now happy with todds

Indiana Citroen · Post by **Indiana Citroen** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:34 am

have sent 3 emails about a web and gun belt I ordered on the same day I also ordered a shirt....

well the shirt arrived in a week....the belts????? no sign

Anybody know why the delay...or why I don't get an answer from my emails?

Stu

Zombie Jones · Post by **Zombie Jones** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:03 am

Have you tried calling them? The number is listed on the main page of the website.

Indiana Citroen · Post by **Indiana Citroen** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:10 am

could...but in Australia.....not so cheap;)

Zombie Jones · Post by **Zombie Jones** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:19 am

Well, you got me there. Your location isn't posted, so I didn't know.

knibs7 · Post by **knibs7** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:49 am

He will respond eventually I promise

NIBS

Indiana Citroen · Post by **Indiana Citroen** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:30 am

I was planing to order the whip holder and holster too....

So is it normal for some of these items to take longer....NIBS???

cheers

Stu

Indiana Strones · Post by **Indiana Strones** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:37 am

Send him a PM here at COW.

Hedji · Post by **Hedji** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:59 am

I emailed him about the web belt availability and he replied he expects more by the end of this week. Don't know what that means for your order, but yeah, as of now the web belts are backordered.

Raider S · Post by **Raider S** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:47 am

I ordered a belt, web belt, etc. the second week of September. All items were said to be in stock but I haven't recieved anything yet...

Nebraska Brad · Post by **Nebraska Brad** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:17 am

I ordered my web belt 2 weeks ago and got it last week.

-Nebraska

gwyddion · Post by **gwyddion** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:24 am

Nebraska Brad wrote:I ordered my web belt 2 weeks ago and got it last week.

-Nebraska

Let me guess: you ordered the steel buckle, not the solid brass.

It seems that the solid brass bucle webbelts are what is causing delays here

Regards, Geert

Herr Doktor · Post by **Herr Doktor** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:40 am

I had placed an order for the gun belt and whip holder, and called the next day to add to the order. I was told, probably by Todd (didn't ask who I was talking to), that they were waiting on new buckles to be cast within a day or two.

Maybe he ran out again, and that's why the gun belts are delayed (for those waiting for them)?

BTW...I had to return the whip holder due to a defect (male part of the snap came off when I tried to unsnap it). Be sure to check yours when you get it. Probably a rare occurrence, though.

Puppetboy · Post by **Puppetboy** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:44 pm

Sorry for the problems, everyone -

If you peruse the website you'll see that many items are out of stock. We simply can't keep up with the demand.

Web belts - we ran out of brown web a month ago and promptly ordered more. Usually we get it in about a week, but our supplier decided to go on a vacation and we haven't heard from him since. A very bad time for this to happen. I have an extra roll of khaki that I'm going to dye brown and hopefully catch up on all the backordered brown belts. In the meantime, if you'd like to change your brown belt to khaki, we've got plenty of that.

Weapons/gun belts - I ordered some beautiful belts from a factory early in the summer. Haven't gotten them yet. This is causing us much distress as we are trying to make them here in the meantime and just can't keep up. Also, our buckle caster is flaky and sometimes takes forever to make our buckles. We're often stuck waiting for him.

Webley holsters - coming from the same supplier as the belts and the same story. We're constantly on them to hurry, but they just haven't delivered yet. This is odd because they're usually reliable. The holsters SHOULD have been here months ago. They promise to ship this week, but they've been saying that for months.

I'm sorry for all the delays. They are all due to supplier badness. Hopefully they will come through and all this will have a happy ending, and I can get back to sleeping at night.

If you have unhappy feelings towards us, please e-mail us and we'll try to make you happy again. I can't explain, Stu, why you didn't get a reply to your e-mails. We always answer all of our e-mail. Of course, this time of year it takes a while to answer, but we will eventually.

Todd

Nebraska Brad · Post by **Nebraska Brad** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:04 pm

gwyddion wrote:
Nebraska Brad wrote:I ordered my web belt 2 weeks ago and got it last week.

-Nebraska
Let me guess: you ordered the steel buckle, not the solid brass.

It seems that the solid brass bucle webbelts are what is causing delays here

Regards, Geert

Nope. solid brass.

-Nebraska

gwyddion · Post by **gwyddion** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:17 pm

Nebraska Brad wrote:
gwyddion wrote:
Nebraska Brad wrote:I ordered my web belt 2 weeks ago and got it last week.

-Nebraska
Let me guess: you ordered the steel buckle, not the solid brass.

It seems that the solid brass bucle webbelts are what is causing delays here

Regards, Geert
Nope. solid brass.

-Nebraska

Todd already cleared it up for me: it wasn't the webbelt buckle, but the webbing itself that caused the delays. That plus some other items.

Regards, Geert

theinterchange · Post by **theinterchange** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:46 pm

Why does everyone get bent out of shape when Todd has backorders or is out of stock, yet they don't complain when it takes months, to a year or more for other items? The site clearly states when a backorder situation is underway.

