I've been trying to contact Williams Firearms Co., Inc. re: a parts order I placed 5 weeks ago without any luck. I've emailed them, left voice messages, and have been unable to make contact. Both phone numbers are still active, but are full and not accepting any more voice messages.

Does anyone know what their status is?

thanks!
Dave

There parts service SUCKS
There customer service SUCKS

any other questions?

I imagine things are a little hectic at WFC right now because of the Winchester debacle. That's not an excuse though for them not answering their phones or returning email messages. It leads me to believe they might be the earliest casualty in the USRAC/Winchester mess. I hope that's not the case, but they're certainly acting like it.

A month or so back I ordered a bottom metal for a model 70. After I didn't hear anything from them I called and talked to a lady (Pam?) who appoligized and said it would be a week or two as they were very busy.

This week I had a message from her letting me know the order had shipped.

Now I haven't gotten the package yet, but they are still alive.

Actually, the winchester thing might be good for them if in fact they finish their prototype of their new action. With Winchester gone that would open the door for them. I hope they succeed.

I read enough of williams bullshit on another forum,to know better then to do business with him.

I would imagine with the loss of winchester. Williams may be feeling it since they supposedly had a major contract for extractors.

The "we were busy and swamped with business" line is usually just a stall tactic and lame excuse for piss poor service. Chances are,they have no volume,so they only produce what they know they can sell and you're waiting for them to produce your part.

Thanks for the input. It confirmed my suspicions. At least they haven't charged my CC yet. I'll just have to wait and see if they send it out. In the mean time I'll keep trying to contact via phone.
I do agree about their service. Hard to fathom staying in business when you don't answer your phone...
thanks again!
Dave

I've always gotten good service for parts from them and excellent answers to my questions. Matt even gave me his office number so I could call him if I need help taking a bolt apart.

i had a broken screw off a 5D and called them, got thru first time, and it was in my mailbox in 2 days at no charge. i couldn't ask for any more than that. that was a month or so ago but if they went downhill, it was fast. and businesses as well as people do have problems crop up they have to recover from.

willmckee,
That would have been the Williams Gunsight Company. This thread is about the Williams Firearms Co.
Confusing, no?

- stu

Fjold,

maybe I might get you to talk to Frank for me as I too ordered about 4 wks a Williams extractor for my stand. long action in the SS version.

Well, I got my model 70 long action bottom today.

If they are having any problems it isn't manifesting itself in quality control.

Great as always.

Grizz,
I ordered the same thing on 3/1.
Talked to Pamm 3/10 and she said "will ship in
the morning" still haven't heard from them
Can't get thru on the phone and won,t answer
E-mail,
Don't know what to think!
Charlie

It sounds like they must be way behind with their production. I placed an order on 2-22 for four extractors. The lady I spoke with was very helpful, and I expected 2-3 weeks to get it to Alaska.

I'm glad to hear that McCray got his part, and I can wait, as long as I know it is going to get here eventually. I would still like to be able to contact them by phone. Any other numbers that may be direct lines into their office, aside from their 800 order line, and FAQ line?

At least after posting this, I don't feel like the lone ranger...

Thanks!

What I don't understand is most people are pretty easy to deal with if they are told up front of any ongoing problems and yet some people choose the delay and ignore option. It really makes no sense, just keep in touch with people and let them know they haven't been forgotten and offer up truthfull timelines and customers will usually be fine. I'm wanting to order a item but threads like this have kept me from it. I hope they get it togther as they offer some things I like at a decent price.

I spoke with Pam at Williams Firearms today. Placed a order and will be shipped tomrrow. She has been on vacation. The phone was answered on the second ring.

Wouldn't it work better to order your Williams parts from GunParts instead of direct?

Just a thought.

George

Pat, (the lady up front) just got back from vacation so communications should be better now.

We do apologize for the extensive delays in the shipping of parts and lack of communications.

