Palmetto State Armory

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Aug 1, 2012
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Here is my experience with Palmetto State Armory and why I will not be giving them any more business.

My first time ordering from PSA was 2 weeks ago. I ordered the Classic Lower Build kit. Good price, shipped fairly quickly. However, when it arrived, it arrived without the entire stock assembly. I contacted customer service, which took an unanswered email and a few phone calls, explained my problem, and was told they'd ship a stock assembly out to me. At this point, I was impressed with the customer service. The shipment arrived and chalked it up to being busy, everyone’s entitles to an ‘oops ’ moment.

When it came time to order my upper, I ordered from PSA. I do pretty extensive research when shopping for an expensive purchase like that. Once again, PSA does appear to have the best batch of features for the price. So I placed my order, my card was charged and my order status was “processing”. 24 hours later, I read here that other customers from MA have been denied business. I checked the website, under terms and conditions, the only time MA is referred to is under ammunition sales. To be certain, I contacted customer service again (again, took me a few tries) and asked them.

I was told that I was correct, they would not ship my order to MA. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why. An upper is not a firearm, and for all of the poor gun laws in MA, there is nothing illeagal about selling uppers to MA residents. And if this is their policy, why was it not posted anywhere on the website so that I might have known prior to placing my order?

But I didn’t want to get into an argument with the young lady from customer service over the phone so I simply acknowledged what I was told and asked to cancel my order. I was then put on hold. When she returned she advised me that it could take up to 5 business days for my refund.

Well, as I write this I am at day 6 with no refund and have contacted customer service again. Today I spent a LONG time on hold. I was told that nothing I had spoken with customer service about on my previous call was reflected in my account. I was also for the first time I was going to be hit with a 10% restocking fee. I told her that at this point I just wanted to be done with it. I asked when I could see the refund, and I was told early-middle next week. So, due to their poor book keeping, I am looking at 2 weeks turnaround on my refund.

TL;DR: First order missing parts, poor policy that they won’t ship uppers to ban states, policy not listed on site, no refund in a timely manner, Customer Service is incompetent and a pain to get ahold of.
 
I would wait until your refund has been processed, then dispute the 10% re-stocking charge with your CC company. If there is no explicit language that states they won't ship uppers to MA, then it is presumed that you ordered in good faith, so the cancellation was not your fault. There is no way in hell I would let them keep $50 of my hard earned money for nothing in return.
 
I would wait until your refund has been processed, then dispute the 10% re-stocking charge with your CC company. If there is no explicit language that states they won't ship uppers to MA, then it is presumed that you ordered in good faith, so the cancellation was not your fault. There is no way in hell I would let them keep $50 of my hard earned money for nothing in return.

My thought as well. however, this was on a debit card, so it makes things a little trickier. I still plan on trying though.
 
PSA "used" to be great, they've turned the corner, gone full retard and never shall see another cent of my hard earned legal tender. Bunch of lying cowards.
 
I would wait until your refund has been processed, then dispute the 10% re-stocking charge with your CC company. If there is no explicit language that states they won't ship uppers to MA, then it is presumed that you ordered in good faith, so the cancellation was not your fault. There is no way in hell I would let them keep $50 of my hard earned money for nothing in return.
This. PSA wasn't clear about it, and if you are with a decent bank, they will refund you for "goods not received".
 
I simply acknowledged what I was told and asked to cancel my order.


From PSA website
Order Cancellation - All requests for order cancellation must be submitted via e-mail. A 10% processing fee will be charged to all orders cancelled after payment has been processed. Payment is processed immediately upon receipt of your order payment. This charge represents the costs we incur to reprocess your transaction and to unpack and restock your order items by our sales and warehouse staff.

Looks like you should have waited for them to refuse to ship the order rather than you cancel it.
 
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But it was only cancelled after verification PSA would not ship here. Besides a shady business practice they're actually stealing from the guy for a policy not stated on the site. Had the OP cancelled the order because he didn't want it then I could understand the restocking fee. The fact that his order was still "Processing" it mostly likely wasn't even pulled for shipping. Being nice to CS is not always the best route especially due to something the purchaser has no control over, total incompetence.

Don't even wait for the refund. Dispute it with the bank immediately. If the bank doesn't want to get their hands dirty then try the card creditor (mines Mastercard). They can take care of it.
 
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I don't think the issue is with the company that doesn't want to get prosecuted by stupid, ambiguous laws that seemingly have no bounds. I think the problem is the state you live in. I've ordered from PSA several times and have never had an issue and I'd readily order from them again.
 
If they want to make it their policy not to ship anything to MA residents, that's fine, but they need to explicitly say so on their website and prevent the orders from even going through in the first place. To not post the policy and then charge people a 10% restocking fee is outrageous.

Edit: Their terms and conditions page now says "Massachusetts: No sales", but I do not believe that was the case before when these complaints started surfacing.

Edit 2: As it was pointed out to me, that no sales line is under the Ammunition section of the terms. There isn't anything on the terms page that says no sales whatsoever to MA residents.
 
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Blame MA for it's asinine rules that make it not worthwhile for retailers to do business with anyone in the state. I had no issues with my PSA order
 
O.K. to charge a "restocking fee" don;t they have to actually take the part out of stock? Isn't that the definition? If they refused your order to some stupid company policy, and did nothing with the physical stock screw em. I would suggest you charge them a 25% fee for idiocy. If they can claim stupid crap, they make up. Well then the rules are set. Fight it all the way through the CC co.
 
