Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats I am PI$$ED at McMillan!!!!

$17,500 or so in one brand of rifle stocks ...
mercy, miss percy.
gotta find some treees to cut down ... or write a best-seller or somethin' ...

My reason for posting this is not to bash McMillan. Maybe I wouldn't mind putting a little public pressure on them to fix their mistake properly, but that would be a side benefit, and after talking with Kelly, I think they've dug their heels in and will not be handling this to my satisfaction.

My reasons for posting were to allow others to learn from my hard and expensive mistake. Ultimately McMillan cannot be trusted to get orders right. They clearly cannot, or will not, step up to the plate to correct their mistakes in a timely fashion. People should be aware when ordering from McMillan that they absolutley need to follow up to ensure that they get what they ordered.

I used to assume that what I send in on my order is what I would get. I can no longer make that assumption, and will never again trust that they got it right. Maybe it's a little inconvenience for me to have to double check on them, but it's easier and less costly than having them screw up, and me having to eat the cost, time, and inconvenience to my customers.

This isn't the first time I have had to take this approach with suppliers. I have a couple in my real business that I watch like a hawk, because like McMillan, they have proven to be not reliable enough.

McMillan does make some fine wares, and I will continue to use and sell them. However, I will be much more open to using Bansner, Brown and Borden stocks from here on out. The next time I have an order with a time deadline, I will think long and hard before I place that order with McMillan.

I hope this didn't come across as me trying to dissuade anyone from buying from McMillan. I just want people to be aware that there is a very real potential that you will not be taken care of properly if they screw up your order.

My real business has been in my family for 109 years. Over that time we have developed a reputation for fair dealing, excellent customer service, and genuine concern for the businesses of our customers. I would never, under any circumstance, tell a customer "tough [bleep], it'll cost too much to fix MY mistake". Maybe that's why we have been in business for so long, and are stronger than ever. I had hoped I would receive the same from McMillan, but it was not to be. Maybe my standards are too high, but it is the way I will always do business with my customers.

If someone can honestly tell me that anything I have done here, with the order, or how I have handled the screw-up was wrong, I would gladly take it all back and issue an apology to McMillan. The way I see it, I placed the order correctly, called immediately when it arrived wrong, gave them ample opportunity to make it right, ate the cost of making my customer happy to the best of my ability, spoke with the proper people at McMillan, and kept a peaceful tone through the whole ordeal. The only thing that got me was a pissed off customer, another 10 to 12 week wait for a stock, over $100 out of pocket to cover their mistake, one confirmed lost sale, and possibly a second, fairly large, lost sale.

McMillan is only out the difference in revenue of selling the stocks at wholesale vs. the cost of selling them on the Internet Special list. You tell me who got the short end of this deal.

a fair, concise post, cas.
could it be mcm has a really big contract to fill right now at the expense of a few lowly, small-scale long-time customers?
if so, it'd be nice to know, and perhaps something to be worked around.

I don't think you did anything wrong. Nor do I see anyone making excuses for McMillan. There's been a few posts giving positive experience with them, but I don't recall reading anything here saying your wrong.

According to a somewhat recent thread, at least one Alaskan sent his McMillan back due to issues. CAS, BXRoads, myself and others have been turned off by McMillan's mistakes. I can post a picture of a flawed McMillan stock right now but what good would that do? And I can also post pics w/orders in which they got the colors wrong.

As for "McMillan rules" I agree only in the color category they do. A Borden RimRock will trump a McM swirly in the weight, durability, wait time and price dept.

When it comes to McMillan anymore, your mileage may vary.............................

MtnHtr

My 1st thought when I read they weren't able to put your stock to the front of the line was they must run the stocks thru the system in some type of "batch" process where all the stocks on order for a specific action are done at once and then the equipment re-set to do the next.

I don't know how many Nesika actions that have in at once but I would suspect it isn't many when compared to the Rem 700 and others....and I don't know how much it would cost them in salary and production time (slowing down the next batch of stocks) but I wonder how much you would expect them in "eat" to correct the mistake one of the employees made?

Suppose they set up production for your stock alone and the excess cost was $1,000 (I don't know it's just a number) and that in doing it they pushed everyone's elses stock back 2 days (again just a number)...would you expect them to do that? Personally I suprised they don't just send you the stock when it's ready along with a full refund.

I guess my question is "How much do you think McMillan should "eat" in costs to get your stock back to you ASAP?"

People make mistakes all the time but I'm suprised it even left the plant.....you'd think someone would catch these screw-ups before they ever get sent out.

Bill,
I have already eaten over $100 out of pocket in this deal, and I didn't make the mistake. Add the two lost orders in, and I am out well over $300, again it was not my mistake. I would NEVER tell my customer that it was too expensive to cover my mistake.