I've rarely been in the office and Pamm took her vacation right after we shipped the last of the parts to Winchester. While this wasn't necessarily the best time for her to do this, it was more than deserved.

We are filling orders steadily and running in year long production numbers, not in what was just ordered.......We'd go broke if I did that.

We've had some equipment breakdowns in the last few weeks as well, which consisted of two brand new spindles in our HAAS CNC machine, which does most of the fourth-axis milling work. This has put us behind on or floorplate and extractor production.

I understand it's frustrating, but please be patient while we get things better organized. In a matter of about a month or less, we'll be stocking every part, in every finish to ship within one business day of your orders.

This is something that we didn't have the luxury of doing before because of the demands put on us by Winchester. The last 2 plus months of Winchester's existence had us working two shifts, totaling over 20 plus hours a day of production and we still got stuck with open p.o.'s.

We are also getting ready to hire another front office person to help Pamm with the calls and orders, so you guys will get the questions you have answered sooner, and the parts shipped quicker.

Again, I do apologize for the inconveniences that this has all caused, but it will be getting much better very soon.

Did anybody see the new receiver at the Shot Show?
Butch

Matt you have a PM.

Matt, do you ever make a post that's not full of promises or some bullshit excuse? It seems that is all you can do.

Heres a post from 3/2/06 but you damn well didn't show up to dispute what I had to say.

Posted 02 March 2006 00:27
Well, here goes another "rant". For the past year (approx) I have been trying to buy a SS 1 pc floor plate for my custom project so that Scrollcutter could finish up the last of the engraving project. I have called Williams several time over the past year. All I have gotten is, oh I'm soory we are out of stock, we just sent the last of them to winchester, we will have more in 5 weeks, so on and so on.
I have left my name and phone number several times and asked to be called when they did have one, just one
I have heard excuses, oh Matt is sick, we had a computer glitch, Matt's step sisters half breed po-dunk inbred cousin in bumfuck motown stubbed his toe
At this point, I will hammer out a god damn piece of rebar flat and punch holes in it for a floor plate before I would put a Williams floor plate on my gun.

Oh, by the way Matt, How's that super duper action? like your customer service NONE

Then, today we get to hear MORE of your world famous excuses, in this last bullshit post. Point in fact:

I've rarely been in the office and Pamm took her vacation right after we shipped the last of the parts to Winchester. While this wasn't necessarily the best time for her to do this, it was more than deserved.

So, her vacation was more important than your customer base

Well Matt, in spite of some of the more vitriolic replies you got, I just wanted to say that I have bought your products before and currently have some coming. As I have been happy with the quality and the price of your products, I expect to continue to be a customer.

I thought it was very decent of you to come on-line and answer some of the questions raised in this thread. As we all know, you can't always expect "velvet glove" treatment on AR. I guess that is just the way things go here, for the better or the worse.

I hope you manage to get your production up to speed and delivery times within limits acceptable to both you and your customer base.

Pity the action project has not yet come to fruition. I guess in some ways, you landed yourself a bunch of criticism for announcing it, yet thus far not having been able to deliver. However, I have seen the difficulties involved with getting something like this on the road, and I realize the pitfalls along the way are numerous. I guess it is also hard not to speak about a project, which you are not only exited about, but also believe would be of interest to the Shooting World. I guess, as always, that the balance between publicity and the uncertainties of actual delivery dates is a compromise.

Finally, on this comment:

quote:

So, her vacation was more important than your customer base

Jimmy, you really need break from AR. Why don't you take the rest of the day off, and come back when your temperament has settled down a bit?? I severely doubt Pam@Williams was personally responsible for any delay you may have encountered. Besides, I guess you go on vacation from time to time as well? In the gun business, there is probably never a good time to do so, but anyone deserves a vacation from time to time.

- mike

Mike, sorry but posts like yours are why Matt gets away with this BS and excuses. There is no doubt that Winchester, was the number 1 customer and is what made the bread and butter for williams.
Every hear the saying, don't put all your eggs in one basket?
Ever wonder why Brownells, no longers lists any williams products?

