Grizzly Industrial — Local services in Springfield

I own one Grizzly machine, it is the first band saw I have ever owned so can't compare it to others but I am satisfied with its performance. I was ready to purchase (at least) one other machine from the company, as a matter of fact it was in my cart and I was very close to checking out, until they started to give me unbelievable attitude related to an issue with the band saw. I had come to the realization that I was using the saw without a piece, it took me a very long time to find out that I would be fine without it so that is what I am doing now, using the band saw without that piece (product manuals tend to be written for techies and often don't explain things like the purpose of some parts and whether you can really get by without em). When I was not aware that I didn't really need the part I tried to get them to ship it to me. This is a tiny piece of plastic, would probably cost about a dollar in postage if they'd put it in an envelope and mail it to me. However, they absolutely refused to mail anything to an address outside of The United States, which not only caused the part to be probably hundreds of times more expensive but also dictated that I would probably never receive, all "just because" this is their policy. The mail works great for me, it is inexpensive and the post office holds things until I can pick them up (where I come from customer is king, I guess once they have your money in GrizzlyLand customer is an annoyance). Their only solution to get me that tiny part, worth probably about $2, was to send it via international courier. This would not only be much more expensive in terms of shipping costs but there would be a standard UPS border clearance fee (for commercial shipments - this wouldn't apply for a mailed envelope), I think maybe about $30. This is not even the end of the story, I told them I am not home very often, UPS's policy for NSR (no sig required) shipments is that they just leave the item outside your front door. Obviously, when I next got home, up to a month later, the wind would have taken it and I'd probably never receive it, after having paying many times what I should have for the item in the first place. It would have been really really easy for someone with the ability to hold a job at this company to place it into an envelope and put my name and address on it, then drop it into a mailbox - I guess no one who works for Grizzly Industrial knows how to "work" an envelope. That way, I would have actually received it and would have paid only the price to mail an envelope from The US to Canada, and ended up with the machine I paid pretty good dollars for. None of this mattered to the people at Grizzly, the only thing fact that they recognized is that they have a different "policy" in place, as if as if ever policy is some sort of religious doctrine that can never be bent in any way, shape or form, regardless of the customer's situation. To my mind this is extreme "screw the customer over" thinking and I avoid dealing with such companies - I will NEVER but another product from...

UPDATE! SEE BELOW....Please see my initial review from a week ago. Grizzly responded, "Dear Mr. Smith, we apologize for the miscommunication you received. We would LOVE TO EARN YOUR BUSINESS BACK and supply you with some quality tools and machinery..." They requested that I call back to speak with a supervisor to receive attention to my situation. That, as expected, was a load of bull, intended to look like a "caring" company to the world wide web and mitigate poor online reviews. What happened when I called back? Treated the same. Finally, spoke with a supervisor who, in a nut shell, said, "if we don’t have the product on hand, we simply don't have the product. Can I help you with something else?". After NOT accepting that as a valid response (reminder: They requested I call back so they can EARN my business). She said she did not have the latitude to do anything,so would pass along my situation to "Mark" in corporate sales who would call me back in 24-48 hours. I waited FIVE days, instructing my assistant to look for a call from Grizzly Industrial. As a national announcer for NBC news, my office calls are both recorded and caller ID is retained. ZERO calls came in from ANYONE from Grizzly. Over the past 7 days, 100% of ALL incoming calls have been accounted for. Grizzly, I present that your customer service is less than one star and is in need of a good house cleaning? DO you have a leg to stand on? DO you have another excuse? You have INTERNALLY PROVEN to me that I dodged a bullet in not being able to purchase from you. The temper of a companies’ metal is truly shown when they react to a less than perfect situations. When this situation presented itself you fumbled the ball, you flipped off your customer base and slammed the door like a spoiled brat. If you had any dignity AT ALL, you’d would be ashamed of how you conduct business. Seriously, how do you sleep at night? I can promise that 100% of every individual with whom I have contact will be aware of my impressions of Grizzly Industrial. I have a longer reach than most, and I will see that my experiences are well expresses to the general public.

UPDATE: Grizzly failed to respond, filed a complaint with BBB, no response. Subsequently purchased both Rikon and Jet products and have entered into a product review agreement with one to have my production staff film a review. Grizzly's failure to offer even a 1/2 way respectful level of service has ended as a blessing in disguise. Will be a guest speaker at the forthcoming NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention in April in Las Vegas and will address this exact example of poor customer service in front of 1500+ registered attendees, "how NOT to provide customer service in current competitive American online marketplace"...Grizzly, thanks for the convention...

I was interested in purchasing from grizzly until I just had a brush with their "customer service". I'm thinking that if the customer service is this bad on the front end, beware the customer service after the sale. Apathy has no place in customer service. Sadly, it appears that grizzly has reached a point in its business whereby they don't care if they aggravate a couple of minion customers. I'd settled on a new lathe from grizzly. I'm a 3 hour drive from their Springfield location. Then I notice that they have a larger lathe listed in their scratch and dent section of their website. I call up their sales team to ask about it. I immediately got a song and dance about how they have no visibility to details on anything in their S&D room. First come, first serve, no info shared. Turns out they can't even tell me if the item still exists in the room.... I was told they don't update that page very frequently if at all. I then ask if I can have the phone number of the Springfield location, in order to talk to one of their staff there to at least get a price and to see if it is still available. Nope. We'd love to help you son, but you are too young to vote. The apathy surrounding this lack of support is palpable. Reading some of the other reviews here has reinforced my decision to pass on grizzly, and instead purchase something a little higher up in quality, and a lot higher up in good customer service. Caveat emptor.

Post response edit : In response to the response from Grizzly : I completely understand that S&D sales are in-person only. Please stop answering questions that are not being asked, and attend to requests which are being posed.

Do you realize that my complaint has nothing to do with in-person requirement to purchase, and that I also have only a small amount of complaint over your timely updating of that online inventory?

Instead, my gripe with you is that NO ONE at Grizzly could take the time to investigate whether that inventory is available and to answer brief questions about it. Given that you won't let customers actually speak with someone at the Springfield location, how long would it take for your customer service rep to call the Springfield location, ask if it is available, identify at a high level why it is in the S&D section, and get a price? 5 minutes at most?

That's the primary complaint that I have. You had a customer who was interested in doing business with you, but the interaction and information didn't fit YOUR idea of service.

Here's the thing.... we customers are patrons of establishments who provide good customer service as measured by the customer.

In this regard, y'all are...