Lancaster Arms Now Up To 35 Better Business Bureau Complaints

Well, you can’t say Lancaster Arms isn’t efficient. Unfortunately, the thing they are most efficient at is pissing off customers.

When I posted about Lancaster Arm’s shockingly high number of Better Business Bureau (“BBB”) complaints back in January, and their “F” rating with the BBB as a result of those complaints, they had amassed an amazing total of 28 complaints. (And keep in mind, these are just BBB complaints. Other complaints have been filed against Lancaster Arms with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and others.) There is no other company in the firearms industry of which I’m aware, that has such a terrible complaint history with the BBB.

While a reputable business might understand that such a high number of complaints was an indicator that they needed to make serious changes to their operations, Lancaster has apparently continued on with “business as usual”, and as a result is now up to 35 complaints…and growing. Apparently they are hoping to achieve sales by relying on the old P.T. Barnum saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Worse yet, the BBB states that Lancaster has not even responded to 31 of the 35 complaints. Anyone familiar with the ownership of Lancaster Arms would not be surprised by this. The owner of Lancaster Arms, Chet Durda, has an unenviable reputation in the AK-owning community. Which stands to reason, as the factual record (as documented on this blog and all over the Internet) shows that Mr. Durda has no problem whatsoever with, uh, “being less than entirely truthful and forthright” in his business dealings. This clown would be a fantastic used car or mattress salesman.

Sure enough, a sampling of recent Internet forum posts validates that nothing has changed at Lancaster.

In this forum post, a gentleman discusses how he ordered some receivers from Lancaster back in January, sent payment, had the payment cashed by Lancaster, and never got the receivers or his requested refund. If I had a dime for every similar post I’ve read on the Internet (Lancaster cashes a check, and then doesn’t send product in a timely manner, if at all), I’d be a rich man.

And in this post, a guy bought a milled Lancaster AK rifle, it had problems, and he got the standard Lancaster Arms runaround. After trying to get them to fix the problem, and Lancaster being unresponsive, he eventually just gave up on Lancaster. And as often happens in such threads, other people also chimed in with the same familiar stories: “I ordered something in November and it still isn’t here”, “they keep telling me the gun will ship soon or that they will rush the order”…but the gun or product never ships.

As always folks, if you insist on doing business with Lancaster Arms (and I can’t state strongly enough how much I would advise against doing so), NEVER, EVER send payment prior to your order being ready. And even then, get a firm commitment IN WRITING from Lancaster as to when the product will ship, and send only a money order or other payment that can be traced and refunded by the issuer if necessary. Do not send cash under any circumstances. And if you speak with Chet Durda about your order, how will you know if he's lying to you? Simple: His lips will be moving.

Failure to follow these instructions will only result in much frustration on your part.