Coyotegods: Fox Pro Problems Recharging

Since this is turning into a Customer Service/Satisfaction thread, I thought that I would mention my all-time favorite customer service story.

There is a short list of outfits that I've personally dealt with that place a premium on customer care and satisfaction; Leupold and Tri-Tronics spring quickly to mind among others, but the shortest sweetest guarantee that I've ever seen comes from Mike Dillon at Dillon Precision; Mike calls it his "no bullshit" guarantee, and it simply says that,

"If a Dillon product fails, we'll repair or replace it free of charge."

Period. End of conversation.

I bought my first Dillon press back in the '80's, before they were available in any retail outlets, so I drove to Prescott (five hours North) and wandered into the little old "store" that they had tied onto the side of the manufacturing plant, and since there were some other folks in there I contented myself with prowling around and looking at the display models that were mounted here and there while I waited my turn.

And of course I was listening, and time after time I heard people approach that counter and state their case in a more or less defensive tone; usually they'd made some mistake or other that had resulted in something breaking, and you could just tell that they were pretty sure that whatever it was that they had done wasn't going to be covered by the warranty, and that they were going to have to pay money to correct their mistakes.

And time after time I watched those helpful friendly guys in the blue shirts with "Dillon Precision" printed on them explain what had gone wrong, step back into the stock room, emerge with the replacement part(s), hand 'em over with a smile, and go on to the next fella, and there was never a mention of a single cent in charges of any kind.

One guy in particular had overtraveled his ram and torn up his cam that connected the handle to the compound mechanism that provides the torque to re-size the bigger stuff, and he was really on the muscle when he stepped up; he knew damned right well that he'd done something wrong, and he was probably a little bit embarrassed on top of being wrong, but they explained to him what he'd done, told him how to correct it by spacing the die and the shell holder correctly, and then gave him SIX of those links, and told him that they were throwing in a few extra just in case he had a little bit of trouble getting the hang of things, so that if he broke another one or two links he wouldn't have to make another drive.

That guy went out of there with a grin and a far-away look in his eyes, and I'm pretty sure that he's using Dillon stuff to this day, but all of the foregoing is just a setup for the real story that follows.

Some of your older guys may remember this, because it happened a few years back, but apparently some monkey with a sense of humor had his reloading setup in a garage or shed or some other structure (perhaps even his house, although it seems like it wasn't a dwelling place) but in any event it caught fire and burned to the ground, and his Dillon reloader turned into a twisted hunk of discolored metal; it was still recognizably a press, but it looked like something that Salvador Dali might have painted, and it sure wasn't ever going to reload another round of ammo.

The owner, though, with that sense of humor that he apparently possessed, bethought himself of Mike's guarantee, and (doubtless with a big grin on his face) boxed up the charred remnants of the press and shipped it back to Dillon with a note explaining that it didn't work any more, and that as a result he was expecting that they'd send him a new one so that he could get back to making ammo before too much longer.

And then he doubtless set back and grinned some more when he thought about what their reaction might be, but I'll bet that his grin slipped a little when the UPS man showed up a few days later with a brand new press and all the bells and whistles to make it work just like the old one had; Mike included a note himself, and he told the fella that he had done the right thing to send it back; it obviously didn't work any more, and Dillon was happy to replace it, FREE OF CHARGE.

Of course Dillon made a few million dollars more as an incidental result because they used that press in an advertising campaign for a while, but nonetheless Mike made good on the warranty, which I'm pretty sure most manufacturers wouldn't have done.

There are some good companies out there when it comes to customer service, but there aren't any that are any better than Dillon.

John-Henry

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