Len in Maryland

Certain people thrive on being anonymous and creating tension by continuously making an argument about anything they can. Talking down to people and talking badly to people makes me think they' re trying to make themselves feel better; but, when they decide to remain anonymous, I don' t care to ' play' .

I know who I am and most others do as well. Many have visited my shop and know what kind of operation I run and where I stand on ' truth' - whether it be in one-on-one situations or manufacturers' advertising.

While I would be glad to explain what I do and where I stand to ANY other person posting, I WILL NOT respond to c903 unless and until he/she reveals their identity and starts posting in a more civil way.

ArthurP: I totally understand your decision not to accept the ' yield' ; but, what can I do. I have told the manufacturers by various ways that this situation stinks. I tell my customers not to buy certain arrows because of the yield factor. Guess what, they still want them. I don' t know of any other shop in the nation that warns their customers about this situation and provides spin testers for them to use. They require arrows and, if they don' t buy them from me with the knowledge and testing that I provide, they would wind up buying them from another source.

As far as the tire situation you describe, I think you should reconsider that scenario. Many of today' s tires can' t be checked by the consumer. They are balanced under a ' no load' situation and then are subjected to tremendous stress. My wife and I have had some horrible problems with tires in the past six months. One blow out, several broken/damaged belts and excessive noise after 1/4 to 1/2 the life of the tire. While the manufacturers give you great advertising, the truth is far from revealed until thousands of miles later. Should we make them put a dial indicator on the tire while it is on the balancing machine? Couldn' t you just hear the tire Dealer screaming or even laughing at you? Yes, the tire Dealer will ' honor' the warranty, but only after he prorates the tires. How do we prorate an arrow that is found out after the fact? At least I advise my customers ' up front' .

You mentioned ' obviously' bad. In the extreme cases that we have found, we yanked the arrows from the batch and gave the customers better ones. But, where do I draw the line? What is acceptable to one may be totally unacceptable to another. When you call a manufacturer on this issue, they' ll gladly send you out another arrow/set. But, HOW MANY GET OUT THERE THAT ARE BAD? The small percentage that may be returned is peanuts to the volume sold.

Quote:

My solution is that I' m not buying any more carbon arrows for the foreseeable future. Y' all let me know if they ever get half as good as aluminum arrows.

I really don' t blame you. But keep in mind that we' re now only seeing it in limited batches and that they are getting better in their yield. In other words, they' re not as bad as what we saw a few years ago. They still, however, don' t meet the advertised specs at least 20% of the time.

Arthur P

Len, I certainly see your side of it. But I' m just a pore ol' Texas redneck that doesn' t have the money to throw away on a truckload of dung, hoping to find a few pearls buried in the slop. When someone like you, who sees more carbon arrows in one day that I could mess with in two years, tells me I' d have to buy two dozen of what is commonly acknowledged as the premier carbon/aluminum shaft in production today just to get 9 arrows I can actually hunt with, it certainly makes me sit up and take notice.

Even the midrange aluminum arrows have always given me a better yield than that.

CAJUNBOWHNTR

For what it' s worth I recently purchased 1 dozen beman ics 400' s.The arrows were within the specified weight range.Cut to my 28" length with inserts installed(by me).They spin fine and shoot fine.You might not shoot a 1400 FITA round.But they will kill deer at 30 yds if I do my part.Len I for one appreciate your honesty and enjoy reading your posts.Having a honest proshop to deal with is a blessing.The folks in maryland are lucky.I have dealt with enough yahoos who will sell you something just to make a buck.Quality control is a big issue.I wonder how many arrow manufacturers are ISO certified? I work in a business where we are ISO certified and if any product does not meet specs it must be segregrated and down graded.If our customers recieve a product that is not" within specs" It can cause major problems.


CB

c903

Len:

You are not being singled out. The thread just happen to swing to the dealer vs. consumer, or consumer vs. dealer, -how ever you want to arrange it; and you just happen to voluntarily step into the slot as a dealer advocate. If you do not like having consumers presenting their opinions, then do not present yours. That attitude is another example of " Give me your money and take it as is and don' t bring it back, or leave it and go somewhere else"


As for your not liking what I say or how I say it, it is your prerogative to not read or respond. If I want to express my views regarding how some dealers believe they are dong the consumer a favor, rather than just the opposite, I will do so. As for your demand that I provide my actual name, address, and place of birth, on the Internet for the world to know, just to appease you is absurd. Just who in the do you think you are? [:@]

PS:

