Hi all,
When I was managing a gun store right after college ('88), I set up an account with the Tyler Manufacturing company. It was a bit of a hassle to establish, but no shop in town carried the T-grips and a lot of crusty old fellows wanted them. Once I'd tried one out, I understood why. Once we had the account going, we placed regular orders and sold the T-grip adaptors frequently. Their wholesale price wasn't cheap so there wasn't a lot of mark-up for us as a store, but it kept our guys happy and coming to us, and it was worth it.
It appears generations change. On Friday, November 9th, I called Tyler to order a simple T-grip for a J-frame. "No problem. Got 'em right here," says the nice fellow taking the order. "I'll have it out to you next week."
Well, they charged my card on the 11th. $31.75 (they're just a chunk of cast aluminum, but no one says they're cheap. And neither is their shipping.) And then nothing happened.
After a whole lot of nothing happened, I called them back on December 10th. Left a message, but no one called back. I called back a while later, and finally got a person. Big problem they were having, they told me. There'd just been an ice storm! Power was out. They were bringing in generators. Gonna get production started again as soon as possible.
Okay, but where was my T-grip? Did it go out last month as promised and just get lost in the mail? "No, no, didn't go out yet. Soon! You'll have it be Christmas!"
Right after Christmas, I called them back and asked, hey, what about my T-grip? Big problem, they told me. Ice storm had the power out for ten days! (Ten days? I grew up in rural IN and we lost power all the time, but what kind of Siberian operation loses power for ten days?) We're making your T-grip right now! We've moved your name to the top of the list for shipping.
Shouldn't it have been there anyway - I ordered in November? "Yes, it's at the top of the list! It'll go out the first week in January."
Okay, it's now the THIRD week in January. Nada in the mail. I called Tyler four times this a.m. No one answered. I left a message requesting a call back. Haven't heard back yet. Their website says that they're trying to fill their November and December orders - and says that they no longer answer emails because the volume was just too big (I'll bet).
So I called my credit card company and did a payment dispute.
Based on my experience, I would not recommend that anyone do business direct with Tyler Manufacturing. If you want one of their T-grips, order it from Brownells and let them do the hair-pulling. Or order it used from one of the auction services. Or order one of the old Pachmayr grip adaptors that Numrich still has in stock.
Because, a monkey with a piece of bar stock aluminum and a file could have made me my grip adaptor by now, and WALKED it to my house from their shop. Which leads me to believe that they need to find better help - or better management (more likely).
Don't waste your time trying to buy from Tyler.