As far as vacations go, being self employed for 30+ years, my vacations came in the off season and while I was gone there was always someone in charge to handle the day to day operation and to service our customer base and answer the phone.

Read back through Matt's post. You mean to tell me there is only one person to answer questions and take orders at williams? You mean to tell me you approve of a business that would tell an employee, sure take a vacation, we just won't answer the phone while your gone.

What about this action????? What about the Completed
/finished action to be at this past "SHOTSHOW"

Now, that winchester is done, we the public will become williams number 1 customer base ?

notice how nothing was said about the actions...even as a courtesey one would have thought something would have been said!!
daniel

Good grief!

How is it that announcing plans for a new rifle action suddenly OBLIGATES someone to keep you (the public in general) appraised of every little aspect of it? How is it that you are now owed ANYTHING?

Customer service problems are legitimate concerns, but bitching about the new action project if you don't have any money invested is really out of line. Sheesh!

CDH, I belive that if he were a reputable business person he would hit this head on and not dance around it. I wouldn't buy one now for fear of not getting the truth or no answer at all.
Butch

CDH, the action was announced on the web. First I believe on Huntamerica and then here. It was announced about 5 years ago. Matt has brought this up in the past and has responded to requests. So why is it a problem to ask.

I have an acquaintance that got an idea for a hybrid Mauser/mannlicher Schoenauer (sp?) a few years ago. Within 6 months he had a working model in plastic that he had cut on CNC. I believe last year he had some made. He is a one man show and a mechanical engineer that travels all over the world for the folks he works for and he did this in his spare time. He completed his idea.

In general, and leaving anyone in particular out of the equation, someone contemplating a new product usually starts out by building a proto-type of some kind (like Chic’s friend did) and showing it off to see if there’s an interest in it.

Merely talking about a new product is just that...talk, and at some point someone is going to want to actually see a finished, working example.

Investing in the machinery and technology to build an action on mass scale is no small undertaking, and my hat is off to anyone who can pull it off and end up with a product in a price range that makes it possible to make a profit.

Hey chic,

How about some more info on this hybrid mauser/mannlicher. Sounds real interesting....

quote:

Originally posted by jimmyd223:
Matt, do you ever make a post that's not full of promises or some bullshit excuse? It seems that is all you can do.

Heres a post from 3/2/06 but you damn well didn't show up to dispute what I had to say.

Posted 02 March 2006 00:27
Well, here goes another "rant". For the past year (approx) I have been trying to buy a SS 1 pc floor plate for my custom project so that Scrollcutter could finish up the last of the engraving project. I have called Williams several time over the past year. All I have gotten is, oh I'm soory we are out of stock, we just sent the last of them to winchester, we will have more in 5 weeks, so on and so on.
I have left my name and phone number several times and asked to be called when they did have one, just one
I have heard excuses, oh Matt is sick, we had a computer glitch, Matt's step sisters half breed po-dunk inbred cousin in bumfuck motown stubbed his toe
At this point, I will hammer out a god damn piece of rebar flat and punch holes in it for a floor plate before I would put a Williams floor plate on my gun.

Oh, by the way Matt, How's that super duper action? like your customer service NONE

Then, today we get to hear MORE of your world famous excuses, in this last bullshit post. Point in fact:

I've rarely been in the office and Pamm took her vacation right after we shipped the last of the parts to Winchester. While this wasn't necessarily the best time for her to do this, it was more than deserved.

So, her vacation was more important than your customer base

Well jimmyd223,

If you'd like for me to "show up" for a dispute of what you had to say, perhaps you should have let me know that you had something to say on a public forum about myself personally or my company......I don't spend every waking minute scanning this forum and a host of others trying to find threads that I should be replying to.

Perhaps including your real name in a post would be handy on idenfying an order that you would have. Perhaps mentioning whether or not this was something you ordered off of our online catalog or phone would be helpful too.