What does that statement mean? Somewhere between selling a product that you know is only slightly defective vs. one that you know is badly defective, there is a line where you do or don' t? []

What has that got to do with an the individual customer? [:@]

5 shot

Where did this thread go wrong? First I want to thank Len for being open and honest. I suspect most shops would not go to the great lengths he does to insure his customers have all the information the need to make an honest and resoanable choice. I don' t know Len, but from what I have read, and the few emails I have had with him I would say that if he could hand select arrows and send the bad ones back to the manufacture for replacement, he probably would. I bet 90% of us would not even know a problem existed if not for him and a few others. Len thank you for the info.
C903, play nice
As for the arrow issue, that' s why old 5 shot just purchased another dozen 2314 superslams and will be shooting them again this year for hunting. I have tried differnt carbon arrows and the " skinny" pultruded shafts seem to be the best of the bunch, but aluminum is still better and I get far fewer arrows that won' t group as they should. Use what you like, and be thankful that we have guys like Len to help all of use make better informed choices.

Straightarrow

I agree that the information that Len has given us, is and has been very valuable. I appreciate it. You sound like you run a heck of a good business. I know there isn' t a single shop around here, helping it' s customers like you appear to.

Arthur P

5 shot, I really don' t see the thread as going wrong because this issue is part of the whole tuning triad. You cannot tune an arrow that isn' t straight or has inconsistent spine. To top it off, the higher performance bow you' re trying to shoot it out of, the more the arrow' s problems are going to be magnified.

Len, that' s pretty much what I pointed out earlier. I know you' ve got a business to run and need to keep the lights on and beans on the table, so I' m not blaming YOU at all. I' m just a little sick of the manufacturers operating on the P.T. Barnum theory of business. ' There' s a sucker born every minute.'

I think if a lot more dealers did speak up and ream the manufacturers, then they' d get a bit more concerned about improving the quality of what goes out their doors. But what would really get their attention is if we, the consumers, started demanding quality products instead of accepting that maybe 4 or 5 arrows out of a dozen will be useable.

Len in Maryland

Arthur: Had a customer in today who had bought arrows at the local mass merchant. He came it to get his string changed, a new sight, and his bow tuned. I asked him for an arrow. I put it on the spin tester and it was bad. Second arrow bad. Third arrow was acceptable. He then asked me to check his remaining 3 NEW arrows. The other 3 tested bad. Needless to say, he was not a happy person. Would he have ever known if he hadn' t come into my shop? Doubtful.

He left his bow and I proceeded to work on it. I got it to tune fairly quickly and it looked good. I changed to the new sight he wanted and proceeded to shoot it to check out whether or not I had it pretty much in the same location as the old sight. During the process I noticed that the arrow wasn' t flying right. I took it back over to the tuning range and it went haywire. I then took a similar arrow out of our sample bucket and shot it. PERFECT! I took the customer' s arrow back over to the spin tester and it was now BAD. [:@] Noticeably different on the spin tester from what I accepted the first time around.

That one arrow out of six that was good just went ' south' . The one thing that I noticed was that they all failed at the nock end. Only one failed at both ends. I' m beginning to think that these nocks pressed into the raw shafts may be suspect. []

I' m wondering if anyone has ever had a similar occurrence? Has anyone ever noticed an arrow going out while shooting it? Had I not been deeply into the tuning process, I don' t think I would have noticed it as quickly.

Arthur P

Len, I' ve never trusted press in nocks. What I' d like to see is a metal nock insert made to take a glue on nock instead of those pressed in nocks. I think that might be a big help.

I' m very interested in how many carbons you find that are whompy jawed at the ends because my draw length is so long that I don' t have the luxury of trimming my arrows at all. I have to use full length shafts. That could very well be the reason I' ve never gotten carbon arrows to shoot broadheads consistently, at all. So far, I' ve had exactly zero yield out of the 8 dozen I' ve bought. Even shooting field archery with field points, my scores drop nearly 30 points under my average with carbon.

Fortunately, 3D doesn' t require quite the same level of precision that I need to 20 out on an 80 yard walkup.

BobCo19-65

Len, thanks for the headsup on the carbons. Personally, I used them one year, and didn' t really like them much. I stay with the aluminums, and may go back to carbons someday. You are correct though, that you are the only proshop that has let me know of problems that can be associated with carbons, and I thank you for that.

Jeez, I think it is a good thing that we are not still in the cedar days. But, I do remember those days as being the worry free days even though you could only get a few out of a dozen to spine or even be straight consistantly. Just a thought.