Napperm4
WKR
Like most of the members on here I’m a self admitted gear junkie. I like to try different things out. Glass is one of the main things I love to play with.
Not shockingly I tend to end up keeping he alpha glass and pass along the savings on items I wasn’t thrilled with to my family and friends or it gets put in the classifieds and eBay.
My Dad and Brother are die hard vortex fans. I’ve never had anything against the company personally, we all agree that my Swarovski, Zeiss, Kowa and Leupold are superior optics but require a lot more investment.
A couple years ago my brother and a hunting partner bought some of vortex’s binos. One is 15x56 vultures and the other is 10x42 vipers. Prior experience was a few rifle scopes and some spotters.
We compared a few things around camp, backcountry and front country and everything seemed pretty decent for the money except the razor spotter. (Picked up a Vanguard for my old man last season and we all agree it edged out the razor for less than half the price).
My brother had some trouble with rifle scopes right from the factory and as per their reputation, the vip warranty took care of him though he did miss out on using 2 rifles that season as they were scope less.
Let’s just say that should have been a red flag.
I’ve recently been playing around with the 15x vultures and decided I liked the magnification. I played around with the 10x vipers and was surprised / impressed with how decent they really were.
Cue my decision to throw some 15’s on the tripod and see if I want to invest a few thousand more into some glass to get between my 10’s and spotters.
Naturally with the performance of the vipers and a higher price point logic would dictate that other than light gathering these should be a step above the entry level vultures.
Not so much. From day 1 I had some issues with them that I chalked up to switching between my swaros and the vipers which are not even in the same county let alone ball park. I don’t down play my roll of not trying before buying but none of our local retailers carry the viper 15’s.
Things culminated through the elk and deer seasons where I let my fiancé (who can’t tell the difference between HDTV and normal) as well as anyone else I hunted with try out the vortex and they all agreed something was off. No one was able to get both barrels to be clear and I ran out of diopter adjustment.
No problem - they have the vip warranty. Sent the binos in and they adjusted the focus rods, repaired the alignment and performed a “general clean”. Service was timely, roughy a month.
Today I eagerly get them delivered to my door, open the box thinking finally I’ll be happy or I can sell these things off to someone with different eyes and what do I find???
Yeah. Both objectives look like they were cleaned using sandpaper. The coatings are destroyed but some of the scratching is deep enough that it’s into the glass itself.
So what happened here?? They were not like that when they left my house. Surely they would’ve noticed that when I sent them in for the focus issue? Especially cleaning them one would think. Does VIP not include a look at the lenses when a complaint of image quality comes in?
Granted their warranty department is taking care of it, sent me prepaid label to send them back in for another examination. Even offered me a free tshirt for my troubles.
I have 0 complaints about the warranty policy don’t get me wrong.
It does prove to be difficult though to spot or shoot anything when your optics are in a shop somewhere waiting for an exam, repair and re exam. Roughly 1 week each way in the mail on top of that.
Sorry for the rant, I’m sure I’ll hear from the Vortex fans out there. No offence intended. Just sharing my experience in the hopes of saving someone else out there the trouble and grief of an overall disappointing purchase.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Not shockingly I tend to end up keeping he alpha glass and pass along the savings on items I wasn’t thrilled with to my family and friends or it gets put in the classifieds and eBay.
My Dad and Brother are die hard vortex fans. I’ve never had anything against the company personally, we all agree that my Swarovski, Zeiss, Kowa and Leupold are superior optics but require a lot more investment.
A couple years ago my brother and a hunting partner bought some of vortex’s binos. One is 15x56 vultures and the other is 10x42 vipers. Prior experience was a few rifle scopes and some spotters.
We compared a few things around camp, backcountry and front country and everything seemed pretty decent for the money except the razor spotter. (Picked up a Vanguard for my old man last season and we all agree it edged out the razor for less than half the price).
My brother had some trouble with rifle scopes right from the factory and as per their reputation, the vip warranty took care of him though he did miss out on using 2 rifles that season as they were scope less.
Let’s just say that should have been a red flag.
I’ve recently been playing around with the 15x vultures and decided I liked the magnification. I played around with the 10x vipers and was surprised / impressed with how decent they really were.
Cue my decision to throw some 15’s on the tripod and see if I want to invest a few thousand more into some glass to get between my 10’s and spotters.
Naturally with the performance of the vipers and a higher price point logic would dictate that other than light gathering these should be a step above the entry level vultures.
Not so much. From day 1 I had some issues with them that I chalked up to switching between my swaros and the vipers which are not even in the same county let alone ball park. I don’t down play my roll of not trying before buying but none of our local retailers carry the viper 15’s.
Things culminated through the elk and deer seasons where I let my fiancé (who can’t tell the difference between HDTV and normal) as well as anyone else I hunted with try out the vortex and they all agreed something was off. No one was able to get both barrels to be clear and I ran out of diopter adjustment.
No problem - they have the vip warranty. Sent the binos in and they adjusted the focus rods, repaired the alignment and performed a “general clean”. Service was timely, roughy a month.
Today I eagerly get them delivered to my door, open the box thinking finally I’ll be happy or I can sell these things off to someone with different eyes and what do I find???
Yeah. Both objectives look like they were cleaned using sandpaper. The coatings are destroyed but some of the scratching is deep enough that it’s into the glass itself.
So what happened here?? They were not like that when they left my house. Surely they would’ve noticed that when I sent them in for the focus issue? Especially cleaning them one would think. Does VIP not include a look at the lenses when a complaint of image quality comes in?
Granted their warranty department is taking care of it, sent me prepaid label to send them back in for another examination. Even offered me a free tshirt for my troubles.
I have 0 complaints about the warranty policy don’t get me wrong.
It does prove to be difficult though to spot or shoot anything when your optics are in a shop somewhere waiting for an exam, repair and re exam. Roughly 1 week each way in the mail on top of that.
Sorry for the rant, I’m sure I’ll hear from the Vortex fans out there. No offence intended. Just sharing my experience in the hopes of saving someone else out there the trouble and grief of an overall disappointing purchase.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