Our Stainless product line has been sketchy at best for a variety of "bullshit excuses" that I won't bother mentioning, but I've shipped many of what you describe within the timeframe that you claimed to have ordered them. These are parts that have been shipped to Midway, Brownells, and indvidual customers. The oldest order we have on the books is around a 30 day period and those would be the stainless models for both Remington and Winchester.
If you call up and ask for a part we don't have and then say you'll call back because we don't have it in stock; you'll never get it until you place an order. We don't charge our customers until the part ships, but the ones that make the commitment to order the parts will be the ones that get theirs first.

Our office manager's vacation, as I mentioned earlier, could have been planned better, but when I have valuable people who work hard for me and ask for a vacation after working around the clock, both at the shop, as well as at home, they get it.

I'd love to have enough time and money on hand to get all these things done by myself, but it's not possible, so hiring quality people on is necessary. We don't have a large shop with plenty of backup people. We all wear a lot of hats everyday to keep things running smooth. Pamm handles all of the online orders, payroll, taxes, phone calls, orders by phone, purchasing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, shipping and customer correspondence, for the most part, and more than I could write today on this forum.

I have two other employees who's main job is CNC production and CNC prototype work. They also hand-finish and blue the final parts and order tooling for their production cells.

My dad and I are soley responsible for all of the fixture and tooling design, production programs, material ordering, technical questions regarding products, production planning, and the list goes on.

So, there you have it......the whole crew in it's entirety......Pretty huge huhh??


Sorry I didn't mention anything on the action, but the question wasn't brought up.

It is in the protoype phase right now, but we are trying to get caught up with the orders that got backordered due to Winchester's last-ditch effort at shipping rifles.

I haven't posted much about it lately because everytime I do, I get posts like yours that think I need to keep everyone abreast as to the progress on a minute-by-minute basis.
I mentioned quite a while back that I would refrain from posting anymore about it until the receivers were complete enough to take pictures of and put into the hands of competent gunsmiths and gunmakers to thoroughly evaluate the product.
I still stand by that statement......At which time that does happen, you can feel free to praise or bash, the choice is yours.

As far as Brownells not carrying our products any longer........I'll let you draw your own theory on that one......as I'm sure you have more knowledge on the subject than I do...

The thought of maybe us moving our product line into a factory direct position isn't probably something you had figured, but give it some thought......Or for that matter, read the home page of our online catalog for the last several months.

For the record.........there is no "offseason" in the firearms industry......there's fast, faster, and completely swamped. That's why the only hunting I get to do lately is with my fingerprints, on the parts that my customers use on their rifles.


Now......on with the flames.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight one way or another, but I don’t recall ever getting the memo that told me I was now being forced into buying a particular product or patronizing a particular vendor/manufacturer.

If you don’t like a guy or his company/product...then shop elsewhere and quit worrying about how he does or doesn’t conduct his business.

I've used Williams products in the past and will use them in the future. I also have spent enough time around small businesses and machine shops to know how hard it can be to make a living and try to keep everyone happy. Obviously nobody's perfect but IMHO Matt tries a lot harder than most. In a small business loosing your biggest customer has to be tough as hell so maybe a little support and understanding is more appropriate than lashing out at someone when they've just taken a heavy blow. I think we should give him a break. Hopefully someday we'll have an action in hand to comment on but I for one understand that making anything new in the firearms industry isn't a guaranteed cash cow and making a living comes first.
Jimmy, obviously you should just move on and buy products from somewhere else.
Everybody else, I'd hate to see someone who makes a good product get shoved under by the people who should be supported them.............DJ

Jimmyd223.

I have up to this time refrained from posting on this subject regarding your ranting about Williams Firearms Parts.

Matt is correct as to there is no slow time in this industry. I have in the gun industry in one shape or form now for 33 years.

You also have no idea as to the problems in the past 3 years getting steel to even make the parts.

