Yeah, Lancaster makes a beautiful rifle, but their customer service is terrible! I ordered a Russian Red back in March and they told me it would take 4 - 6 weeks til I got it, it took 5 months. If it's gonna take 5 months, then tell me 4 - 6 months, I'm fine with that, just don't tell me 4 -6 weeks, you'll save us both a lot of pointless conversations.
After numerous phone calls and plenty of give me a call in a few weeks and I'll you'll have one in a week type of excuses, I finally got it. Of course they charge your c.c when you place the order, which I don't really mind. But I got to the point where I was approaching the deadline as to when my c.c. would remove a charge from my bill - essentially taking the money back from Lancaster. So I was willing to go up to this deadline and not after it - I wanted to have some type of recourse if they kept dickin around with me. My next to last phone call I told them either I'm getting a rifle or I'm canceling the order, and get this, Mike said if I cancel the order I have to pay them a 25% restocking fee. A $200 fee for them to 'restock' my rifle. RESTOCK MY RIFLE WHERE?!?!? If you're gonna charge me to restock the rifle then that must mean you have the rifle not sitting on a shelf but rather wrapped up and ready go? So send me the damn thing!!! All you're gonna do after you 'restock' it is charge someone else $900 for it. As you can guess I definitely was not going to go pass my c.c. reimbursement deadline. After threatening to cancel and telling him I wouldn't pay a restocking fee he said my rifle was going out the next day and to call back to get the tracking number. Side note: I called the next day and Mike didn't have the tracking number, I figured this was another one of his runarounds, but he called me later that day with it.
I don't remember the exact details, but when I got the invoice for my rifle I came to reasonable conclusion that my rifle was pulled off of someone else's order - I think me complaining enough and threatening to cancel the order probably ended up screwing over someone else that didn't complain as much.
So, how about a rifle review: it looks awesome, the gun is so beautiful, the wood is beautiful*. I put a 100 rounds of Wolf through it and it was fine. One problem I had: the lug nut on the base of the gas block, that serves as a guide for the cleaning rod, broke clean off. I was annoyed that the gas block wasn't one solid piece - it looked like the lug was just tacked or braised on. I called Lancaster about it and Chet said it never it happened in 17 years before - he sounded very graciuos about me shipping it back for them to fix it. One problem: I don't feel comfortable sending them a $900 rifle now that I can't get my money back from the c.c. company. I don't think it would be a problem, but it took so long to get my rifle I'm not giving it up that easy, just for a little lug nut that serves no real function - it's not like the functionality of my gun was affected. I did just super glue it back and I'm letting it sit for a while. After the fact I noticed that the lug was off center from the hole where the cleaning rod goes in. I think this might have put added tension on that lug and that may have been the reason it snapped off after it got hit or something. I'll see how it works out.
*If you want to keep the wood looking beautiful DON'T put a sling on your rifle - the metal on it scratched the hell out of my wood near the handguard where the sling connects. Really pissed I did that, and I only really put the sling on for the look of it.
