Patrol Base

[Andyglaister]

Final update.

Be warned it's long

It should be way longer but I'm going to try to keep it as brief as possible

   A fairly long and detailed email with a link to Negative Airsoft's YouTube video was duly sent to one of Patrol base's director's.

He responded very quickly apologizing for the problems and service I had received from patrol base .

As he was at the time away on business he would instruct his general manager find out what had gone so very wrong with my order, and contact me to explain what had happened and hopefully find a way to resolve the dispute.

The chat with the GM didn't go quite as I expected .I was quite prepared for an argument.

He started off by unreservedly   apologizing and held their hands up to the shocking catalogue of fuck up's lock  stock and barrel.(no pu intended)

They would do basically anything I wanted to put it right ,refund, or if I wanted to keep it they could renumerate me for repairs and inconvenience, I didn't have to decide on the spot so took a couple of days to think it over.

 A couple of days later I decided if they would cover the repairs the gun needed after I received it back from them I would cut my losses and take the refund .I fired of an email with a breakdown of expenditure on the gun and the subsequent repair and postage costs ,

I did add I had considered buying an lct G3 but the £400 price tag for a first gun I deemed too steep and opted instead for the arcturus (oh the irony ) with what I'd spent I could have bought one.

The reply from the GM came a day or so later saying patrol base had just that day taken delivery of lct's entire range and would I like to pick a G3 from the range as a replacement for the arcturus .The cost price of the G3 would be less than the refund but yes I was interested. 

  That's when things went south again .

   The lct's started appearing on the site ...Ak after Ak until after a week one solitary AR G3 (not my cup of tea) appeared, after a few more days with no more G3's on-site I rang patrol base to find out if and when the rest of the range would go on the website,

   I explained I was in contact with the GM and had a gun going back to them for exchange, he didn't know but could ask the GM as he was in the building .He returned saying the GM will ring me back as he wants a chat.

Five days later and no return call ,yet another email is fired off and I get a call from the GM apologizing for not getting in touch sooner ,the entire G3 range was now on line just let him know which one I want and he'd arrange a courier to collect the Arcturus.

Logged on the website and .....nope no G3's checked again later that afternoon and at last all of them had appeared . Promptly emailed my preferred model back to the GM and waited for his response ......to be fair I waited almost another week before I gave up emailed again saying I was no longer interested in an exchange and wanted a refund ,but this time cc'd the director in  ( got a response in minutes) .

The Ak was collected Monday

The refund was issued today.

They got there in the end 

Patrol base

Great website

Good range of gear

Great prices

Comms are a nightmare seriously appalling

 

[Heath]

Ordered 2 guns on the 17th at 11:30 with next day delivery. Called on friday to find out why the order was still showing as 'received' (ready to be fulfilled) and not dispatched and I was told it would arrive by monday, and that they would refund the postage. Apparently the UPS pickup didn't arrive. The order is still showing as 'received' today so I'm going to hazard a guess that it's not going to arrive by monday. 

They were quick enough to take my money, though. 

 

[Heath]

Update: I've had a couple of emails from UPS this morning saying that parcels will be getting delivered tomorrow. I'm assuming that's the guns, but I've had nothing from PB to let me know what's going  on.

 

[Philby21]

They were quick enough to take my money, though.

Not sure what your point is with this comment about an online purchase?

Regardless, it seems that PB is extremely hit and miss.

Online purchases - generally very good, you order, they deliver (subject to courier performance, which is obviously outside of their control), never had an issue with any order I've placed;

In store experience - I hear/read of plenty of people getting poor service from them in person.  I've visited them and found they were really friendly and helpful, a friend of mine has had several guns from them and never had an issue when visiting either;

Repairs - no experience personally but they repaired said friend's ASG Scorpion without any problems apart from it taking a few weeks but they'd warned him that they had quite a few other jobs in so this was expected.

It sounds to me like what service you get and how things go very much depends on what day it is or who you deal with and basically just demonstrates a general lack of professionalism, makes me suspect that the owners/directors (whatever they call themselves) perhaps aren't as "hands on" as they should be to keep an eye on what's going on.