If they had just come out and said "we won't ship anything to MA" that would be one thing. But when they come up with BS excuses like "The ATF just passed a new law and we can't ship anything that goes in or on a gun to MA", then when they're told that the ATF can't pass laws come back with "Well it's a new South Carolina law" (which also does not exist) then that's a load of crap. Bad enough their customer service sucked to begin with without them lying to your face.

For a business that is bringing in as much money as PSA they should know better than to make up crap like this. A first year law student would be able to tell them that it is perfectly legal to ship a stripped lower to any FFL in the country. As far as the rest of the laws and regs, they may be onerous but they are not incomprehensible. Most of us here understand them pretty well and few of us are lawyers.

I fail to see how abandoning gun owners in MA does anyone any good, except furthering the agenda of the anti's without them raising a finger. PSA's egos and pocketbook are getting in the way of their common sense.
 
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Another story of shitty business practices from PSA; they won't get a dime out of me, in MA or out!

They shouldn't have even taken the order if they're not selling anything to MA residents (despite no legal prohibitions for uppers/parts), charging a restocking fee on this order is unreasonable to say the least.
 
Bought a LPK on 7/25, received order confirmation, funds pulled from my account and no shipping info. No reply to my email inquiry.... first and last order with them...yes I live in MA....

edit 8/8 emailed them again today, called their web order info line numerous times with voicemail on but no way to leave a message. I actually received a UPS tracking number for my order late in the day so it looks to be on the way.
 
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It's likely they don't administer their own shopping cart checkout software and all ordering interfaces are outsourced. In those situations people programming the checkout routines are mostly likely not planning specifically for gun owners and all the asinine laws in this country, but instead are simply cross referencing inventory status with you cart. It's far more likely a PSA direct employee doesn't see the details of the order (I.e. shipping address) until after the third party software has processed the payment and issued a work order. At that point they throw the flag on the order.

Is that a shitty system, yes. Should they have a notice somewhere warning MA citizens, yes. However some onus should probably be placed on you to ensure any gun related item can be shipped to you since you already know how shitty your states laws are and this issue being prevelant in many other situations. I'd say 66% their fault, 33% yours.

Obviously the restocking fee is bullshit and you should have gotten an immediate refund once the order was cancelled internally. Just call them and tell them you're going to place a stop payment through you CC if they don't correct it immediately. This will most likely get them to move as they won't want to deal with a CC company claims dept.
 
Bought a LPK on 7/25, received order confirmation, funds pulled from my account and no shipping info. No reply to my email inquiry.... first and last order with them...yes I live in MA....

Yup, same here... Just I ordered mine even earlier than you. Still no shipping info.
 
Same deal here. Ordered thier on sale lpk two weeks ago and emailed them today. They never responded, but I did get a ups email notification a couple hours later... If only it said who the shipper was.. Maybe I buy to many gun parts online?
 
I ordered the LPK with ALG ACT trigger on 7/26 and received it this past Monday.

Too bad about their new policy because I'm putting together a list for a new AR build, won't be using PSA!

Yup, same here... Just I ordered mine even earlier than you. Still no shipping info.
 
If they want to make it their policy not to ship anything to MA residents, that's fine, but they need to explicitly say so on their website and prevent the orders from even going through in the first place. To not post the policy and then charge people a 10% restocking fee is outrageous.

Edit: Their terms and conditions page now says "Massachusetts: No sales", but I do not believe that was the case before when these complaints started surfacing.

This is listed specifically under ammunition sales. It also says they won't sell standard capacity mags to MA. It does not say anything about upper recievers.
 
This is listed specifically under ammunition sales. It also says they won't sell standard capacity mags to MA. It does not say anything about upper recievers.

Good catch, they space things out oddly so it looked to me like it was a separate section. OK, so they still do not say "no sales of anything whatsoever, jerks" for MA customers. WTF kind of way is that to run a business?
 
BBB is toothless.

Prior to all this hitting the fan, I had ordered 5 LPK's when they went on sale. Never received any confirmation but I knew my CC got hit. They arrived on my doorstep over 2 weeks ago. Today I got my shipping confirmation. Way to keep on the ball, guys. If I ran my farm that way I would have a bunch of empty barns with closed doors and cows roaming all over the countryside.
 
I ordered an LPK from them a few weeks ago that was on sale and listed as in stock after several days of hearing nothing I called and was told it would ship that day. I received no shipping info so after a few more days I checked again and was told another story that all the parts were not available but now they were and it would ship. Again I heard nothing after a few days so I called again and I got another story but was told it would ship that day and was given a tracking number. Later that day or the next I received shipping information but the tracking number was different than what I was given.
I am a bit concerned because the tracking info says 2 packages and an LPK should only be one package.
It makes me wonder what they shipped in that second package.
It is due tomorrow so we shall see.
 
I ordered an LPK from them a few weeks ago that was on sale and listed as in stock after several days of hearing nothing I called and was told it would ship that day. I received no shipping info so after a few more days I checked again and was told another story that all the parts were not available but now they were and it would ship. Again I heard nothing after a few days so I called again and I got another story but was told it would ship that day and was given a tracking number. Later that day or the next I received shipping information but the tracking number was different than what I was given.
I am a bit concerned because the tracking info says 2 packages and an LPK should only be one package.
It makes me wonder what they shipped in that second package.
It is due tomorrow so we shall see.

Maybe you will be lucky and that other guy's upper will be your second package![smile]
 
In case anyone is wondering, still no refund. I was told "sometime early next week, because it takes the bank a few days to process." Call me crazy but I don't think the bank is the weak link in the chain [rolleyes]

Maybe you will be lucky and that other guy's upper will be your second package![smile]

Hey if you do, let me know how it shoots! Don't be like that guy who got the sig in the mail by accident from Amazon in the other thread and call the cops.
 
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