While away on a 30th anniversary trip decided to sign up for alerts on a rifle that was to be my anniversary gift. Got an alert from White Birch Armory on the 18th and jumped on it, purchasing right away. Immediately got the text indicating the credit card charge had gone through. Got home a day later to find no confirmation email. Checked with the local FFL and on the 18th they asked him to confirm his FFL info (though they already had it online when I ordered), but had been radio silence since. I've been chasing them for a few days. Finally, while in the middle of leaving them another voicemail, I got the below email response to an email sent Wednesday:

Good afternoon <slosig>,

Upon further investigation, our distributor unfortunately encountered an inventory error affecting your order. This means we will cancel and refund your order shortly. Please keep in mind that it could take 3-5 business days for funds to post back to your account. You will receive a cancelation confirmation email from our Sales Department.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience. Have a wonderful weekend!

<name removed>
Executive Assistant
White Birch Armory
80 Industrial Park Way
Dover, NH 03820

Now, I know that some (many? most?) online sellers are selling out of their distributor's stock. When the distributor has stock, they list it, try to sell it, then go to the distributor to get it shipped out. Sucks, but that is how it is. Can't blame them for that. However, if I were doing stuff like, I'd move quickly to confirm that my distributor was shipping the rifle to me (or more likely drop shipping to my buyer's FFL) and when it turned out that I had been aced out by another FFL doing the same thing I was doing I'd reach out to the customer to apologize, having already refunded their money, not send them a mealy mouthed message trying to say my distributor screwed up and that I'll eventually get around to refunding their money.

Am I wrong to be annoyed at them?

Wrong to be annoyed? No.
But as long as you get your money back I’d just move along.
It’s crazy right now. I would not hold it against them.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Wrong to be annoyed? No.
But as long as you get your money back I’d just move along.
It’s crazy right now. I would not hold it against them.

That's pretty much where I am at, other than I wouldn't go back to them.

In other news, the caps showed up for the scope today. The scope and rings showed up on Monday. All ordered after the rifle. Sigh, now just gotta find the rifle somewhere...

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:
Am I wrong to be annoyed at them?

No, but if you're annoyed at them enough to the point

quote:

I wouldn't go back to them

then, you should be more annoyed at their distributor (the root of the error), find out who else uses them, and, if you are going to avoid the one dealer-customer of that distributor, you should equally avoid the distributor's other customers as well.

Personally, I'd chalk it up to human error and give all a second chance.

Just curious - what rifle were you looking for?

They are relatively new and have been busy promoting locally. I think they opened in 2019 or 2020. Due to Covid I haven’t made it to their shop yet but had planned on going soon. Now I will have to rethink that.

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
Just curious - what rifle were you looking for?

Tikka T3x CTR Stainless in .308 Win.

quote:

Originally posted by Green Highlander:
They are relatively new and have been busy promoting locally. I think they opened in 2019 or 2020. Due to Covid I haven’t made it to their shop yet but had planned on going soon. Now I will have to rethink that.

Joel9507 has a point. The reality is things are crazy and I’m prolly overly annoyed as this is the second time. (EuroOptics was the first). If they had a local shop I’d absolute walk in and get a better read.

Honestly, I live in NH and I've never heard of them. Looking at their website though, they seem to make a serious effort to identify which products are IN STOCK and/or available. They have a check box radio button function to 'Show Only In Stock Products', and even go far as to indicate the 'Total Available' for IN STOCK items.

Obviously, the info on their website only has value if their live inventory data is reliable, but with all the effort they'ye put into their website build and their seemingly plausible explanation for the Out-of-Stock issue, I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

I'd still be annoyed, but chalk this one up to the current and unprecedented demand for all things firearm related!