My Grey Birch Experience

J

Jeeptag

CGN Regular
Location
Whitby ON
Early this spring I attended one of the CPRS Rimfire Nation Days which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone! It was an amazing day and I had a blast!

One of the rifles they had to try out was a Grey Birch. It was by far my favourite out of all the ones I tried including CZ457s and Vudoos.

Fast forward to few months later and I see a post from Grey Birch about demo rifles.

I thought awesome I will pick one up. Just one problem I was in the middle of getting a mortgage for a house in the Toronto area and for the approval I had to maintain my cash on hand and not put anything on my credit cards until after the closing.

Good news though they offered a Sezzle option. Buy now pay after mortgage closing.

I tried to put through the order over a dozen times and kept getting a strange error message. I contacted Sezzle they told me there was something wrong on the Grey Birch system. Reach out to Grey Birch they told me other people were using it with no problem and blamed Sezzle.

I went back and forth many times without resolution. At the same time I successfully was using Sezzle at other retail stores without any issue.

Jeff from Grey Birch reached out to me to as they were getting messages about all of the failed purchase attempts. I explained the situation and he asked if a 25% discount would help. I thought that was very good of him and accepted.

Again I tried to place an order and the coupon code I was provided was invalid,

I reached out to Jeff and got some excuses and was told to use a 20% off code instead. Not quite as good but still nice of them offer.
Tried the new code and still did not work.

I reached back out to Jeff he said he would need to get his IT guy to fix it and would contact them Monday morning.

That was June 17th and is the last I heard from Jeff or anyone at Grey Birch.

I followed up many, many times including private messages on CGN and never got a single response.

I understand not being able to honour the offer or anything else that may have come up but I think I at least deserved some type of response.

Given the fact that I am not worth the 2 minutes required to respond to any messages I am kind of glad I didn't purchase.

If you are happy owner I am happy for you.

For others hopefully you are more important to them then I am.
 
They're in the process of an enormous move, all of their families and the entire business are fleeing this ####hole country for Florida. Thats a huge job and customer service will likely suffer for a couple weeks - i had a fantastic customer service experience regarding Jeff here on the forum recently (just prior to the move) and my new Grey Birch gear works incredibly well. If you have some patience I'm confident Jeff will still honor the offer after they have settled in Florida.
 
Very positive experience here as well. Ejector on their bolt went bad, and after contacting them via their website form, a replacement bolt was in mail within 2 business days. Jeff mentioned that they are in the middle of the move. Give them some time and then try reaching out.
 
TorqueAddict said:
Very positive experience here as well. Ejector on their bolt went bad, and after contacting them via their website form, a replacement bolt was in mail within 2 business days. Jeff mentioned that they are in the middle of the move. Give them some time and then try reaching out.
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What issues were you having with the "bad bolt"?
I have two GB Fusions (a 16.1 and a RDR) and both have more frequent stove pipes than I think is normal.
 
Beeron said:
What issues were you having with the "bad bolt"?
I have two GB Fusions (a 16.1 and a RDR) and both have more frequent stove pipes than I think is normal.
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Likely a bad extractor. I purchased a LDR and the extractor failed almost right away. I had quite a few issues getting my rifle to run but I will say Grey Birch did everything in their power to accommodate me and make sure I was happy. Contact them and I’m sure you’ll have the parts or a couple bolts in the mail shortly.
 
I'm having the same problems with mine as well but Grey Birch hasn't got back to me yet and it's been 4 days now. Mine also doesn't fire the last round. I bought the complete carbon fiber package.
 
dfrombc said:
Likely a bad extractor. I purchased a LDR and the extractor failed almost right away. I had quite a few issues getting my rifle to run but I will say Grey Birch did everything in their power to accommodate me and make sure I was happy. Contact them and I’m sure you’ll have the parts or a couple bolts in the mail shortly.
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Yeah, I've been in touch and they told me to reach out to their Canadian Distributor to ask for an extractor which i did. No answer there yet.
i should probably ask for one for each gun.
GB have been very accommodating for me, if a bit light on the comms.
 
