Nightforce Customer Service - not happy

[Trr15]

8 weeks = “we already have your money, we’ll get to your repair when we get to it”. Companies invest more resources in getting your money than they do in backing their product. If a company wants a shorter turnaround time for repairs, they staff more repair techs.

 

[fwafwow]

At least the Meme creators are making more money.

 

[fwafwow]

I've had to send Apple devices in a couple times in the 20 years of having them. My last was an issue (my fault 100%). Apple overnighted me a box with pre-paid priority overnight. From the time I called with my issue till the time I had a fully functioning, repaired MacBook was 3 days. That's service and that's what you pay for when you pay the premium that Apple demands.

I'd expect for high end optics a similar experience. Maybe not that quick but 1-2 weeks is acceptable. You asked so I answered but it appears there are a folks that just want to argue on here about expectations.

I just acquired my first NF scope, but I've yet to mount it, so perhaps I'm a NF fanboy. But I also suffer from a "where is it?" and timing OCD (I'm tracking a couple pair of Vivo shoes referenced in another thread and I'm miffed the tracking hasn't been updated in a week). So I can see the OP's POV - getting something resolved sooner is always ideal. But it is hunting season, and maybe a company with fewer problems has less staff dedicated to fixing problems?

Anyway, I had to chime in on the Apple comment. Our family has Apples coming out of our arses - phones, watches, iPads and MacBooks, etc. But even they fail - including in CS. I'm well into more than a YEAR of dealing w/ Apple regarding a MacBook Air that exhibited problems from day one. I can't tell you how many repairs (all failed), calls and other BS I've dealt with and they will not offer a replacement. I finally had to fax a letter to Tim Cook's office (no way it really goes anywhere near him, but when asked to escalate in CS, that was the only option - a fax) and I've been working w/ that CS division for more than a month. Long-winded way of saying that my one bad experience w/ Apple has me pissed, but not so much that I won't buy the next iPhone. Maybe this is a very limited sample for NF as well.

 

[alaska_bou]

Nightforce's warranty return rate is less than 2% of annual sales, according to Sean at Nightforce. I would be surprised if any other brand could offer comparable numbers. Quality products are going to need some time to evaluate and actually repair, while throw-away brands simply send out a replacement and scrap or part out the return. Big difference.

 

[JGRaider]

There should be a sticky thread about which companies we are not allowed to criticize.

We have:
-kifaru
-nightforce
-thunderbeast

What else???

Isn't that the truth? I'm not much of a pure brand loyalist, as I like to try different stuff. For the record, my repair history.....

Leupold 2 weeks
Vortex 10 days
Zeiss 6 months
Leica 1 month, 3 times to get it right, so a total of 3 months.
Swaro 6 weeks

I've done my share of Vortex bashing myself, BUT, I just returned from hunting TX Panhandle whitetails for 10 days. I greatly underestimated the Vortex Fury AB.

 

[BluMtn]

Here is the real story on Nightforce CS. You guys have to understand that the stagecoach only goes to Orofino once a week from Lewiston. Now the guy that works on the broken scopes comes from Winchester and has to travel down the hill through Gifford and then to the clearwater to Lenore and then go east to Orofino. Now this trip will likely take a couple hours depending on weather, how many people that person stops and talks to, or maybe he does some scope testing on Coyotes. So by the time he gets to Corporate headquarters part of the day is gone. Now he walks into the office and visits with the receptionists and waits for the stagecoach to show up, now most of his day is used up. So he gets about 2.5 hrs a day working on scopes because he has to leave early to make the return trip home. On the days the stagecoach does not show up he gets about 4 hrs work done if he does not get bothered by phone calls. So 8 weeks is a pretty good number for getting a repair done.

 

[762 ULTRAMAGA]

I was having a problem with my zero stop on the NX8. I emailed NF and they promptly replied, asked me to try something to try and fix it, and once I did and it didn't work, asked me to send it in.

This was on a hunting rifle I was supposed to take on a Colorado deer hunt - right now.

I took my backup gun and mailed in the NF. I just got an email from NF - only 8 weeks wait before they get to the scope. Hell of a customer service department and turnaround when you need something. "see ya in 8 weeks".

