Sportsman's Warehouse — Attraction in Ankeny

Take your bow elsewhere. I called ahead to get an idea of pricing and turnaround time for getting my bow restrung. Its our first time needing this so we were looking to understand how things work. Store manager answered after I selected the option for the hunting counter. She wasn't able to help so she redirected my call to the Lead. I was on the phone with him for 15 mins just for him to talk unsurely in circles about what string I need, if they can order string for me, if they can even service my bow, string pricing (from Sportsman and Amazon), just to tell me they can't be sure until their bow guy looks at it. Told me I could bring it in, and their bow guy would look at it on Saturday when he comes in.

Fast forward to Monday 8/28, we bring in the bow with the full understanding that the bow guy is only there on Saturdays. The lead took the bow, filled out a form, gave us a copy for our records, and said they would call us on Saturday after it is inspected. He said they would look at it and recommend string options and how we can repair a stripped screw. Sunday 9/3 rolls around and neither I or my brother received a call on Saturday 9/2 like they said and clearly wrote on the form(both of our numbers were on the form provided by the Lead when we dropped it off). So I call them for a quick status. Gentleman on the phone stated there were no new notes on the form and it didnt look like no repair has been done. Disappointed, I asked him to make sure they call us on the coming Saturday 9/8. It ended up being a repeat of the previous Saturday.

Left our bow with them for 2 weeks and ended up not getting anything done or even a courtesy call. Bow was picked up today 9/11 to have business taken elsewhere. It's disappointing because we have such great memories shopping with dad here as kids. That's the only reason they are getting 2 stars otherwise the service we got would be worth only 1 star. This may very well be our last time shopping at this store because customer service goes a...

I have purchased several guns from this store and I must say, it feels more like a chore than a positive experience. The big guy with the beard, that smells like a smoke stack never does anything to help other than verify others work, no matter how many people are waiting. And the rest of the staff seem completely miserable and unwilling to help customers. Every time I go in there is a disappointment. Sometimes they have decent deals but it’s not worth having to deal with the incompetence. The cashier literally told me that getting a refund on a pistol that I haven’t picked up from there yet was a felony. I bought the pistol online while it was in stock and it was sold out when I got there, so that means they sold my pistol to someone else and still charged me for the back stock. I doubt I’ll go back to the Ankeny store. After my experience today, I’d be fine with returning everything I’ve ever bought from there if I didn’t have to deal with the staff to do it.

After receiving the response to this review for Sportmans warehouse, I called the number they provided and the customer service rep (Jake) had no clue about what I was calling and kept asking me what I wanted. I tried a couple of ways to explain that I was just calling to see what questions they had for me regarding the issue and he said that since the transaction was complete, there was nothing further needed. He tried to sell me the handgun again. I told him I was no longer interested in shopping at this store. He seemed to not be discouraged at all from this news and easily accepted the answer and the call ended from there. So again, this was just another waste of time spent on this...

I've purchased probably 10 firearms from Ankeny Sportsman's Warehouse over as many years. It was always my first choice because of their friendly, knowledgeable and professional staff.

Unfortunately, over the years, the quality of that staff has declined significantly. On my last trip in, I was picking up a gun that I ordered online. I received no notification that it was ready for pickup (I always got a call in the past), and when I arrived, I was met with a staff of three. One was working with a customer, one was hanging out with a buddy, and the other one looked lost, and told me I'd have to wait "a while". While waiting, the clueless guy took some phone calls, and gave the callers some completely incorrect, and some very dubious information about shotguns.

Once the sole working staff member got to me, things went pretty smoothly, until he was called away, and the clueless guy took over, just long enough to get confused, and go looking for the other guy.

Eventually, I got checked out, but the whole deal took nearly an hour. Picking up an online purchase used to take 15 minutes. There was one customer other than myself (and the other guy's buddy, who wasn't buying anything), so being busy wasn't the issue.

SW still has good prices, and their website is good, but there was a time that I wouldn't buy from anyone but them. Sadly, that's not the case anymore. I guess I'll start driving a little further...