I’ve been waiting for the next sale and even though what I wanted was in stock, it has magically just disappeared from the site. It was still in my cart, but can’t check out. If you don’t want to offer the sale price, then be upfront and exclude it. Don’t expect to waste my time again, I will find a straightforward dealer.
As has been stated many times before, if there is a W2 in the SKU, that is a product in a separate warehouse and those tend to be turned off during most sales due to volume of on location product being sold. In order for our shipping team to keep up and avoid a lot of shipping complaints regarding time to ship, we limit the sales to what is on hand and pickable so it can be picked and packed in a timely manner.
I'll preface my comment with this - I have shopped at SFRC, both in store and online, multiple times and overall have almost nothing but positive feedback to say about them. I've purchased everything including firearms, ammo, components, clothing, accessories, chokes, etc. etc. etc. the list can go on, over dozens of orders, and have always had positive interactions with both the staff and ordering process in general.
With that said, I absolutely can understand the frustration where a customer is waiting for a sale to go on for something they've had their eyes on, maybe even in their cart as noted in the quoted comment, only for them to find it is suddenly "no longer available" once the sale starts. Similarly, I can completely understand from a business owner's perspective that there may be complications with order processing when handling orders from two separate warehouses, especially with a locally owned and relatively small business such as SFRC.
Where I don't agree in particular is with the messaging. Maybe it's my decades of being worn down by larger coporations lying in their advertising, but I can't help but have a more difficult time believing the
only reason in removing W2 SKUs from sales is because of the long wait times associated with shipping orders from the secondary warehouse. I completely understand if W2 SKUs may be items not marked up as high as others and the business can't afford as much of a loss or less profit on those particular items - it makes sense, businesses don't exist to be your friend. It's nice if they can be at the same time, but they also
have to make money, and perhaps items in the second warehouse can't be sold at that much of a loss.
However, if the issue really is
only about delayed shipping times, I don't think that warrants removing the items from the site altogether. As a customer, I would much rather see the sale simply note something along the lines of: "Please note, items marked with a W2 SKU are stored in our secondary warehouse and therefore may be subject to extended wait times before processing / shipping while orders from the primary store are fulfilled with priority." rather than having the items removed altogether. If someone is really purchasing a firearm or something else they need right away, they're not waiting with it in their cart for potentially months at a time for a sale at any rate. I'm sure a few extra weeks or even a month+ would not be an issue if they were happy with purchasing it at the right price.
Or, and this would definitely be the cynic in me, SFRC really does remove W2 SKUs during sales because they can't afford to take less profit on those items and is just misleading everybody with the "second warehouse takes longer" messaging. If that is the case, as noted previously that is also completely understandable, but I would again then prefer some other customer-facing messages, i.e. something as simple as: "Please note, items with a W2 SKU are ineligible for this sale." You could even explain that it's simply due to the cost of running a business and I don't think anyone would have any issue in understanding that, we're all (mostly I think anyway) adults here, we can get how the world works. Some items just can't be sold with a 15% discount, of course!
Either way, I'll always keep my eye on the SFRC sales and continuing ordering from them. Hell, I bought $350 of ammo on this sale itself! But I do think the messaging of these sales, and perhaps the option of including W2 SKUs as well, should at the very least be addressed for future similar sales, as I always see the same discussions come up on these threads with the same complaints and the same responses. What I
don't want is these issues to make it so SFRC stops having the sales! Please don't! We love them!
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