That's my rant. I just hear nothing but good things about NF and all the fanboys and then this.

You're not the only one who's had issues with NF customer service.
I know a guy here in Idaho who literally had to sue them for not fixing his defective NX8.
They kept telling him it was a mounting error, and sent the same defective scope back.

Most of these forums deleted his threads detailing the mess with NF,
I believe it's still on Snipers Hide but it's been locked.

 

[Marbles]

You're not the only one who's had issues with NF customer service.
I know a guy here in Idaho who literally had to sue them for not fixing his defective NX8.
They kept telling him it was a mounting error, and sent the same defective scope back.

Most of these forums deleted his threads detailing the mess with NF,
I believe it's still on Snipers Hide but it's been locked.

Yep, he had a pretty big customer service issue (he also never had a thread on this form). There are multiple, sensible ways NF could have handled his situation better. Long lead times are not a horrific CS experience in my opinion. I was expecting a similar story to that one based on the title of this thread, and literally laughed when I realized it was someone wanting NF to accept his poor planning as their emergency.

 

[Ryan Avery]

Six to eight weeks is there standard response. Sent one in back in September, they said eight weeks I had it back in 18 days.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[KHNC]

A couple were on higher end, a few were on lower end. Not ridiculous, just my experience.

You must be excessively hard on scopes. I have 2 razors and 3 Vipers that i have had zero trouble with over a 10 year stretch. Razor binos and rangefinder no issues either. I did send my binos in to be cleaned. They cleaned purged and refilled the gas on those. Maybe I should start dropping and banging my rifles to see how they do.

 

[KHNC]

Nightforce's warranty return rate is less than 2% of annual sales, according to Sean at Nightforce. I would be surprised if any other brand could offer comparable numbers. Quality products are going to need some time to evaluate and actually repair, while throw-away brands simply send out a replacement and scrap or part out the return. Big difference.

Hell, from what i read on RS, Vortex return rate is 98% I guess. If someone has a vortex that hasnt failed, I guess its a unicorn or people are afraid to mention it.

 

[fwafwow]

Hell, from what i read on RS, Vortex return rate is 98% I guess. If someone has a vortex that hasnt failed, I guess its a unicorn or people are afraid to mention it.

Do you have one other than the Razor HD LHT that was drop tested? If they are working well, would you consider having it/them tested?

​

 

[KHNC]

Do you have one other than the Razor HD LHT that was drop tested? If they are working well, would you consider having it/them tested?

​

I havent and wont have my scopes dropped on purpose for any reason. Yes, I have a couple VIPER HSLR's , Strike Eagle and a couple older Razors. Also have some leupold , burris and one Zeiss VR. The ones with Turrets all shoot fine under normal hunting conditions from one year to the next. THey are always zeroed at the end of a flight or a long drive to hunt. No need for me to start slamming them on the ground or banging them on stuff just to "test". Practicality is what matters to me. I dont care if they will survive being thrown down or not. Anyone who knows me knows i hunt plenty of rough terrain. My weapons, rifle or bow, dont go around getting banged into shit enough to worry about it. And i would venture to say the averages hunters weapons dont either. Would i go into combat with a vortex over a NF? Probably not, but i have never been in combat , also same as most people .

 

[justinspicher]

You must be excessively hard on scopes. I have 2 razors and 3 Vipers that i have had zero trouble with over a 10 year stretch. Razor binos and rangefinder no issues either. I did send my binos in to be cleaned. They cleaned purged and refilled the gas on those. Maybe I should start dropping and banging my rifles to see how they do.

I had a set of binos that developed a rattle, nothing happened, but I sent them in and they were fixed.

I had a strike Eagle that wouldn’t hold a zero, Id get it zeroed, shoot a mag and then it’d be 6-8” off.

I had a 2-7x the was knocked off a shooting bench and it had the knob break off.

My NF scope was dropped 30’ out of a tree strand and I shot a deer with it 30 minutes later. I checked the zero later that afternoon and it was still on.

Am I hard on gear, yep, but you get what you pay for.

 

[prm]

8 weeks seems excessive to me. But I would want to know more details before judging too much.

