After I got home from completing my addon at the Washoe County Regional Shooting Facility under the direction of Armed and Safe on Saturday afternoon, Gary from Safe Shot called me. He heard I was in earlier in the day and that I had a complaint about the steep pricing and addon drama. I didn’t ask for him to call; he took it upon himself. I applaud him for that because good customer service is hard to find, especially it seems at times hard to find at Safe Shot .
He told me that he didn’t know he charged me more than MSRP for the revolver when he sold it to me the day before and that he couldn’t fix that. The store paid more because it bought the revolver before Smith & Wesson dropped the price. The price drop happened recently, about six weeks before. To make up for the price gouge and the confusion about the addon, he couldn’t offer cash money, but he could offer some perks.
GB and I will enjoy at our next trip to Safe Shot :
- Range fee waivers (2 @ $10)
- Free box of ammo (2 @ about $30)
- Free target (2 @ $2)
That’s a total of $84 in perks. It makes me feel better about the overpaid $30 and the mix-up about the addon. The only catch is that we go to redeem this offer on a day when Gary is working, or with his approval on a day he’s not working. This is to avoid any further chaos. I didn’t get this in writing and I’m kind of worried that when I go to use this offer, it will have disappeared somehow. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when/if I get there. This mistrust really shows how the service at Safe Shot has messed with my feelings towards them. I used to love them. I shot a gun for the first time at their range and that experience changed my life. I also purchased my first firearm from them. I hope that with good staff like Gary, the image of Safe Shot can be turned around.
For now, while Safe Shot can suck at times, Gary seems like an ethical, helpful guy who cares about customer service. He doesn’t earn commission, so he doesn’t benefit from me saying this, but it’s my advice that if anyone is going to buy a gun at Safe Shot , they should buy it through Gary. The rest of the staff seems confused, untrained and hampered in providing customer service by the owner and the owner seems rude and uncaring.
It’s my advice to the owner of Safe Shot that he should make himself scarce on the sales floor and let his staff and customers interact with competent management in his stead. He should focus on running this business from behind the scenes since his people skills are sorely lacking. Not everyone is cut out for retail; perhaps he should stick to the things he is cut out for. Maybe he’s good at the accounting/paperwork aspect of the business? I donno. But get that man off of the sales floor!
Anyway. I’m glad Gary called and I’m crossing my fingers about a successful Safe Shot range trip for GB and I sometime soon.
