Has Fubar Bundy Airsoft closed down?

[Dani930]

The concerns raised by myself and others, and the reason people were questioning whether the business had closed down, were entirely down to the lack of communication, google showing extended periods “closed” with no updates on the website bar saying look on instagram and google.

For context, I emailed a few days after placing my order, and before the “holiday” in question, to ask whether I could collect it as I needed the items that weekend. I received no response and couldn’t get through on the phone, so eventually accepted that I wouldn’t have them in time.

However, I then expected delivery the following week. The order confirmation had indicated delivery within three days of payment, yet over two weeks passed with nothing arriving and, more importantly, no communication explaining why.

I was left having to guess what was happening, make multiple phone calls and send several emails, all with no response. I didn’t become abusive, kick off or make unreasonable demands. I simply wanted an update on an order I had paid for and if no update would be provided within 72hours I’ll have to recover the funds.

I looked on Google, Facebook and Instagram for any information, but found nothing. The website directs customers to Google for opening hours, which continued to show the business as closed on every day for over two weeks, with no explanation or update elsewhere.

After seeing other people in the same situation and the concerns being raised here, I left a review to make other potential customers aware of my experience. Interestingly, once that review went live, I suddenly received a voicemail, a response to the review and an email cancelling my order. And in response to the comment by the retailer that they sent me an update that morning is factually incorrect I’ve checked both my junk and inbox.

I had genuinely tried to resolve things directly and was more than happy to amend my review once my order had been fulfilled. I wasn’t looking for an argument; I was looking for communication and the goods I had paid for.

Unfortunately, the response I eventually received only added to my disappointment. The sarcastic comments, the decision to cancel the order and the general lack of any apparent interest in retaining a customer were completely unexpected.

No one is suggesting a business isn’t entitled to close for holidays or take time away. But customers are equally entitled to expect reasonable communication, particularly when they have placed and paid for an order.

Had there been a simple update, an automated reply or even a reply to one of my many attempts to make contact before they went away none of this would have happened.

The issue was never the closure itself. It was how customers were left completely in the dark and then treated when they quite reasonably asked questions.The facts of mine and other’s concerns and the reason for asking if they had closed down was due to stone-walled communication.

The thread, comments, questions, reviews and frustrations are valid. This isn’t just one person but several I know of and probably more with orders still being open while “closed”.

Customers shouldn’t have to search high and low to find opening details, email and call for updates or needing to guess what’s happening. 99% of buyers in this situation would have the same thought process with many not waiting as long as I did before exploring ways to recover my money.

 

[Dev]

Dev, the mod team are first & foremost, players, so by virtue of that, assuming they aren't rentals, they are also customers of airsoft retailers.
Whether they're customers of fubar bundy is irrelevant, their experiences with other airsoft retailers gives them a bar to judge by, & unlike all of the now defunct forums, everyone here is entitled an opinion, as long as its presented in accordance with the fairly easygoing forum rules.
Even without the input from any of the mod team in this discussion, its fairly safe to say that the general opinion of members recent experiences fubar bundy has been unfavourable, irrespective of the reasons behind it.
In this digital age, no one should struggle to source the most basic information from a supposedly live business, especially if that business is still taking orders & payments.
If it was my hard earned expect a message on their website, or confirmation email, giving an honest timeline for order completion & despatch if, as was the case here, the business was closing for a personal holiday.
It's not a lot to ask, especially if you're throwing hundreds of pounds at a business.

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Just sayin You liked my initial reply.

I don't think anyone is questioning a moderator's right to hold an opinion.

What I am questioning is why every response seems to return to justifying the criticism of the retailer while largely avoiding the point I've raised about the distinction between facts and assumptions.

Poor communication may explain why people became suspicious. It does not automatically make the suspicions true.

That's the principle I've been arguing throughout, and so far nobody has really addressed it directly.

 

[Dev]

The concerns raised by myself and others, and the reason people were questioning whether the business had closed down, were entirely down to the lack of communication, google showing extended periods “closed” with no updates on the website bar saying look on instagram and google.

For context, I emailed a few days after placing my order, and before the “holiday” in question, to ask whether I could collect it as I needed the items that weekend. I received no response and couldn’t get through on the phone, so eventually accepted that I wouldn’t have them in time.

However, I then expected delivery the following week. The order confirmation had indicated delivery within three days of payment, yet over two weeks passed with nothing arriving and, more importantly, no communication explaining why.

I was left having to guess what was happening, make multiple phone calls and send several emails, all with no response. I didn’t become abusive, kick off or make unreasonable demands. I simply wanted an update on an order I had paid for and if no update would be provided within 72hours I’ll have to recover the funds.

I looked on Google, Facebook and Instagram for any information, but found nothing. The website directs customers to Google for opening hours, which continued to show the business as closed on every day for over two weeks, with no explanation or update elsewhere.