Same could be said for those complaining about Lee Keppler...

Cut the man some slack, he's only human.

:steps off his soapbox:

Randy

P.S. I state this having had an order or two take some time to process, I understand how retail goes. I appreciate having lower priced options out there.

JC1972 · Post by **JC1972** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:51 pm

I agree with interchange. Before I would out someone on something, I would check with the source first. Which seemed kinda easy to do by going to Todd's site.

Raider S · Post by **Raider S** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:51 pm

When I ordered all my items Randy, they were said to be in stock. I never got a notice saying when I could expect my items.

I'm not upset and haven't complained, but maybe you can see why people would be if they believed the items they ordered were ready to ship.

theinterchange · Post by **theinterchange** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:56 pm

Raider S wrote:When I ordered all my items Randy, they were said to be in stock. I never got a notice saying when I could expect my items.

I'm not upset and haven't complained, but maybe you can see why people would be if they believed the items they ordered were ready to ship.

Raider S, I was actually making generalizations. I have no way of knowing each case, just that he and several other suppliers get an easier "I'm ticked off at them" mark than others.

I'm not scolding anyone, just making an observation.

Indiana Citroen · Post by **Indiana Citroen** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:04 pm

well it sounds my brown web belt with brass buckle and gun belt are on back order....

Ill wait as I am happy with the shirt and delivery time......but would have appreciated a reply

so lets see

theinterchange · Post by **theinterchange** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:08 pm

Indiana Citroen wrote:well it sounds my brown web belt with brass buckle and gun belt are on back order....

Ill wait as I am happy with the shirt and delivery time......but would have appreciated a reply

so lets see

Yeah, I can understand.. wasn't taking a shot at you, just observing. Hope there was no misunderstanding.

R

Puppetboy · Post by **Puppetboy** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:11 pm

I wish we had a better method of keeping inventory and communicating with customers. I try to keep backordered items up to date so you know ahead of time. Often, we don't know how many we have on the shelf.

Lets say we have a small pile of whip holders in a box. We've started work on 200 more, but it will be another week until they are done. We get orders for 20 whipholders in one day. The next day, we go to pack up the whip holders. We don't realize until then that we are 5 whip holders short. by this time, we've already sold 15 more. Now we're 20 whipholders behind before I can even get to the computer to put "we're sold out" on the website. And as flimsy as it sounds, writing 20 personal e-mails to tell you that it will be a week until you get your whip holder takes far more time than we have.

We're far too small to afford a nice automated system that tracks inventory, and with the rate of returns/exchanges, even if we did have an automated system, keeping it up do date would be impossible without having scanners and barcodes - and even that system does not always work (ever been to best buy and the sales guy scratches his head and says, "well, it says here that we have 5 of those, but they're not on the shelf...)

We're always trying to solve problems like this - keeping customers informed about backorders. The problem is that there are just too many for us to handle. I'll be thnking about a solution - perhaps a form or something like that to save time... I'm open for suggestions...

theinterchange · Post by **theinterchange** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:35 pm

Todd, I had that tonight at 2 Sears stores looking for a lawnmower.. they both claimed 2 in stock and they only had the floor model. So I know that ALL too well

Indiana Citroen · Post by **Indiana Citroen** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 1:25 am

all good......amazing that cow can help me and thanks todds

anyway long way to the land down under and a shirt that arrived in one week was a pleasant suprise

JC1972 · Post by **JC1972** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:35 am

theinterchange wrote:Todd, I had that tonight at 2 Sears stores looking for a lawnmower.. they both claimed 2 in stock and they only had the floor model. So I know that ALL too well

I worked at Sears Automotive 10 years ago as a salesman/customer service advisor. How many times our system said we had at least 4 tires, and I go back in the tire room and only find 3? I lost a lot of sales due to the fact I could not find enough tires or the time it took to find them. That was frustrating.

PLATON · Post by **PLATON** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 7:03 am

Maybe someone stole the tire.

Give some time to Todd, he's an honest guy.

Puppetboy · Post by **Puppetboy** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 12:50 pm

I think I may have found a solution to the problem.

I use Paypal's free shopping cart system, and they have now upgraded the cart to track inventory. When an item is sold out, it will not let you buy it. End of problem. If we don't have it, you can't buy it until we do have it. I'm working on putting those features into place right now.

The only other option is to constantly edit your web pages to remove the buy buttons from items when you're out and replace them when the item is in. With 120 pages and 90 items, that's a full time job.

Indiana Citroen · Post by **Indiana Citroen** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:10 pm

Belts arrived today....phew

Soup · Post by **Soup** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:25 pm

Glad it work out. Todd really does a great job for us.

Regards,

Soup

Alkali Jones · Post by **Alkali Jones** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:29 pm

Hey all,

Maybe the thread title should be edited now everyone's happy. Just my $ .02.

Dan S