Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Pics of my new custom action

Skane, read what is on BAT's website:

This is the home of precision rifle actions, machining and tooling. Whether you are a competitive shooter or a rifle enthusiast wanting the finest possible action, you've come to the right place. Please take time to check out our actions and accessories. If you don't see exactly what you need, please get in touch with us as we can custom manufacture a solution for your specific needs. Thanks for stopping by!

Bruce A. Thom

Now if you think what I received is a "precision rifle actions, machining and tooling" than you are full of CHIT.

Maybe you have a close relationship w/either the mfg. or distributor, whatever your angle/agenda I don't know. The only agenda I had when I paid for the action is to receive what I was promised. There was no Commitment to deliver as promised givent their blatant lack of QC, nor any willingness by Bruce to show he gave a damn and wanted to provide an immediate agreed upon solution. There is another problem I see here, one where the trust that the distributor has in jeopardizing their business, by not delivering as promised, and reflecting upon their business.

I will damned to be attacked by the A$$holes on this site about MY choice to take control of this situation and provide my own resolution immediately rather than wait, wonder, and hope for a satisfactory resolution by Bruce Thom who waited three days to contact me AFTER I had contacted him.

There is NO excuse. Not for the action, or his brushing me off.

You guys who think I over reacted, and Bruce's response was fine, and the action getting out the door was fine, is exactly why this CHIT happens.

If anyone of you 'haters' out their had the balls to stand up for yourself when this crap happens and call them out, then you would not have heard or seen this happened. That action simply NEVER would have hit the market. That said, what pissed me off 10 fold was Bruce's lackadaisical attitude.

Bruce and I differ HIGHLY on what it means to take care of customers. I have been in business all my life and do my damnest to give my customer the utmost courtesy and respect and SERVICE and whenever there is an issue or question, I find an immediate answer or resolutiona and communicate with my customer on it. Bruce chose to NOT contact me via phone or email. Bruce chose to Not apologize this CHIT left the shop. Bruce made an excuse how the lettering on the action could not be messed up do to how they machine it (and that was a minor issue, but you are talking about a product that commands the highest price, promises the highest quality, and of all things, the name of your company you put on the product is not done right).

BAT shows me ZERO respect as a customer, for my time and dollars spent buying the action, and to the headache trying to get them to contact me.

SKane, obviously you and I differ. Best of luck you.

As to BAT, maybe because of THIS, they will get their act together. I got burned once, and why the hell should I give BAT a chance to do it again? They had their shot at earning a lifetime customer who potentially might have bought MANY actions, and MY experience shared w/peers would have resulted in many fold over in sales to other shooters.

You all are free to buy what you want, and deal with YOUR situations how you feel best. I did the same, and will continue. The last I checked, the USA is a free country and that includes free speech. I am sure for every person like you SKane, there are many more who like knowing a heads up before dropping nearly $1,100 dollars sight unseen for a product that is touted as WORLD CLASS.

I have nothing to apologize for, and I make NO excuses. As far as Bruce goes, as far as I am concerned, he has NO excuse for this happening IMHO.

Have a great day folks.

The problem with us A$$holes is that we understand the difference between having a problem with a rifle action-a problem that can and will be rectified-and having to go thru the serious stuff life throws at us, much of which can't be fixed.

Just one a$$holes thoughts on your current situation.

I've not read all of the two threads. Did they offer to make it right?

Nevermind.

65br is a person who needs lots of attention. He also has a inferiority complex and thinks BAT is trying to belittle him.

just another childish rant on the internet.

Would I have returned the action? Most likely...

Would I have handled this situation differently? Absolutely..

65BR, is your head in the sand?

Pretty sure it ain't located in sand...

i'm still waiting for the third thread to be started about this soap opera.popcorn anyone

Tell ya what BR, I expect excellence from the products that I purchase and I expect excellence from the people that work for me. But I'm a realist - I do not expect perfection and I generally accept that mistakes, no matter who you are, do indeed happen. And it'd be a pretty dang boring world if everyone was perfect anyway. It's how people respond that makes the difference and, if they learn from those mistakes.

I also understand that as a single consumer, the sun does not rise and set on my @ss and that businesses today have to do less with more. What once was a simple call gets put on the back burner because of other duties, lines of communication get crossed, family matters etc. While there isn't a proper protocol for such a thing, you could have waited until you could talk to the company owner PERSONALLY or someone that could make a decision prior to taking it the world - man-to-man, the way things used to get handled. I have ZERO doubt that with a little patience that your handling of this life-or-death situation, like a man, would have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Tomorrow morning I'll face east and watch the sun rise off of your @ss.

