sort, even normal shipping time frames , they want to protect themselves in the event your account is cancelled by the issuer in the interim, I expect.

Those "credit" dollars are held against your limits I expect. A similar way to see this in action, is when people use a Bank Card for gasoline purchases, instead of a credit card. The gasoline stations will put a "hold" on a certain amount of $$$ in the check account. This adds up quick.

I suppose the good news is the phones still work, at least for now. Give 'em a call, and ask to speak to a human being. Find out if they actually have on hand what it is that you want in stock.

If someone charges your card and they don't have it, then you are within your rights to "charge back" the sale. They don't want you to do this, they want to come up with excuses on why they can't cancel, but it's up to you to decide if they are playing fast and loose with the regulations.

 

[SOLANCO]

I collect Case knives. They mailed their Dec '20 Collectors Club magazine in December. I got it on February 17th, well past the 13 January cut off for ordering a couple of special editions they were offering.

They said their mailing sat at the USPS center in Rochester for weeks along with 5 trailer loads of other mail. To Case's credit they had extended the deadline.

Recently received an email from a bank suggesting I go online to get my statements and to make payments due to the severity of problems with the mail.

 

[Ponderosaman]

I worked at a place that had explosives and the ATF kicked out all of the temp workers because they weren’t getting their ATF government background check. Could be Dixie has to hire only direct employees.

 

[Lipps1948]

It took a month for me to get my caps, but no where else had them when I ordered, unless I wanted 2500. I still haven’t got my tap a cap stuff from 22 re-loader.

I too am still waiting on both Dixie and 22 also "sigh"

 

[FishDFly]

"Might be harder to hire a temp worker than you think. After all we (the gov't) are paying people extra to stay home and not work."

Union City, TN is where Dixie is.

Population is a whooping 10,000, probably not a lot of extra labor there to work part time.

 

[jdesro]

From what I understand, they, like many others, have been inundated with orders. I also understand that they got hit pretty good with the "unspecified virus of unknown origin". I don't think they had a large amount of staff to begin with, and with the above two factors they just couldn't keep up.

In an overly simplified example, if they get in 10 orders a day, but only have the staff and capability to fulfill 5 of those orders a day, there is de facto going to be a backlog - there is just no way around it.

I've ordered many things from them this past year. It always gets here, sooner or later.

I think we have just gotten a bit spoiled with internet ordering and companies the likes of Amazon and such. I fully remember ordering things mail-order by filling out the order form and sending it along with your check, with the expectation that you will receive the items you ordered sometime within the following six to eight weeks.

Yes, there are other companies that carry the items we are interested in here that seem to have dealt with large order volumes better that Dixie has, but I am wiling to cut Dixie some slack during these rather "interesting" times.

 

[Zonie]

"Might be harder to hire a temp worker than you think. After all we (the gov't) are paying people extra to stay home and not work."

Union City, TN is where Dixie is.

Population is a whooping 10,000, probably not a lot of extra labor there to work part time.

I agree. Union City is a pretty small place and it's not close to any of the big cities so finding a reliable person isn't easy.
There is also the problem of training those "temp employees".
A place like Dixie Gun Works isn't like a place like McDonalds where a newcomer can learn how to make a hamburger and dish up an order of frys in 15 minutes.

When your company has over 10,000 things in storage like Dixie has, it can take weeks if not months to train a newcomer where to find things and how to pack them for shipping. Not every company has all of the modern bells and whistle computer systems that tell someone the item is in row 11, shelf 14b. Of course, the person doing the training also isn't doing any shipping while they take the time to train the new people.

 

[SchwartzStock]

I made an order with Dixie last Monday and it has been in transit since Tuesday. Paid 2nd day......expected tomorrow. Be expecting a refund from UPS.

SS

 

[rickystl]

" I have an item on order from the Netherlands that have been in transit for two months and no idea when it will get here."

I won two locks from two different European auctions. One in Germany, the other in Italy. In both cases it took two months to receive.

Rick

 

[FishDFly]

Most likely your lock is in a container on a ship bobbing around in the Big Pond. Doubt anyone pays air shipping for locks.

 

[James Kopp]

I had an order with Dixie for a single powder horn that on the website showed in stock. After three weeks I finally call the company and the response I got was subpar at best. I was told that it would take at least 6-8 weeks to fill my order. To me to wait for something that is in stock that is inexcusable. I get that some of these companies are small places with few employees, but that is crazy.... I canceled my order and moved on....It will be a long time before I do business with Dixie Gun Works again.

 

[dave61965]

I remember filling out and order form, mailing it in with a money order, and waiting four to six weeks for delivery, and when it arrived, I was happy.

 

[rp77469]

I put in an order with Deer Creek a day or two before Thanksgiving. Jason told me he was busier than a one arm paper hanger and had 34 orders to get out. Told him it would be 35 by the time we finished our call. Anyway, my order shipped the next week. Tracking is a wonderful thing. I followed my package as it slowly made its way to Dallas where it sat for a few days, then it magically appeared in Houston where it wandered over to Richmond and was marked "Out for Delivery" . It didn't show up.

