POLITE REQUEST DURING THESE DIFFICULT TIMES!
A message from Paul, the owner of Defcon Airsoft:
We value all our customers immensely, you guys (and girls) are amazing and we would be nothing without you – we are trying our absolute best to fulfil all your orders as quickly and efficiently as possible. We thankyou for your continued support and patience during these difficult times.
As per the notices on our website there are delays in shipping due to the courier networks being overwhelmed by online deliveries during the Covid-19 lockdown and suffering from shortages of staff.
Due to us keeping some vunerable members of staff off work to keep them safe and reducing staff levels to comply with social distancing we have limited staff available, then safety of our staff and their families is our priority.
We have a choice to make – do these limited staff focus on dispatching orders or replying to the hundreds of emails asking where the delivery is and can we check the tracking number they have been provided. We see the same info from the tracking number as customers do, all we can advise is please be patient and understanding and in 99% of cases your order will reach you.
Please try to refrain from sending ‘just checking where my order is’ emails and messages – chances are we would be packing and dispatching the order if we weren’t replying to all the emails!
If you ordered an item on a Saturday (when we are closed and our courier doesn’t collect) please dont send multiple angry emails on Monday asking why your order is not with you. Please don’t leave us 1-star reviews because you had to wait a little longer and couldn’t get through to support for a daily update on why delivery is slow. We are not Amazon with unlimited resources and scant regard for employee safety, we are a small family run business operating in a niche hobby industry trying to keep our valued team members safe and dealing with unprecedented order volumes and delays in the courier networks.
With this in mind, and to prioritise the dispatch of orders, we will NOT BE ABLE TO REPLY to messages asking for a shipping update for the time being. Our limited support staff are overwhelmed by these messages and it means other more urgent enquiries are getting buried in the backlog, we have even had to turn off phones as it was taking up one member of staffs entire day answering these ‘quick updates’ on tracking when they could have been sending parcels out. It is not an easy time now to get more customer support staff and get them trained up especially while maintaining social distancing in a limited space.
We are not trying to rip anyone off, our business thrives on our reputation and good customer feedback, if you have paid for something we will get it to you as soon as humanly possible! If we can’t get it to you we are more than happy to refund it, we are not thieves but things are just taking longer at the moment!
The guys in our team are doing an amazing job in these difficult times, coming in and working incredibly hard even on their days off to keep our business going and get all your orders out when they could quite justifiably request to stay at home to minimise any risk to their own health and that of their families. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to the team, we are a close knit group and are like family – you are going above and beyond I couldn’t ask for more, I am very lucky to have you guys!
Some issues can arise where a customer purchases a pre-order/backordered item. Please check your invoice carefully, pre-orders are shown clearly at the time of purchase and understandable delays may occur in getting new shipments from the far east at the moment.
The other main confusion arises where people haven’t realised they need a valid defence to purchase an airsoft gun. Airsoft guns are highly restricted items, if you don’t have the supporting evidence to purchase one you will have to pay for it to be painted blue. All info regarding this is clearly shown on the website, please make sure you read it and understand the process before placing your order. We currently have a lot of orders on our painting list, we are trying to get through this as fast as possible and get the orders out but again there is a longer delay than normal.
If you’ve got this far I thankyou for your time taken in reading this – once again I apologise for any inconvenience and slow communications and appreciate your patience and understanding – we are doing our very best in these difficult times and getting 4x the orders out than we normally do and we hope to resume our usual high levels of communication and support as soon as possible.
