Right before I left for work 2 weeks ago I placed an order for some primers and a couple of pounds of Shooters World Ultimate Pistol powder from Powder Valley. I've been buying from them for several years now and have had exemplary service from them until this last order. They shipped the order out in their usual swift fashion and my wife received it a few days after I had placed the order. She doesn't open my packages while I am gone but rather piles them in the corner for when I get back from the rig. Fast forward 2 weeks and yesterday I opened the package up and found that it was shy a pound of Ultimate Pistol. Since it was after business hours, I used their contact form on their site and left them a message with the order number and invoice number and told them that it was short a pound of powder. So this morning I got a reply about 10:00 AM from them telling me that they were sorry this happened and that the pound of powder was on desk and was shipping out to me today. And a few minutes ago I got notification from Fedex that a package from Powder Valley had just been registered into their system.

Why post this? To let my fellow forum members know that while anyone can mess up, Powder Valley is a class act that will quickly rectify any problems with fulfilling their orders in a quick and efficient manner. And this is the first time I've ever had a problem with an order from them too. Service like this is what will keep customers loyal in my opinion.

None better. I've been buying components from them since before they used the Powder Valley name, probably thirty years ago. If you look hard, you might find an item or two cheaper elsewhere, but overall, Powder Valley's prices beat the competition and they don't do the shipping or handling shakedowns that are common practices with some companies.

Good to hear!

Glad you posted this, 'cuz I was starting to think the folks at Powder Valley were PERFECT

Not being perfect myself, that was starting to annoy me. Good to see they are just very, very good human beings

Wow, while I like the intent of your thread, consider what the subject line looks like -- and if you wish to honestly give PVI a friendly nod (I agree!) then make the subject line obviously positive.

Right now it looks like hell, and that is not only what just the forum will show, it is what a google search will show, and it'll show the same thing YEARS from now also.

More people see subject lines (headlines... think "fake news" or "clickbait") then will ever read the glowing review.

Powder Valley is the best.

I mistakenly purchased power from another place a few years ago during the shortage. I was shorted a pound of 231. Customer service told me to pound sand.

Now, I just stick with Powder Valley.

....online from Powder Valley, but I"ve never had money for more than two pounds at a time.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Did you perhaps notice the little thumbs up thingie icon I chose to go with the first post? That is an important clue.

But I guess you are right in that all the google and other spiderbots won't notice the thumbs up icon either so I guess I ought to edit in a more positive spin into the thread title for their sake.

I've dealt with them quite a few times - always good service.

Its nice to hear some good once in a while, thanks Muddocktor.

Thanks for your post! Most of the time good service, quick shipping, good prices, etc., go unnoticed/unreported, but one small screw-up get a whole lot of "thread space". Thanks for a positive report on a vendor. I've never had any, even slight mistakes when ordering from Powder Valley...

They run occasional free shipping or free hazmat specials. Sign up for their newsletter, lurk and strike! I used their recent free shipping for a bunch of bullets.

I've also gone in with friends on bulk buys before. Defrays the shipping & hazmat.

Others run free shipping & hazmat and usually still total out more than Powder Valley.

Save up for a while and place the order when they run a free hazmat, like Fishslayer said, or go in with some buddies and place a bulk order for several friends and yourself. They are definitely a company that is good to do business with. In my case, they sell Accurate powders, which nobody near me sells and I am a big fan of some of the Accurate powder offerings. Also, I've been shooting some of the Shooters World powders lately and I'm liking them too and they are generally a little cheaper. And their primer prices are significantly cheaper than the local sources too by quite a bit. The shipping charges are reasonable too.

Another store I regularly shop at is Midsouth Shooters, who also has comparable pricing and shipping to Powder Valley.

I have used Powder Valley for most of my bulk powder/primer orders for a very long time now. They were one if tge few who didn't gouge prices during the long term shortage we just went through.

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SWCA #3437

A little update here.