After seeing other people in the same situation and the concerns being raised here, I left a review to make other potential customers aware of my experience. Interestingly, once that review went live, I suddenly received a voicemail, a response to the review and an email cancelling my order. And in response to the comment by the retailer that they sent me an update that morning is factually incorrect I’ve checked both my junk and inbox.

I had genuinely tried to resolve things directly and was more than happy to amend my review once my order had been fulfilled. I wasn’t looking for an argument; I was looking for communication and the goods I had paid for.

Unfortunately, the response I eventually received only added to my disappointment. The sarcastic comments, the decision to cancel the order and the general lack of any apparent interest in retaining a customer were completely unexpected.

No one is suggesting a business isn’t entitled to close for holidays or take time away. But customers are equally entitled to expect reasonable communication, particularly when they have placed and paid for an order.

Had there been a simple update, an automated reply or even a reply to one of my many attempts to make contact before they went away none of this would have happened.

The issue was never the closure itself. It was how customers were left completely in the dark and then treated when they quite reasonably asked questions.The facts of mine and other’s concerns and the reason for asking if they had closed down was due to stone-walled communication.

The thread, comments, questions, reviews and frustrations are valid. This isn’t just one person but several I know of and probably more with orders still being open while “closed”.

Customers shouldn’t have to search high and low to find opening details, email and call for updates or needing to guess what’s happening. 99% of buyers in this situation would have the same thought process with many not waiting as long as I did before exploring ways to recover my money.

Click to shrink...

The concerns raised by myself and others, and the reason people were questioning whether the business had closed down, were entirely down to the lack of communication, google showing extended periods “closed” with no updates on the website bar saying look on instagram and google.

For context, I emailed a few days after placing my order, and before the “holiday” in question, to ask whether I could collect it as I needed the items that weekend. I received no response and couldn’t get through on the phone, so eventually accepted that I wouldn’t have them in time.

However, I then expected delivery the following week. The order confirmation had indicated delivery within three days of payment, yet over two weeks passed with nothing arriving and, more importantly, no communication explaining why.

I was left having to guess what was happening, make multiple phone calls and send several emails, all with no response. I didn’t become abusive, kick off or make unreasonable demands. I simply wanted an update on an order I had paid for and if no update would be provided within 72hours I’ll have to recover the funds.

I looked on Google, Facebook and Instagram for any information, but found nothing. The website directs customers to Google for opening hours, which continued to show the business as closed on every day for over two weeks, with no explanation or update elsewhere.

After seeing other people in the same situation and the concerns being raised here, I left a review to make other potential customers aware of my experience. Interestingly, once that review went live, I suddenly received a voicemail, a response to the review and an email cancelling my order. And in response to the comment by the retailer that they sent me an update that morning is factually incorrect I’ve checked both my junk and inbox.

I had genuinely tried to resolve things directly and was more than happy to amend my review once my order had been fulfilled. I wasn’t looking for an argument; I was looking for communication and the goods I had paid for.

Unfortunately, the response I eventually received only added to my disappointment. The sarcastic comments, the decision to cancel the order and the general lack of any apparent interest in retaining a customer were completely unexpected.

No one is suggesting a business isn’t entitled to close for holidays or take time away. But customers are equally entitled to expect reasonable communication, particularly when they have placed and paid for an order.

Had there been a simple update, an automated reply or even a reply to one of my many attempts to make contact before they went away none of this would have happened.

The issue was never the closure itself. It was how customers were left completely in the dark and then treated when they quite reasonably asked questions.The facts of mine and other’s concerns and the reason for asking if they had closed down was due to stone-walled communication.

The thread, comments, questions, reviews and frustrations are valid. This isn’t just one person but several I know of and probably more with orders still being open while “closed”.

Customers shouldn’t have to search high and low to find opening details, email and call for updates or needing to guess what’s happening. 99% of buyers in this situation would have the same thought process with many not waiting as long as I did before exploring ways to recover my money.

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To be clear, nothing in your post would concern me from a moderation perspective.

You've laid out your experience, explained your reasoning and described why you became concerned.

My concern has always been with the broader suggestion, advanced elsewhere in the thread, that because people had reasons to be suspicious, assumptions and speculation should effectively be treated as justified facts.

Those are two different things.

 

[Punisher3990]

Oh, I thought this thread was finished.

I can't see where anyone was vilifying anyone, but the concerns raised were perfectly valid at the time they were discussed.

When I first came across the thread and looked into the shop's social media presence, it genuinely looked as though the business had disappeared. Closed for weeks on Google, Facebook page gone, Facebook group with no new posts for months, and nothing on Instagram. There had been no replies to emails or phone calls for two weeks, nor any out-of-office messages or recorded announcements explaining the absence.