In my real business, I have eaten over $1000 to cover a mistake before. While painful at the time, it was the right thing to do, and I most certainly did not let my cusotmer know how much it cost me to make things right for them.

Let me ask you this? What would be the harm in moving the entire run of Nesikas to the front of the line? Of course, since I don't manufacture anything in my business, I "don't know what the hell I'm talking about", according to Kelly McMillan.

Cas, IMO if McMillan were concerned about your continued business, they would have done SOMETHING to try and please you. I also own my own business and just recently I underestimated shipping cost on an order by $1250, which I will end up eating to please my customer instead of making them pay it and not getting any more orders from them. I think at minimum, if they insist on making you wait, they should have offered to send you the stocks for half price or even free when they were finished.

Whatever it takes! ... or risk losing a customer? But I'm a simple man with relatively simple ideals.

I agree. Their foul up. Drop what you are doing and make it right. If they want to give him the option of waiting on a stock when they can manage to get to it at current production levels and refunding the full price, that should be left up to the customer.

I've shot McMillan stocks before, and they are nice. But they aren't magic, nor are they only one on the block. It's a piece of plastic...

For my taste McMillan's are too heavy and the wait is too long. If I wanted the strength of the McMillan (with less weight and wait - grin-) I'd alway go Borden. Borden royally screwed up two stocks for me (it happens with even the best) but made it right in a heartbeat and were VERY cordial about it. I HIGHLY reccomend them. Ditto Bansner's.

Not to make light of the situation and I do think CAS deserves some type of compensation but the real "up-side" to this is that those of us who really like McMillan stocks may not need to wait as long in the future.....now if we could only get 'Stick pissed at them it would be days and not weeks,

CAS;
I think I already made my opinion clear, I don't think you did anything wrong, and that includes posting your situation on the internet here. I am shocked by the treatment you are getting, and would undoubtably be ballistic myself way earlier in the game than most...

But I am still going to put a McMillan stock on every rifle I come across. I consider my rifles tools, and don't get real finicky about the details of their appearance, so a cosmetic flaw or two would not matter to me, I think some of the stocks some guys are dissapointed with would fit in my stack like a glove...

I hate to get involved in these things, everyone is entitled to their opinion. There is no right or wrong, just opinion and fact. Unfortunately sometimes the facts get lost in the translation.
Yes, we screwed up. Made two stocks green black and white instead of grey black and white. We even checked the fax and sure enough , though at first glance it appeared to be green, it was in fact grey. I think that the "english" spelling is what made it appear at first glance to be green and not gray. In any event, this isn't about us screwing up, we admit that happens from time to time. It's about "customer service".

Contrary to someones speculation, it was Eileen who handled the original call. She has been with me for 20 years and I fully trust she knows how I would want a situation handled under any circumstances.

As you might expect, CS was upset when he called. I actually talked to him personally and it was very difficult to get him to understand that no one here wanted anything less than to make him happy. We have managed to stay in business for over thirty years by producing a great product and servicing our customers. In this particular instance, I tried to get him to understand that we would make him one just as fast as we possibly could. Unfortunately what he didn't want to hear was that it could take almost as long as our regular production. I suspect that that is where he came up with "go to the back of the line" because he was never told that, I'm sure it just felt like he was being told that.

Just so you guys will know, here is how it works. Our stocks are made by hand. The very first process is the shell. This is where the molded color, marble or camo finish is done. If we have to make a stock with a specific color molded in, this is where it has to begin. Someone posted an excerpt from a thread on another site where I had offered to "put him at the front of the line" and ghet him something in 2-3 weeks. The only way I could do that is if he wasn't picky about the color and/or the stock was going to be painted. In that case I could actually "hi-jack" a stock from another order preferably one that wasn't rushed for time, and change names on the stock.

After the shell has been made, it is filled. Once filled it goes into a staging area and waits until that particular type stock is scheduled for inletting. We have 5 CNC machines that do all of our inletting. Each stock has it';s own set of fixturs, each unique to the exact stock they are made for. Setting up a machine to run a particular stock takes 2-3 hour. We try to run as many as possible at one set up reduce the cost as much as possible. If the stocks are real popular like the A-5, we run 24 to 48 stocks at a time. But, remember, that does not mean all 48 are the same. on the comtrary we may have 12 L700, 6 of them will be BDL, 2 ADL and 4 Badger florrplates. Of those 12 three may have Remington Varmint barrels, 3 may be Sedaro barrels, and the other 6 will be custom barrels from any one of about 10 custom barrel makers we have programs for. As you can see, in only 12 stocks that apprear to be pretty simple, we could have 12 different variations, each one requiring it's own specific programs.