You may know about the cost of FUEL to run the trucks that deliver the steel, but do you know how long that load of steel was on backorder from the foundry.

Also when equipment breaks down it is very time consuming as you should well know since you drove truck for so long.

Matt.

I wish you the best in getting caught up.

I know the feeling far to well that since I am behind the pack in the race I think I am in front. Just to find out I am in dead last.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith
President
Wisner's Inc.

The problem I always have with people venting about their issues on public forums is that you are only hearing ONE SIDE. In 30+ years of dealing with suppliers, customers, staff etc there is always two sides to every issue. Even when you try and be fair in your discription of the issue you are still doing all the talking. There is always at least two sides to every issue and the truth is usually someplace in the middle. Yes on occasion there is the rip off artist but I have found them to be rare.

Every business can't take the time to address every post on every forum.

quote:

Posted 06 April 2006 04:01
I've used Williams products in the past and will use them in the future. I also have spent enough time around small businesses and machine shops to know how hard it can be to make a living and try to keep everyone happy. Obviously nobody's perfect but IMHO Matt tries a lot harder than most. In a small business loosing your biggest customer has to be tough as hell so maybe a little support and understanding is more appropriate than lashing out at someone when they've just taken a heavy blow. I think we should give him a break. Hopefully someday we'll have an action in hand to comment on but I for one understand that making anything new in the firearms industry isn't a guaranteed cash cow and making a living comes first.
Jimmy, obviously you should just move on and buy products from somewhere else.
Everybody else, I'd hate to see someone who makes a good product get shoved under by the people who should be supported them.............DJ

EXACTLY! DJ said it better than I could, so let me just repeat it.

quote:

Originally posted by ramrod340:
The problem I always have with people venting about their issues on public forums is that you are only hearing ONE SIDE. In 30+ years of dealing with suppliers, customers, staff etc there is always to sides to every issue.

Every business can't take the time to address every post on every forum.

Actually, I’ve always found there are three sides to every story...Mine, yours, and somwhere in between there is the truth!

Jimmyd223
Brownells list Williams Firearms products on there WED site. Check it out. If you talk about a business are someone at least know what you are talking about.

Elmer, you have a reading problem or can you not understand english.

Mfr: WILLIAMS FIREARMS
SPECS: 1215 and 11L17 steel or 416 stainless steel. 8½" (21.6cm) long.



LONG ACTION - Drops in current Super Grade and Safari Express stocks. Fits all long action, Post-’64 stocks with just minor inletting. Fully contoured and pre-drilled. Available in polished blue, bead blasted blue, steel, in-the-white, and stainless steel, bead blast.



No alternate products found.
Stock Number / Desc
Price
Qty
More Info

954-100-201
Polished Blue $172.13




Gun Parts
Dropped by Brownells

954-100-202
Bead Blasted Blue $178.28




Gun Parts
Dropped by Brownells

954-100-203
In-The-White $161.48




Gun Parts
Dropped by Brownells

954-100-204
Stainless Steel $209.63




Gun Parts
Dropped by Brownells


ramrod340, let me say up front, I do not feel Matt or Williams is a rip off

J Wisner, I really don't see the point is slow time or full time and beyond. If Winchester demands all of williams time, then don't offer the product to the public until you have enough product to supply the demand.
As to problems getting steel for the product, this is the first I have heard any mention of this problem.
As to working hours and time off, I can relate to the problems involed. My hours from may thru november run 90+ hours/wk and 50+ from dec thru april and 4 days of hunting in the last 3 years.

Matt, I do think that part of this problem could be the fact that I was not willing to leave my CC number on file with Pam for the up to 5 weeks until production was to start on the SS floorplates. That is why I left my name,address and phone number, expecting a call when ready at which time I would supply my CC number. If you want my name send me a PM.

Jimmy, when a seller has one item, and two guys who want it, the one with money in is hand is going to get it, 9 out of 10 times, and everytime with a small business.

Sigh, Dutch.