I went back to tracking my package, and it showed up back in Houston, then Dallas en route to Oklahoma City. It sat up there for a few days apparently resting up from all its travels, then went back to Dallas, back to Houston, back to Richmond and finally my house where it was delivered before Christmas. It was well packed and there was no damage.

 

[kelljp]

Every business around town has a help wanted sign out front. The exits from the shopping centers have on every corner some one with a cardboard sign homeless kids to feed bla bla bla. Look in every direction all you see is help wanted signs.

Point it out to them what they say I cant put in print. They would have to pass a drug test and show up on time and every day.
Then someone stops and gives them money but if you tell them what they use the money for or point out the help wanted signs they tell me I am cold hearted. Why should they work they aren't stupid.
Sorry about the rant this is a sore subject with me.

Amen

 

[helwan9]

I spoke to a supplier on Friday who said their order volume was up from 20 packages a day to 200. They don't have room or equipment to add people.

George

 

[.36Rooster]

Soarcj, you’re giving us too few words and punctuation marks. I am intrigued but don’t understand. I think what you’re saying is, “Fear not, though the mail is slow, you will eventually get what you ordered, as I eventually did when I ordered a bag from Dixie back in November”....

Well, I understood his message without effort; but now I'm now wondering whether that was a good or bad thing after reading Bob's well-authored remark...which I also understood.

Perhaps it's a sign of heightened neuroplasticity on my part...

 

[rshveyda]

I spoke to a supplier on Friday who said their order volume was up from 20 packages a day to 200. They don't have room or equipment to add people.

George

That sounds like a ten fold increase in revenue, but I still feel for them. With the additional revenue you'd think they could afford to find some way to expand to accommodate the extra sales, but what if it's only temporary? A business cannot afford to expand unless the eventual return on investment will be realized. Growing and shrinking your sales capacity to match the up and down nature of gun demand would surely be a challenge.

But, you can always stop taking orders if you simply cannot get them out in a timely manner, and also be honest with customer over expected processing delays. Or give up and decide you always want to be a small business and not embrace the opportunity.

My wife owned a local retail shop and we manufactured all of our core product. I then built her a really nice e-commerce platform and we began selling online. We had concrete plans in place for if we should ever take off and get more orders than we could process with our small, family operation. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with cancer and we had to liquidate the business. I don't know how successful we would have been if our orders went up 10 fold overnight, but adding a 6-8 week processing time was never an option in our minds. It would lead to too many angry and lost customers and eventually destroy our brand.

All that said, we really have few options other than waiting or accepting the realities of the market as they are.

 

[BJm]

Very few of the excuses I'm hearing from various online retailers hold water, IMHO. Why does it take 30 days to put something in a box and ship it? And I'm not taking about delays by various shipping carriers which is a separate issue. I'm talking about claiming an item is in stock, but taking a month or more to put it in a box and ship it. And often they have your hard earned $$$ to hold hostage since you've already paid for an item you won't get for some time.

If you have so much business that it's overwhelming your operation, then you should have all that extra sales revenue swelling your bank account and you can afford to hire temp workers to process the extra orders.

If you have sick workers out then you hire temp workers to fill in until they are better. Or pay other workers overtime if possible. It's your responsibility as a business owner to ship in stock items in a timely manner.

If you can't get products in stock then list them as OOS and stop taking orders for them. But I suspect many online retailers don't want to miss the orders and are accepting them anyway and blaming the delay on COVID. Yeah, COVID has decimated the overseas producers of many guns and supplies, but be honest and stop taking orders for items you don't have yet. Or at least be open about your expected in stock date. Most online retailers are doing this and getting it right and it shows respect for the customer.

COVID hit my place of business and we are still open and operating at full speed. No delays. Some products we can't get from our distributors but we carry on with what we have in stock. No need to take a customer's money for months or more and promise we will eventually ship it to you some day UNLESS you are honest about it and the customer is willing to wait.

So, if Dixie or any other online retailer is saying we physically have the item on hand, but it will take us 30+ days to put it in a box and ship it, well, that's pretty bad business practices and has nothing to do with COVID.

And cancelling an order without notifying the customer is just plain bad business. I understand everyone is hit hard by the pandemic, but sometimes I feel some business are taking advantage of the situation.

Packaging is not the problem, with the amount of parcels being shipped these days the couriers can not handle the load. If you need it desperately go for a drive & pick it up. I recently drove 700km round trip to collect a firearm.

 

[rshveyda]

Packaging is not the problem, with the amount of parcels being shipped these days the couriers can not handle the load. If you need it desperately go for a drive & pick it up. I recently drove 700km round trip to collect a firearm.

It's right there in the second and third sentence I typed: "And I'm not taking about delays by various shipping carriers which is a separate issue. I'm talking about claiming an item is in stock, but taking a month or more to put it in a box and ship it."

Whether retailers blame COVID or an increase in order volume, I can't accept that even a small business wouldn't feel a responsibility to spend some of all that extra sales revenue on increasing their shipping department's output.

 

[toot]

YEH! you pay for 2 day delivery expect 3 days, and it turned into 3 months. it is not the complete fault of the USPS.