Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Last straw with Midway USA for me

I've been out of town and away from my shop for a few months due to a death in the family and I tried to order some stuff from Midway this morning and have it sent to me up here in Oregon.

Couldn't do it because Midway's "policy" does not allow shipping to any address except the business premises on your FFL.

I've ordered a bunch of stuff from Brownells and Dave Manson and had it sent to me here in Oregon with no problem at all...and I ordered the Gre-Tan firing pin assembly for scoutdog from Brownells the other day and had them ship it directly to him and they didn't blink an eye when I told them where to ship it. I have ordered parts for customers on numerous occasions over the years from Brownells and had those parts sent directly to the customer and Brownells has never had a problem with that.

The order I tried to place with Midway did not involve a firearm or even a firearm part...just a Leica laser range finder.

Midway has pulled this crap before by refusing to send Remington receivers to my mailing address that appears as "mailing address" right on my FFL. Their "policy" (even though the ATF does not require it) is to only send firearms to the business premises address on the FFL.

I had a long discussion with Larry Potterfeld (the owner of Midway) two years ago at the Guild show in Reno about this ridiculous policy and despite his assurance that he would "look into it" nothing has changed. I guess old Larry doesn't really care about his customers all that much.

I notified the supervisor at Midway that I spoke with that I was canceling my dealer account with Midway and would NEVER be patronizing them in the future. Now that they no longer have a contract with Remington for 700 actions I don't really need to do business with them anyway.

Midway and Larry Potterfield certainly have the right to adopt any policies they want to...and their customers (and potential customers) also have the right to spend our money elsewhere.

I'm not asking for advice or suggestions, just putting this out as general info on what you can expect when doing business with Midway. They will get none of my business in the future.

One of the guys that works for me ordered a 30 round magazine for one of those really high powered AK-47's they're talking about on CNN.com He got it, opened the package, it was a 5 round magazine. He called Midway up, they said it was their mistake and to keep the 5 round magazine and they'd get him a 30 rounder. The package shows up, inside is another 5 round magazine. He writes a nasty gram, takes a picture of a 5 round magazine next to a 30 round magazine, and sends it off. He recieves a follow up call from Lori "P" (I believe that was the first name, only speculating what the P stood for) and she apologized and said she was personally sending the 30 round magazine to him. It finally arrived.

Everytime I've ordered from Midway half the stuff has been backordered, even though the commercial on tv shows their massive warehouses and Larry is standing there saying they keep big inventories to prevent that from happening. Then you get charged to ship the original order, as well as charged again to ship the backorder.

I'll live with screw ups, back orders, and such (to a point) but this other stuff Midway does has just run it's course with me and I will NEVER patronize them again.

Several other smiths I know feel the same way about their ridiculous shipping/mailing policy and NO ONE (including the owner Larry Potterfield) seems to know where it came from or why this policy is in place.

I've been around long enough to remember when Larry started Midway and he used to consider customer relations as a very important part of doing business. Well boy has that changed since he has become rich and prosperous and is busy buying up all of his suppliers and competitors.

There are too many companies out there that value their customers to waste your time on places like Midway. Gunsmiths frequently buy stuff and have it sent directly to a customer and having a policy that doesn't allow this is just stupid business...in my opinion.

Obviously, the loss of my yearly business is not going to send Larry into bankruptcy, but I'll bet I'm not the only smith that takes his business elsewhere.

A year or so ago, I ordered a box of 20 empty .308 Nickle plated cases. The price was reasonable, but when I did the calculations for the total, the postage was much more than the cost of the cases, and about double the actual shipping charges. I canceled the order.

I have heard of companies that do this--charge nearly double what it actually costs to mail a package, then stick the balance in their pocket.

To me, this is just making additional profit under of the guise of "postage and handling."

I won't buy from companies who do this.

Not getting too far off the topic, but then you have companies like Half Moon rifle shop.

I remember when I placed my first order for some of their great Gun Goddess rust bluing solution. I offered to pay on the phone with my credit card but they said they would send a bill because they didn't know what the actual shipping would be until they took it to the post office.

I got the Gun Goddess a couple of days later and there was no bill in the box. I called them and they said: "Oh, don't worry about it, you should get it in a week or so."

Guess who I buy all my rust bluing solution from now?


There are plenty of great companies and businessmen/women out there (Brownells, Half Moon, Dave Manson, Ed LaPour, Roger Biesen, Paul and Sharon Dressell,to name just a few I deal with pretty regularly) and I will keep going to them even if their prices might sometimes be a bit higher than others. LIfe is too short to deal with jerks that don't care about their customers.

their shipping costs are astronomical ...

Rick,

Midway has a policy,
Midway made a choice...

Now you get to choose. Stop doing business with them.

Your kind of acting like a "victim" IMHO

Guess you missed this in my original post: "Midway and Larry Potterfield certainly have the right to adopt any policies they want to...and their customers (and potential customers) also have the right to spend our money elsewhere."

I made my choice to spend my money elsewhere and emailed Larry Potterfield to let him know exactly why.

I'm hardly viewing myself or acting as a victim...just a very unsatisfied "ex" customer of Midway.

I missed it.
Good for you!

What was the purpose of this thread?

Guess you didn't read that either ?

"I'm not asking for advice or suggestions, just putting this out as general info on what you can expect when doing business with Midway. They will get none of my business in the future."

