MacQueen Pipes, Buyer Beware

I'm a pipe smoker, no longer a full time smoke every day pipe smoker but a pipe smoker none the less. I typically smoke Peterson Pipes, I like the quality, but I also have more than one corncob pipe, and several briars of moderate price but good quality. Not long ago I was pointed in the direction of MacQueen Pipes, specifically their Churchwarden line as I was thinking of trying that style of pipe.

On 11 August this year I placed an order, I was immediately billed for that order. I understood at that time, based on their website, that there was a 8 to 12 week turn around time. I accepted that. Anyone who's done business with me knows I don't mind waiting for products I want. I once waited over four years for a custom longbow, and I'm currently in the third year of a wait on a custom knife. I am not an impatient man.

That does not excuse poor communication or bad customer service in general. I inquired three times before receiving the first response from them. In response to my question regarding a 'guess as to the shipping date', I was told the wait time was 8 - 12 weeks, which I knew, and that the pipe would ship on October 15th. Okay. Incidentally, the wait time is now listed at 10 to 12 weeks, and I will say that I still do not have the pipe I ordered.

Some background is in order at this point, because at this stage I decided maybe I need to look a little deeper. While the amount in question isn't great in the grand scheme of things, no one likes to be stolen from or mislead. When I started looking I realized that ordering from these people was a mistake. 

The first thing I looked at was the Better Business Bureau. The BBB has graded MacQueen Pipes with an F, contacted them repeatedly, and has never gotten a response from MacQueen Pipes. In fact, 51 complaints over the past three years, 35 of them in the past 12 months. Yeah, I should have looked at this before ordering, I was sloppy as I do usually check companies out. In this case I actually thought, well they make pipes, they are not overly expensive, it is a Canadian company, I classified them as low risk in my mind.

I looked a little further, on the pipe forums for example, and found a lot of disgruntled people who were in the same boat, waiting on orders for months and months. I won't belabor the point, I will say for the pipe smokers that read here, do your homework, it won't take long to realize you don't want to deal with the frustration.

October 15th came and went. On 2 November I sent inquiry but received no response, again on 12 November and again no response.

Then, on 20 November I  received an email stating my order had shipped. I accepted maybe, that they'd just gotten way behind. That still didn't sit well with regard to communication though, never the less I accepted that. The email stated the order would arrive within 6 to 14 days.

Nothing ever showed up of course.

Today, 9 December, I sent my final email, explaining that I hope the funds served them well, for in the end it was going to cost them more business than the amount could ever offset. I'll warn every pipe enthusiast I know, and I'd not stop doing so until I felt satisfied that I'd warned a sufficient number of potential customers. Within seven minutes I received a reply from one of the owners. He indicated an overwhelming back log was at fault, production improvements had been made though, but they were still behind, and that contrary to the ship notice I received, it had in fact, never been shipped. That he could ship tomorrow, air mail it even, and that it would arrive within 4 to 9 days, or I could get a refund.

Okay.

I don't enjoy writing posts like this one, I don't. The problem is many companies out there these days are not dependent on local customers where if you screwed one of your local customers over they'd spread the word and soon you wouldn't have any customers, new or otherwise. That was the penalty for bad business practices and poor customer service. In this age of get anything anywhere there's far less impact when you screw a customer over, especially one not local and in fact in a whole other country. Still, as customers we have the right to write about our experiences. Issuing a refund does not in turn buy silence nor does it mean that a poor experience shouldn't be spoken of, written about, or repeated.

There are consequences for actions, or in action as the case may be because if I'd have gotten an email telling me there was another delay, an update on the shipping date, and NOT have gotten a ship notice that was a lie, then I wouldn't have written this, and you wouldn't be wasting your time reading it. As it is, none of that happened though, in my opinion based on their actions their 'give a damn' for their customers was clearly broken.

I opted for the refund.

I'll update this when and if I receive it, because contrary to his statement of "I just issued a full refund to your paypal account" I have not received said refund. 

That was at 4:30pm central time the 9th of December.

I'm not going to hold my breath.