Since you said you were ready to buy many actions from them in the future money is oviously no problem for you. And you have spent alot of time on many forums complaning about this so time doesn't seem to be a factor.

I recomend you buy yourself some CNC machines and get started on making your own action and I am sure you will have the perfection you desire.

If it happened to me I would be pissed. I would then calm down and deal with it. you took it to the ninth degree too soon. There is good and bad put out everyday no matter the price. The big thing is how they deal with it. Yes they phoned you only once and you were passed off to his brother but there is a hudge F-class shoot on right now aswell I am sure he is very busy in everyday life and buisiness. If monday you talked to his brother and they wouldn't resolve your problem I could see the point in all this, But as of now I am going to call it over reacting.

Life goes on

Copied & pasted from classified for the update here....


I just spoke with Bat and they will take care of it & ship to Robert Gradous for my .308 build.

Thanks 65BR for selling it to me and sorry it came with a flaw. Im looking forward to having a Bat action on my custom.

Im scared if this thread don't die, my rifle will be jinxed.

So STFU! Lol

You're a good man and you know that they will take care of you. No being on a long waiting list either.
Butch

That would not bother me. I doubt it even scratch cases being off to the side that way.

Butch, slg888 knew that when he contacted me to buy the action, because his smith is apparently tight with BAT and they had communicated, unlike me, who never spoke to anyone.

Stoney, your action won't be jinxed if its 'RIGHT' when you have the rifle built. Had I rec'd a well made action to start, or simply had a phone call quickly after I contacted them I may have had a decent rifle. I left 3 phone numbers and had one attempted call/and a msg on my home number over a 3 day period. An email came in on day 3 instead of a phone call to my cell/hm/work phones.

As to if it would scratch it......well Eddy, if you had a dent in the door of a brand new auto, and it did not 'affect' anything, would you accept it? Certainly not. As you know I felt I deserved to have BOUGHT a product made right when it left the factory and certainly have an immediate solution proposed by being contacted immediately after I notified the mfg. The ball was dropped twice IMHO and my patience was gone, and I had NO faith or trust left to allow the ball to get dropped 3x.

Guys, make your choices, spend your money how YOU choose, and good luck.

At the very least this incident reflects poorly on the quality control procedures at BAT. An easily visible defect such as the one on this action should have been caught before it ever left the factory. Especially when production isn't measured in hundreds of actions a day.
What does this easily seen defect getting out tell you about a defect that is much more difficult to see such as a dimensional or concentricity defect?
When my quality lab shipped a defective part to one of our customers that part was then required to undergo a 100% dimensional inspection for a period of time before we earned the right to take a statistical sample again. All of the other parts we made for this customer were also given greater scrutiny by their inspectors.
Whether or not 65BR handled this in the best way is debatable but a defect like this in a limited production part causes my confidence in the other aspects of their manufacture to be lessened.

Based on the picture, it would appear the receiver became loose in the fixture during the machining process. Gouges in the material like that are indicative of just such an occurrence.

My guess, and it is only a guess, so know one fly off the handle, is that the action came loose during machining. Somebody undoubtedly heard it, stopped the machine, tightened things up, and proceeded to finish out the operation.

If that was indeed the case, there's really no telling as to what other features may have been affected, but most often in cases like that, it would be isolated to the area that was visibly suffering from excessive tool marks.

No question that it should have been caught, but kudos to Bat for handling it the way they did.
It is unfortunate that a better compromise wasn't reached between all parties.

Ummmm, no, it's not.

For 65BR it was the best way since he got out of an action he had ZERO confidence in for full price. He wouldn't have trusted any action coming from BAT after this one and to sell this one he would have had to disclose the defects to any potential buyers.
Either way BAT was going to be hurt by this incident and just maybe they deserved to be hurt by letting this out of their shop. BAT may well improve their QC over this one incident. I hope so!

Your example of a scratch on a door does not fly, the correct anaolgy would be a scratch on an inner fender panel. Yes I would buy a car with a scratch or dented inner fender panel.

No, the lettering on the outside of the action was screwed up too.
Also the analogy might be made that the feed ramp defects are like getting a Ferrari with a bad 2nd gear synchro. You don't see it but it can cause problems putting it in 2nd gear.

Either way, from a QC standpoint, it doesn't look good for BAT in my book.

for christ's sake let it go.