The stocks mentioned in this thread were A-5's, the most popular stock we make. We have six molds that we fill everyday and it takes as long as 3-4 weeks from the time the stock is ordered until we can make the shell. If the customer is lucky, his stock may get made and filled, and two days later they are scheduled to be inletted. From that point it may take another two weeks to complete the process, leaving a delivery time of 6-8 weeks. If a customer is not lucky, his stock may be filled and ready for inletting the day after the rst of the stocks of that type had been inletted. In this case it may be 2-3 weeks before they get back on the inletting schedule. In this scenario, the delivery time might be 10-12 weeks. Unfortunate, yes but we haven't been able to figure out a better way.

continued on next post for those who want to know more.

Huh?

Someone mentioned that he stopped buying our stocks when we took a price increase and couple of years ago. Actually we haven't. We had our last price increase January 1, 2002. We were actually scheduled to take an increase the first of this year but decided to wait. Not that our margins are going up or our costs going down, we just thought we needed to hold the price as long as we possibly could so that more shooters would be able to afford to shoot a McMillan.

One posters comment was that he didn't like McMillan stocks because they were too heavy and the wait was too long. I suspect he doesn't know that our hunting stocks weigh about 2 pounds and we make a Hunters EDGE that is completely finished with recoil pad and studs weighing only 22 ounces. He probably doesn't know that he could order a stock with specific color combination or camo molded in, and that he can specify what type of action, barrel, sling swivel studs and recoil pad he would like to have. And I'm quite sure he doesn't know that when he places an order that stock was specifically made for him from start to finish.

I had a similar circumstance happen to me. This is a true story.
I ordered a 2001 Camaro Super Sport. I had had a 1999, loved it and figured I would order another so I would get exactly what I wanted. I wanted it "Pewter"
It took almost eight weeks for the car to come in and man was I excited. I went straight to the dealership, met my salesman and headed for my new car. Man was it gorgeous. I opened the door, got in, and noticed that it had window cranks. First thing that went through my mind was, "what is an SS doing with window cranks." Come to find out there were no power door locks either. I jumped out of the car and askeed the salesman, (probably not real politely)" what the hell was up with that." He explained that he didn't even know you could get an SS without all power so he didn't think to order it when he placed the order for the car.

So there you have it. I waited 8 weeks for the car of my dream only to find out it wasn't what I wanted, through no fault of my own. What should I have done? Go to a different dealer? Buy a different make of car? Take the one I didn't want?

I took a white one from the dealer because he had one in stock. I was just as happy, maybe happier. White is a good color here in Phoenix. Had some custom rally stripes put on it and I was good to go. I guess my experience as a manufacturer helped me to understand that even though it wasn't my fault, there just wasn't anything anyone could do about. To order another car it would have taken 8 weeks. (I know you are thinking, why didn't they get it from another dealership? In 2001 demand for the Camaro SS was so high dealers were selling them at sticker so there was no incentive for them to move them between dealerships)

Okay, I know it's a long post, a long two posts. Does anyone have any questions I can answer specifically?

CS, please do me a favor. Make sure and post on here when you get the replacement stock. 5-6 weeks down the road everyone will have forgotten about this thread, I would really like for them to know how long it really takes to get your stock to you.

Yep,I got a bull busting question for you.

Should my next A5 be a Purple flame or a Desert Camo schemed flame?

Stocks is easy.

McMillan or bust.....................

That is a tough question. I really like our new sand camo. There is a sample on the web site under colors and finishes. As fpr a flame using desert camo colors, I can't picture it.

[quote]One posters comment was that he didn't like McMillan stocks because they were too heavy and the wait was too long. I suspect he doesn't know that our hunting stocks weigh about 2 pounds and we make a Hunters EDGE that is completely finished with recoil pad and studs weighing only 22 ounces. He probably doesn't know that he could order a stock with specific color combination or camo molded in, and that he can specify what type of action, barrel, sling swivel studs and recoil pad he would like to have. And I'm quite sure he doesn't know that when he places an order that stock was specifically made for him from start to finish. [/qoute]

I'm aware of all the above... "About 2 lb's" is generally around 32-34 oz's and more for molded-in colors. I'm also aware the Edge's weight is a bit deceptive as you use a little "mini" recoil pad... a real 1" Decelerator will push the stock weight up around 25-26 oz's, just like a Borden or Rimrock. Also, you won't do your molded-in colors as solid's... I don't like the "bowling ball look" of your Swirls... just a personal thing.


As to specific question's, what does "there's no right or wrong, just opinion and fact" mean and how does that statement relate to CAS's problem...?

Also, have the good manner's to speak to me directly in future replies...