The title of this forum is "gunsmithing" and there are several of us posting on here who are FFL holding gunsmiths and have to use certain businesses as suppliers for parts and equipment. Midway, at one time, was one of the better places we did business with. In the last few years that seems to have changed for the worst and I just thought other smiths might like to know about it ahead of time.

Thank you

Good post Rick. You are not the only one. About every shooting board I go to has some one bitching about them. I used to order weekly when they had the shipping in with the price. Once they really started expanding their prices went up and I found good deals else where. They screwed up my last two orders and double billed me. I am not completly done with them but they are the last place I look for stuff. I need to be hard up for bullets or brass. Everything else comes for other places now.

It's pretty common on gun forums for customers to complain about this gunsmith or that gunsmith in regards to their lack of customer relations/service and I just thought it might be appropriate to point to an example of what we gunsmiths also have to deal with when we are the "customer" of the businesses who supply the stuff we need to work on your guns.

The mailing/shipping policy I related that Midway has chosen to adopt does not affect anyone except those of us with FFL's and dealer accounts with them.

They even have a clickable button on their order form where you can specify a different shipping address from your credit card billing address...UNLESS you are logged in as a dealer, then the button doesn't work.

Your FFL info, along with the FFL premises address is already on the order page and you can't change anything when it comes to shipping the merchandise...even if it is not FFL restricted stuff like receivers, frames , etc. If you order a damn tee-shirt from them it has to be mailed to your FFL address.

The other thing that really cracks me up with Midway is when they send out their "BIG SALE!!!!" emails.

You look at the "BIG SALE" and instead of something being $39.99 it is "discounted" to $39.95.

RickB,

I'm wondering if Midway's shipping policies (not costs) stem from them trying to prevent fraud. I've had a few credit card numbers stolen over the years and in each case, the thief tried to have the merchandise shipped to a different address than the billing address of the CC. The vendors refused and saved VISA, me and the vendors from losing money. In one case a $10,000.00 TV! Midway may just want to ship to the CC or FFL address for "security" reasons. I don't know the whole situation but there is my $0.02.

RH

I've ordered all my optics from bear basin without ant problems.

I asked that very question of Larry Potterfield at the Reno guild show two years ago had he had absolutely no idea why or when the policy was adopted...and he ownes the damned company! If you ask a supervisor at Midway about it they will only answer that this is their policy and cannot be changed.

As far as credit card fraud is concerned, 99% of companies would go broke at Christmas if customers were not allowed to buy gifts and have them sent to someone else at another address. I do a ton of business over the internet and I have stuff mailed to different places all the time. This is the first business I have ever encountered that makes you have stuff sent to a specific address...and one of their choosing I might add!

Like I stated earlier, just this week I ordered a part from Brownells using my dealer account for a poster on here and I had them send it directly to him. Brownells didn't seem to have the least bit of trouble in doing that for me. I also just ordered some stuff from Dave Manson and had him mail it to me at my mom's house in Oregon where I am right now. Dave also had no problem with that.

My FFL lists both my business premises address and my mailing/shipping address and both are clearly denoted as such. When I get mail from the BATF it goes to my mailing address NOT my business premises address. If I order non-restricted parts from Midway they will send it to my mailing address...but if I order an FFL only part they will only mail it to my business premises address. And no matter what I order from them they will not mail it to other than one of those two addresses. You make sense out of it because I can't.

In order to log onto Midways dealer section of their web site, I have to enter a user name and password just like I do at my banks web site.

I'm only guessing about this, but my conversation with Larry Potterfield certainly didn't disprove or deny it. I think this "policy" of Midways came from some computer geek who set up their web site and their computerized billing/shipping system. What I do know is that before they had a web site and computerized billing and shipping this policy wasn't there.

I have an 03 FFL account with them and I have used it to buy and ship to 4 different addresses, of which 1 of them is listed on the FFL. Maybe since it was an 03 instead of an 01?

I have had no problems with them and use them alot.

However I love those sale ads:
YOU SAVE $0.10!!

Years ago I used to buy a lot of supplies from Midway, back when the shipping was "free" (included in the price). When they started charging shipping I posted a thread on another board, AR, titled "Midway USA raises prices, starts charging for shipping". I got a kind of irate e-mail the next day from Potterfield (he must have monitored the board) explaining how he had to start charging shipping because people were nickel and diming him by ordering $2 orders from him and going to the competetitors for their large orders, so he instituted a minimum order and started charging for shipping so he wouldn't have to pay $3 to ship something someone paid him $2 for. He assured me that they would only charge actual shipping costs, that they would not make money off of the shipping like Cabela's and most others do. Well, fast forward a few years and you can see that Midway's shipping charges have spiraled up through the roof, no way it costs them what they charge for shipping. It's become a profit center for them which is the exact thing that Potterfield stated that they would not do in his e-mail. As their shipping costs have skyrocketed my patronage has diminished. I can't remember the last time I ordered anything from them. I'll admit that it's as much about their chronically being backordered on many items as it is their high shipping charges. If you put together an order of ten items then usually at least 3 are out of stock. It's just become a hassle to deal with them and when you factor in shipping their prices are too high. They used to be a great company, but over the last few years they've gone to pot.

I have no idea why the type of FFL would make any difference, and no one at Midway (up to and including the owner) can/will explain what they are trying to prevent or protect by having this policy or what terrible incident precipitated it's adoption in the first place.

I've never had any problems with Midway except for this silly mailing policy. Everything I have ever ordered from them came on time and as ordered. I mostly used them as my source for Remington 700 actions but they no longer have that contract with Remington and when they sell off what they have they aren't getting any more.