Another year of Boomershoot is set for the weekend of 29 Apr. Another chance for me to recharge the batteries and get away from the city life for a brief period. As usual, I feel like I am about 3 months behind in my preparation cycles and I am not nearly ready.
I have been working over the past year to upgrade portions of my gear, and to show up on top of my game rather than just brushing loose the rust as I tune up on site. Well, I have not made nearly as much progress as I would have liked. I would have preferred more trigger time, at longer ranges. Not too be this time.
One significant thing that I did want to make a change on was my spotting scope. I had “gone cheap” on my first one and it was time to upgrade. Being a frugal shopper (read cheap bastard) I really did not want to drop $1000 or more on a piece of glass. That decision may wind up being the wrong one but time will tell.
So after much due diligence and shopping I narrowed the field down to a view mid-range products and began “shopping” looking for that value that could not be passed up. I hit Gunbroker, and Optics Planet, and Sinclair, and Midway, and Larue, and Amazon, and …. until finally I said hey what about eBay. Sure enough, a lightly used model in my preferred brand with the right Objective lens size, and zoom capability showed up for auction. Taking a chance on it, I entered the auction and bid. Then I was outbid, and I bid again and back and forth over and over until finally the auction ended and there I was the winner.
After few trials and tribulations the scope showed up on my doorstep yesterday morning. I open it up and find a scope, inside a nylon cover with zero packing material around it. No documentation, not even a note from the seller. I open up the cover and much to my surprise (and worst case imaginings) I have two pieces. It seems this scope was severed in half right in the middle of the barrel. It was broken exactly on the mounting ring.
Disappointed, and depressed I jumped on the interwebs and contacted the manufacturer. You see one of the reasons that I was willing to take a chance on this lightly used scope is because Vortex offers a no questions asked lifetime warranty. I explained the situation to the customer service folks and they said, “Send it in, expedite the shipping and we will do everything we can to get a repaired scope back in your hands before you leave for BoomerShoot”.
I had never intended to have to lean on the Vortex warranty. This is actually the fourth Vortex product that I own and I have been quite pleased (obviously) with the value and quality of the products to date. Now, I have presented them with what I believe to be the extreme test case for their warranty program. I am looking forward to what I hope will be a positive outcome.
More to come.