I'd imagine most people would have been concerned under those circumstances. It's not unreasonable for customers to start wondering what's going on when every avenue of communication appears to have gone quiet. Whether those suspicions were true or not is almost irrelevant. The situation created the conditions for people to draw those conclusions, and that is ultimately the retailer's responsibility. A simple notice explaining the absence would have gone a long way towards preventing that speculation in the first place.

All of this over something as simple as not setting up an out-of-office auto-reply, which takes less than 60 seconds to do.

Dev, all you're doing now is keeping this thread alive in the new posts section of the forum, resulting in it getting more views and the concerns raised remaining in the discussion for longer. I would assume that's probably NOT what you wanted, yet that's exactly the result you're achieving.

You're keeping this topic alive and exposing those concerns to an even wider audience.

Honestly, you should have just left it alone. This thread would have been on its way down the list and into the depths of the forum by now.

 

[Austeyr]

Jesus this is still going?

 

[Dev]

Oh, I thought this thread was finished.

I can't see where anyone was vilifying anyone, but the concerns raised were perfectly valid at the time they were discussed.

When I first came across the thread and looked into the shop's social media presence, it genuinely looked as though the business had disappeared. Closed for weeks on Google, Facebook page gone, Facebook group with no new posts for months, and nothing on Instagram. There had been no replies to emails or phone calls for two weeks, nor any out-of-office messages or recorded announcements explaining the absence.

I'd imagine most people would have been concerned under those circumstances. It's not unreasonable for customers to start wondering what's going on when every avenue of communication appears to have gone quiet. Whether those suspicions were true or not is almost irrelevant. The situation created the conditions for people to draw those conclusions, and that is ultimately the retailer's responsibility. A simple notice explaining the absence would have gone a long way towards preventing that speculation in the first place.

All of this over something as simple as not setting up an out-of-office auto-reply, which takes less than 60 seconds to do.

Dev, all you're doing now is keeping this thread alive in the new posts section of the forum, resulting in it getting more views and the concerns raised remaining in the discussion for longer. I would assume that's probably NOT what you wanted, yet that's exactly the result you're achieving.

You're keeping this topic alive and exposing those concerns to an even wider audience.

Honestly, you should have just left it alone. This thread would have been on its way down the list and into the depths of the forum by now.

Click to shrink...

I appreciate your perspective. I agree that concern was understandable given the circumstances, and I accept that better communication would have helped.

However, I felt it was important to respond because some of the discussion had moved beyond concern and into speculation.

When comments about your business are being made publicly, it's reasonable to want to correct the record once the facts are available.

Those facts are now out there, so people can make up their own minds. I'll leave the matter there and move on.

 

[Dev]

Jesus this is still going?

View attachment 55776

Click to shrink...

Exactly.

 

[Dev]

Oh, I thought this thread was finished.

I can't see where anyone was vilifying anyone, but the concerns raised were perfectly valid at the time they were discussed.

When I first came across the thread and looked into the shop's social media presence, it genuinely looked as though the business had disappeared. Closed for weeks on Google, Facebook page gone, Facebook group with no new posts for months, and nothing on Instagram. There had been no replies to emails or phone calls for two weeks, nor any out-of-office messages or recorded announcements explaining the absence.

I'd imagine most people would have been concerned under those circumstances. It's not unreasonable for customers to start wondering what's going on when every avenue of communication appears to have gone quiet. Whether those suspicions were true or not is almost irrelevant. The situation created the conditions for people to draw those conclusions, and that is ultimately the retailer's responsibility. A simple notice explaining the absence would have gone a long way towards preventing that speculation in the first place.

All of this over something as simple as not setting up an out-of-office auto-reply, which takes less than 60 seconds to do.

Dev, all you're doing now is keeping this thread alive in the new posts section of the forum, resulting in it getting more views and the concerns raised remaining in the discussion for longer. I would assume that's probably NOT what you wanted, yet that's exactly the result you're achieving.

You're keeping this topic alive and exposing those concerns to an even wider audience.

Honestly, you should have just left it alone. This thread would have been on its way down the list and into the depths of the forum by now.

Click to shrink...

My goal isn't to make the thread disappear.

My goal is to discuss the concerns being raised. If those concerns are still being discussed, the thread remaining visible isn't really a problem.

 

[Punisher3990]

My goal isn't to make the thread disappear.

My goal is to discuss the concerns being raised. If those concerns are still being discussed, the thread remaining visible isn't really a problem.

Click to shrink...

My point was that the concerns are that the shop has poor communication, etc. If you want to keep that opinion around longer and have it put off more of his potential customers, then be my guest.

I am sure he would probs disagree and want this to go away rather than be kept alive for more and more people to see it? It's like you're highlighting a 1-star review over and over again?

