Honestly, DA is going to survive this. Like has been said, the number of cans affected vs the total number produced is probably a very small percentage. Could DA have handled this better? Most likely, but I think some of the problems were due to them not manufacturing the cans themselves and having to send them out for repair. Regardless, it seems like the cans are getting repaired and people are moving on. Who remembers the Griffin Reece 5 shake-weight issue? They survived that, and people still buy GA cans. Similarly, this will pass for DA.

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Could DA have handled this better?

I think this is the actual point. I can't conceive how they could have handled it worse. And I think the penalty for that should be that nobody buys their stuff till they come clean on the whole situation publicly. What happened, why, what was the fix, why did they fu so badly communicating etc. etc. Till then I'm not buying their stuff (and I have tons of it already) and I'm telling any else considering it to not do it. Anyone can have a production disaster what separates the good people is what they do when they have one. And DA screwed that one royally.

I don't doubt that they'll survive. I trust my LGS folks, and they said the Sierra5 was a great performer. DA makes good stuff. I agree with the sentiments of Smudge and hrcjon though, when it comes to their handling of the whole thing.

I'll have to look into the Griffin "shake-weight" thing; I haven't heard of that.

As to how they know the Sierra issue is "fixed", they have probably isolated the issue to a specific number of batches run by the manufacturer, which means they know which cans were bad and which cans were produced after the issue had been remidied. Or maybe repair requests fell below a threshold where they can consider the issue resolved.

Of course, this doesn't mean the issue has been fixed - it may have or may not have. And it certainly looks like they didn't handle it properly.

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Originally posted by AUTiger89:
As to how they know the Sierra issue is "fixed", they have probably isolated the issue to a specific number of batches run by the manufacturer...

If this is the case, then that serial range should have been made public knowledge, but to do that, they would have had to acknowledge there was a problem in the first place, which brings us back around to where we started.

Dead Air will survive this, but I'm not going to forget about it and many others won't as well. Any company can biff an issue, but holy hell did they fuck this up at absolutely every turn. Their tactic has been ignore, be silent and also silence the customer where they can, and now it's to effectively say "I'm over it, let's move on, now." I can't get on board with that.

Well I am glad I found this thread. I was considering the Dead Air Mask as my next purchase. I think I will have to stick with the Rugged Occulus. If you read the warranty of each company it is pretty clear which one stands behind their product and the customer.

The Sierra is the only model to be affected by this issue, but I certainly understand if you would rather go with another company based on Dead Air's response to the issue.

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Originally posted by vjb.knife1:
Well I am glad I found this thread. I was considering the Dead Air Mask as my next purchase. I think I will have to stick with the Rugged Occulus. If you read the warranty of each company it is pretty clear which one stands behind their product and the customer.

This was posted today by Todd Magee, Director, Product Engineering at Dead Air Silencers.





Some other quotes I'm not going to bother with the screenshotting and all that right this moment:

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Lol. You've already made up your mind (but you're wrong).

We have full control over our manufacturing. You're out there on the internet sitting behind a glowing monitor acting like you understand QA/QC and supply chain management. As soon as you actually work in manufacturing, let's get together and have a beer (I'll buy) and we can laugh at all the people that have no clue what goes into it but live and breathe Ford vs. Chevy-like arguments.

BPI and KGM definitely produced some bad stuff. Please note the difference between present tense and past tense. What you saw show up on the internet was something you saw last year ago and was made a year or two before that--which is before we took over managing all production.

Nothing goes to a customer anymore unless it goes through our hands at our facility.

Also, we stood behind the Sierra 5 issue. Every customer that had an issue was taken care of. I'm sorry they didn't reach out to you for validation. I'm also sorry that it appears you were somehow traumatized by the internet drama.

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Oh, we definitely had some misplaced trust in some vendors in the past. I'm not here to try and play legal games.

We're a different company than back then, but people want it to be otherwise. The drama is more fun. It's also an opportunity for shill accounts from competitors and influencers to help build their brand because they think they have to pull down others to build their brand. There's A LOT of that going on and you know who you are.

If you're ever at Shot or a demo where I'm at, be sure to look me up. I'll totally buy you a beer.

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I heard Pappas was talking about that and he discussed it on some IG live events, but I was busy in the shop fixing processes and occasionally popping on here and discussing things. The trolls didn't want to hear it though. The narrative and clout was too tempting. These guys love to break out the tiki torches and your average redditor wants the drama. It is what it is. I do admit we could've done better on satisfying the internet's curiosity, but in the end we took care of business quietly with individual customers and made sure everyone was taken care of.

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Mageever = Todd Magee. I'm Pappas' business partner and responsible for design and engineering. I've always enjoyed hopping online and helping people when I can. Online interaction has grown really toxic in the recent years so I've backed off. Everyone feels so entitled and are just angry and there's A LOT of guerilla marketing and shill accounts here now so it's too artificial. I gotta admit, it's been nice just focusing on work and not dealing with idiots online.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NFA/c...still_hate_dead_air/

So... when you read that, and then re-read the stuff in my initial post, what does it look like? In addition to being unable to say "Hey, we've got a problem here. We know there's X number of bad cans that made it out, here's what is affected. Please contact us if you bought one of these," they are now saying it was all Reddit trolls and they took care of everyone, but hey, it's all just shill accounts and sorry we were traumatized by the drama.

What a cocksucker. This is not how you talk to an angry client base. I went from having a problem seeing how this was handled to believing this is just a shitty mindset at the top levels of the company. I wasn't planning on buying any Dead Air stuff, now I hope they go under. You don't treat paying customers this way, you don't talk to your market like this. Most of what I've done for work in the last fifteen years has been manufacturing for a few different companies, from one about the size of Dead Air with probably a similar market footprint in their sector, to Lapua Ammunition for a short stint before my health took a sharp turn. These guys having these conversations happens in probably every workshop of every industry. What it absolutely cannot do it turn into stuff you actually say to the customer base. He also, in a roundabout way, confirmed they still don't build a fucking thing. They design stuff, have it built for them, then test it. Evidently they weren't even doing the last part before.

If you have Dead Air cans and you like them, I'm happy for you. I would sooner hand what a Mask or a Wolfman costs to a fucking hobo on the street corner, because at least he'll say "thank you, bless you" instead of "sorry you were traumatized by the drama." What a dick.