Now I am extremely mad at Fedex, who PV used for shipping the missing lb of powder. Those no-good so and so's (Fedex) have a bald faced liar for a driver or drivers. I was home all day yesterday expecting the package to be delivered and even had a call on Monday from Fedex saying to have somebody home to sign for the delivery, as PV had it shipped signature delivery. So I put off a trip to the range yesterday to make sure at least I was home to sign for it in case my wife went to town. While home waiting yesterday, I had a delivery of a tub of Lyman Green tumbling media from Amazon by the USPS and a delivery by UPS of another powder and primer order delivered from Midsouth, but no Fedex delivery. Then, at 5:48 PM I receive an email from Fedex giving me a delivery exception saying nobody was home!! I looked on the door handle and there was no note from Fedex saying that nobody was home and at that time I was sitting about 15 feet from the front door in my living room, so I know there was nobody that had come to the front door.

After getting my temper under control so that I wouldn't curse out the first person I talked to, I then called Fedex and let them know that they had a lazy, lying driver and also let them know that this isn't the first time I've had problems with their sorry personnel not delivering packages to my house and told the nice lady in their call center that I wanted to file a complaint on this bunch of lying no-good people in the distribution center based in Lafayette, LA. She said she would forward the complaint to the local manager and reschedule the delivery and to expect a call from this local manager. So I guess that I will see if they follow through on this. And I guess that I will also send a note to PV about this sorry service by Fedex to let them know that Fedex can't be relied upon for timely delivery.

In the comments box on your future PV orders, you can specify you want them to use UPS instead of Fedex. That's what I do after having a similar series of issues with Fedex myself. Works great!

While on the topic of lazy, lying drivers . . . the only ones I've found worse than Fedex are the drivers from the new "Uber-like" services that are being used by (eg) Amazon (AMZL US). Especially around Christmas

My be helpful to note that FedEx uses two VASTLY different groups of employees... the FedEx air guys with the classic colors and logo are decent and solid, the FedEx Ground guys sporting the bright green/purple have lousy jobs, get paid poorly and get treated similarly and their service (and their equipment and the quality of their driving) reflects it. And USPS is being similarly contracted out and their final delivery service (in some places) reflects it as well.

I finally got my pound of powder delivered today, but it took yet another call to Fedex to get it done. It turns out this "driver" was some kind of third party driver and not a direct employee. He told my wife this evening when he delivered the package that he looked all over New Iberia for my street when I actually live about 8 miles away from the nearest part of New Iberia. I guess the driver doesn't have a smartphone and hasn't ever heard of Google Maps.

Twoboxer, thanks for posting the bit about specifying UPS; I will do that with my orders with PV in the future.

As for me, I was totally fed up with all this so I went to the range and shot a whole bunch of rounds. I brought my 629, my 6 1/2" model 27, 627 Pro and my Beretta M9 and shot until my trigger finger got sore. Then while I was packing up a range buddy showed up who had just bought himself a Savage 110 in 6.5 Creedmore and helped him get sighted in and shoot some rounds downrange. It shot pretty good, but he was getting some flyers. I think it was the ammo, some S&B stuff he had found a good deal on. It reminded me of my 03-a3 shooting some Hornady bullets that the gun just plain didn't like too well. If I can get my 260 Rem neck sizer to work on Creedmore cases, I might try loading him up around 20 or so rounds with some Nosler bullets to see if his groups tighten up. Mark said his usual range day is Mondays, so I plan to meet him back there next Monday.

A lot of people rave over Powder Valley and I'm sure for good reason. No doubt they are great to deal with. However, ever since the Great Powder Shortage of 2014, they have not had Federal Small Pistol Primers in stock with the possible exception of once in a blue moon offering.... first come first served. Cabelas dot com, while more expensive, does in fact offer those primers to their customers and will allow a backorder if they are not in stock at the time you place your order. Small thing, I know.

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NRA Pistol & Reloading Instr.

Funny you posted that Thomas15. I just checked and actually PV has a fair supply of Federal primers in stock for once. Fed 150, 155, 200, 205, 210, 215 and GM200M are showing as in stock right now. But yeah, they haven't had a steady supply of Federal primers over the last 3 years or so and they aren't the only online company that has had problems keeping Federal primers in stock.