Defense Athletics — Local services in Santa Ana

About 3 weeks ago our Shorinji Kempo branch purchased about 8 wooden staff from Bushido martial arts store. We did a random web search for martial arts supplies and we called and found the store. The Bushido store is large, clean and in a very accessible location from highway 405 in Orange county, California. Our first visit there, all of the personnel were very nice and tried to engage in martial art conversations. One person even told us about how we can sign up for an account where the students and the teacher can receive substantial discounts and all of the orders can be controlled and viewed via their website. I was somewhat surprised how web focused the Bushido store is to help the customer. This should be the norm, however after visiting several martial arts stores, Bushido is the only one that offers this type of service. The prices of the 8 wooden staff we purchased were competitive to the web and they had plenty of variety to select from. Once we returned home, about a week later we noticed that one of the 8 wooden staff still in its original package was slightly cracked. Even though I couldn't find the receipt, they had me in the system and even remembered who I was when we walked in... They immediately apologized for the inconvenience and replaced the wooden staff. That's what I call customer service!!! This place is a solid 5. Our Shorinji Kempo foundation would have given it even a higher score if they had a location in Huntington Beach!!! Keep up...

When I first called these guys, I was given an incorrect quote on the price of the bokken I was interested in, and was told that the tsuba would be an additional cost, but when I arrived, the tsuba was included, and the final price I paid was different (the person who I spoke to on the phone had absolutely no idea what they were doing.) It turned out that the white oak bokken they sold me was over engineered (it had far too much material to it, and wasn't proportional to a katana/daito blade.) When I contacted their company to inform them of this, they were completely unapologetic. I won't ever do business...

I live out of state and was looking forward to purchasing some items at the store. The phone message stated the Saturday hours were 10am - 4 pm. I arrived at 2:30pm to find the store closed with a sign in the wondow stating Saturday hours until 2pm. I am very disappointed. I went out of my way to shop here only to find they are not thorough regarding something as basic as store hours. I even called the store phone number only to get voice mail. I was one of three customers there and all of us...