 

[Shraggs]

My belief, most of these companies are much smaller organizations then folks think. I think ZEISS would be the outlier but the optics division is smaller. These are not Apple size companies with infrastructure - more cottage size. Jut my opinion.

That said, 8 weeks to me is nothing for a smallish company making technical products. Not saying this is the best path for customer service by any means but it is no way out of line with this small industry segment.

My brief experiences:
ZEISS - 2 conquests scopes over a year ea
Swaro - bino 3 months
Meopta - bino 4 months
Luepy - 4 scopes all less than a month, 2 scopes went back multiple times.

Swfa - needs a repair, RMA issued but it is fully functional in terms of zero retention and dialing. The turret housing battery is lose at base. I am not sending it in until they have inventory and able to swap it out. Otherwise it would be over a year and waiting.

Definitely not judging or saying it doesn’t suck - but if my scope needed attention but functioned I’m not putting my hunting rig at risk during hunting season.

In a perfect world - a handful more scope companies focus more on the functional aspects that matter with rokslide’s influence. Phase 2 with a smaller service rate like NF they begin to improve the support for repairs as meaningful way to separate from the larger number of scope companies making excellent tools.

Editing: I didn’t want to even begin to detail the crap show it was with ZEISS, and the saga with leupold. Also had pretty big issue with ZEISS RF software but that didn’t require sending unit in, but it took 6 months. Then there was the Lecia crap show over my 1600b and 4 trips…. In this edit portion I had to escalate to senior Mgt to get anything done.

 

[JCMCUBIC]

I don't know enough about what how long a repair "should" take to comment on it. Any time is long if you need it.

The hope is always that the product is perfect and never needs service....or at least it's rare. Should it need service, perfect customer service is a company sending the exact model for you to use while yours is repaired. Maybe a lot to ask but that's perfection.

 

[redneckbmxer24]

Just hope they fix it. They belittled me and told me I don’t know how to focus an optic when I had a 5-25 ATACR straight up fail after a shot despite having another one of the same optic with no issue and a dozen more NF’s at the time plus S&B’s with no focus issue. They finally gave me an RMA and they sent it back saying they adjusted the parallax but the scope was still ****** up. They flat out refused to let me send it back in to be fixed and the optic absolutely was not right. The guy I sold it to at a huge loss eventually got them to fix it.

I sold all of my NF’s and will not own another, they can eat a dick. Having to use a warranty sucks, but a company at least needs to fix or replace the product when there’s an issue. This was early on when the 5-25’s were first released and other people had parallax/focus problems too but at least admit there’s a problem when you haven’t figured out how to fix the POS yet.

And FWIW people still continue to have parallax failures with the ATACR’s. There’s a thread every couple months on the hide where someone’s broke.

 

[Ryan Avery]

Just hope they fix it. They belittled me and told me I don’t know how to focus an optic when I had a 5-25 ATACR straight up fail after a shot despite having another one of the same optic with no issue and a dozen more NF’s at the time plus S&B’s with no focus issue. They finally gave me an RMA and they sent it back saying they adjusted the parallax but the scope was still ****** up. They flat out refused to let me send it back in to be fixed and the optic absolutely was not right. The guy I sold it to at a huge loss eventually got them to fix it.

I sold all of my NF’s and will not own another, they can eat a dick. Having to use a warranty sucks, but a company at least needs to fix or replace the product when there’s an issue. This was early on when the 5-25’s were first released and other people had parallax/focus problems too but at least admit there’s a problem when you haven’t figured out how to fix the POS yet.

And FWIW people still continue to have parallax failures with the ATACR’s. There’s a thread every couple months on the hide where someone’s broke.

It's seems very odd that NF did not wanting to fix the issue. I've had focus issue with an old NXS, haven't seen this with the ATACR's. The NX8 2.5-20 does have a funky Parallax knob IMO.

What scope did you end up going with?

 

[redneckbmxer24]

It's seems very odd that NF did not wanting to fix the issue. I've had focus issue with an old NXS, haven't seen this with the ATACR's. The NX8 2.5-20 does have a funky Parallax knob IMO.

What scope did you end going with?

It was early on for the model and I think they just didn’t have a fix yet and wouldn’t admit it. The NX8’s do have sensitive parallax.

I replaced them with more S&B PMII’s.