OkayShooter said:
If it's just a 10/22 and uses 10/22 parts, just put in a tried tested and true VQ claw extractor.
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Proprietary Extractor!!
When I ordered my GB's, I also ordered a couple VQ extractors intending an immediate swap but the GB Bolt uses a pinned extractor with a tail.
Didn't know that then.
Luckily, I have other uses for those.
Hopefully, the CDN distributor will send me a new extractor and it will run like a top.
It certainly looks the part!
 
What I was told was they had a run of extractors that were over hardened and prone to chipping / breaking. There was also an issue with the coating on the bolt which prompted them to replace my bolt assembly when I complained about my extractor. Sucks the extractor is proprietary, I never did pull it when it broke.

Hopefully they get you sorted quickly. It will be interesting to see how their warranty center handles claims because if I had received a lesser level of service when I was dealing with my issues, I would have an entirely different opinion of grey birch and their products.
 
dfrombc said:
What I was told was they had a run of extractors that were over hardened and prone to chipping / breaking. There was also an issue with the coating on the bolt which prompted them to replace my bolt assembly when I complained about my extractor. Sucks the extractor is proprietary, I never did pull it when it broke.

Hopefully they get you sorted quickly. It will be interesting to see how their warranty center handles claims because if I had received a lesser level of service when I was dealing with my issues, I would have an entirely different opinion of grey birch and their products.
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I just heard from their Canadian vestige (name withheld).
They suggested it's not likely an extractor but might be chamber related.
I can send them the rifle to have a look?
What are they gonna do?, ream the chamber? turn it into a regular 10/22!?
I decided to hang onto it for now and just clean it every 5 mags and hope in wears in.
If it's still unreliable at 1000 rds, I will send it in.
 
Well back from the range, 100 rounds Center X 2 to 3 failure to eject every ten rounds. Awesome groups, must say it is very accurate but not reliable enough for competition. The spent shells don't fly out they just go sideways and then jam the bolt. It would be a top notch competition rifle and win all day if this problem can be cured. It shoots one ragged hole at 50 yards.
 
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Beeron said:
I just heard from their Canadian vestige (name withheld).
They suggested it's not likely an extractor but might be chamber related.
I can send them the rifle to have a look?
What are they gonna do?, ream the chamber? turn it into a regular 10/22!?
I decided to hang onto it for now and just clean it every 5 mags and hope in wears in.
If it's still unreliable at 1000 rds, I will send it in.
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Regardless of the chamber or extractor being the problem it should be fixed. They are asking enough for the rifles, they should work In my case when I closely examined the extractor I could see the crisp sharp edge was chipped. If the chamber is the issue on your rifle I’d expect a new barrel and nothing else. You should not have to clean every 50 rounds to make it run. PM me if you want to hear my experience and how it was handled. In the end I’m a satisfied customer but it was a bit of a road to get there. I now have a super light, compact and accurate rifle. Took a while to get there but we did get there.
 
ottertok said:
Well back from the range, 100 rounds Center X 2 to 3 failure to eject every ten rounds. Awesome groups, must say it is very accurate but not reliable enough for competition. The spent shells don't fly out they just go sideways and then jam the bolt. It would be a top notch competition rifle and win all day if this problem can be cured. It shoots one ragged hole at 50 yards.
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Was the same deal with mine with the broken extractor. It would not run more than 3 rounds in a row. Have a close look at it. I didn’t actually see it until I completely disassembled the gun and did a through inspection.
 
dfrombc said:
Was the same deal with mine with the broken extractor. It would not run more than 3 rounds in a row. Have a close look at it. I didn’t actually see it until I completely disassembled the gun and did a through inspection.
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Thanks for the info, I'll disassemble it today and have a look. What pisses me off is I bought this gun for this years 22 competitions and I've managed to come in dead last in two of them so far from failures and making me get mad. There's one competition left this year in a week but I won't be competing. My original plan was to buy a CZ 457 but I saw this rifle and thought it would be worth it. I've sent Grey Birch 3 emails so far and still no answer. So what do I do buy a new complete bolt from Kidd?
 
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Some more bad news for you. They are in the process of packing up the business and their family’s and moving to the states,rumour(Florida) . What will this do to spare parts and repairs
 
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