For the sake of arguing something that, at the end of the day, doesn't really matter anymore, as the owner already explained what happened in this thread and it was done and dusted. Then you resurrected it for no reason other than to create more debate and arguments.

 

[Dev]

Oh, I thought this thread was finished.

I can't see where anyone was vilifying anyone, but the concerns raised were perfectly valid at the time they were discussed.

When I first came across the thread and looked into the shop's social media presence, it genuinely looked as though the business had disappeared. Closed for weeks on Google, Facebook page gone, Facebook group with no new posts for months, and nothing on Instagram. There had been no replies to emails or phone calls for two weeks, nor any out-of-office messages or recorded announcements explaining the absence.

I'd imagine most people would have been concerned under those circumstances. It's not unreasonable for customers to start wondering what's going on when every avenue of communication appears to have gone quiet. Whether those suspicions were true or not is almost irrelevant. The situation created the conditions for people to draw those conclusions, and that is ultimately the retailer's responsibility. A simple notice explaining the absence would have gone a long way towards preventing that speculation in the first place.

All of this over something as simple as not setting up an out-of-office auto-reply, which takes less than 60 seconds to do.

Dev, all you're doing now is keeping this thread alive in the new posts section of the forum, resulting in it getting more views and the concerns raised remaining in the discussion for longer. I would assume that's probably NOT what you wanted, yet that's exactly the result you're achieving.

You're keeping this topic alive and exposing those concerns to an even wider audience.

Honestly, you should have just left it alone. This thread would have been on its way down the list and into the depths of the forum by now.

Click to shrink...

Oh, I thought this thread was finished.

I can't see where anyone was vilifying anyone, but the concerns raised were perfectly valid at the time they were discussed.

When I first came across the thread and looked into the shop's social media presence, it genuinely looked as though the business had disappeared. Closed for weeks on Google, Facebook page gone, Facebook group with no new posts for months, and nothing on Instagram. There had been no replies to emails or phone calls for two weeks, nor any out-of-office messages or recorded announcements explaining the absence.

I'd imagine most people would have been concerned under those circumstances. It's not unreasonable for customers to start wondering what's going on when every avenue of communication appears to have gone quiet. Whether those suspicions were true or not is almost irrelevant. The situation created the conditions for people to draw those conclusions, and that is ultimately the retailer's responsibility. A simple notice explaining the absence would have gone a long way towards preventing that speculation in the first place.

All of this over something as simple as not setting up an out-of-office auto-reply, which takes less than 60 seconds to do.

Dev, all you're doing now is keeping this thread alive in the new posts section of the forum, resulting in it getting more views and the concerns raised remaining in the discussion for longer. I would assume that's probably NOT what you wanted, yet that's exactly the result you're achieving.

You're keeping this topic alive and exposing those concerns to an even wider audience.

Honestly, you should have just left it alone. This thread would have been on its way down the list and into the depths of the forum by now.

Click to shrink...

“You're keeping the thread alive" isn't an argument against anything I've said.

It's also hypocritical when you're participating in the same thread and achieving the same result.

If my points are factually wrong, explain why.

If not, then whether the thread remains visible is a distraction from the actual issue.

 

[Dev]

Jesus this is still going?

View attachment 55776

Click to shrink...

This!

 

[Punisher3990]

“You're keeping the thread alive" isn't an argument against anything I've said.

It's also hypocritical when you're participating in the same thread and achieving the same result.

If my points are factually wrong, explain why.

If not, then whether the thread remains visible is a distraction from the actual issue.

Click to shrink...

I think you're missing the point I'm making, Dev.

I'm not suggesting that the fact the thread is being kept alive somehow invalidates the concerns originally raised, nor am I disputing the points you've made.

My point is that the original concerns had already been discussed, the business owner had provided an explanation, and the matter had largely run its course. There was very little to be gained by bringing it back to the forefront of the forum.

You say your goal is to discuss the concerns, but what exactly is left to discuss? The circumstances have been explained, the concerns have been acknowledged, and people have already formed their own opinions based on what happened.

There's a difference between holding a business accountable for poor communication and repeatedly bringing the same issue back into public view after it's already been addressed.

And that's the irony of your position. You're saying you want to discuss the concerns, but by repeatedly doing so, you're ensuring those concerns remain visible to anyone browsing the forum, including people who might otherwise never have come across the original discussion.

I'm not asking you to pretend it never happened, nor am I suggesting anyone should be prevented from discussing it. I'm simply questioning what purpose continuing to resurrect the same discussion actually serves.

You asked me to explain why your points are factually wrong. I haven't said they are. I'm questioning the need to keep making them.

 

[Austeyr]

The initial OP has had his issue resolved and Fubar have given their response. Nothing else of value is being added, it's simply going around and around so I am going to lock the thread.