 

[Heath]

Not sure what your point is with this comment about an online purchase?

It wasn't meant to be about the transaction speed, it was a comment about how it feels like they're happy for people to spend money but their service from that point on has room for improvement. If I hadn't chased it up I'd be in the dark over what was going on. I feel like if you're spending a few hundred on anything, especially with quick delivery, it's good to know what's going on/why things are delayed. 

 

[Heath]

Another update. The trigger was catching when pulling it back on full auto. Returned to PB and they're sending out a replacement. They've checked the original one over and said that it may ease up over time, and there's no guarantee another will be ok, but they're happy to replace it anyway. They received it yesterday and called today having checked it over, so the service on that front has been pretty good.

 

[Han5gruber]

I visited their shop before as I wanted to try on some plate carriers before purchasing. The experience was awful. 

The staff really don't give a shit about customers and are quite abrupt and even rude when answering queries. 

I asked about a particular plate carrier in multicam as there was one in olive in the store. The guy behind the counter told me that all same items are kept on the same peg and if it's not there they don't have them in and it's too late (4pm) to check the warehouse. He was not impressed when I pointed out that the same vest was dotted around the shop in tan, black, olive and cam. He cut off the conversation and walked to the other end of the counter. 

In contrast I visited Urban Airsoft the same day, the young lad on the counter dug through 3 rows of plate carriers, check online and asked his manager about stock of the specific vest in melticam. Much bigger, better store but with a terrible website. The complete opposite of patrol base. 

Safe to say I'll never shop at patrol base again and have advised friends to do the same. 

 

[sonofsammo]

1.  The staff really don't give a shit about customers and are quite abrupt and even rude when answering queries. 

2.  I asked about a particular plate carrier in multicam as there was one in olive in the store. The guy behind the counter told me that all same items are kept on the same peg and if it's not there they don't have them in and it's too late (4pm) to check the warehouse. 

1.  I've dealt with PB a lot, so I think to say that all the staff don't give a shit based on your dealings with one member of staff is somewhat unfair.  Some of their staff are truly awesome and deliver excellent customer service.
 

2.  They seem to have been a bit dim in the way they presented it to you, from what you have said.  Their warehouse is not on the same site as the shop. It's on the other side of town, afaik. So what he should have said was - I can't get it here before we close, but I can check our stock system to see if we have one. Although, that being said, their stock system is famous for being a little on the inaccurate side.

I've dealt with Urban a fair bit as well - and again, it depends on who you get as to the experience you have. Some of the staff there are awesome too...

 

[dycha]

My experience with PB is great. I ordered some replacement parts but UPS delivered me ZARA shirt instead hopup. label with my address details from my parcel sticked to somebody's package and my wife did not realize it when collected. So my parcel without any sticker disappeared and UPS just been focused on collection of that mistaken parcel from me. PG started their investigation about parcel but in the same time they sent my order again. It is great for me because I will not miss closest shooting. It was really quick and professional action. 

 

[CombatVVombat]

I ordered a Tokyo Marui HK45 from them on the 24th Jan, and it arrived on the 28th,  however the slide lock didn't work properly. I contacted them on the 29th and had a shipping labe emailed to me. It was sent back on the 29th Jan, and arrived on the 31st. They checked the gun over, said that they were having the same issue, and offered 3 solutions.

1) 'Service'* and lube the same gun up and send it back

2) 'Service'* and lube a new gun and send it back (with the caveat that the issue may be found on the new gun)

3) A full refund, for the gun and the used mags. 

So far, so good. 

I was pretty set on the HK45, so I went with option 2. It was the 4th Feb by the time we had emailed back and forth discussing the issues and options, and the replacement arrived on the 6th. 

Upon checking the pistol over, not only was the problem replicated, but they had sent the exact same pistol back to me. The packaging was also damaged inside, so either it was damaged in transport (the externals were ok), or it wasn't too carefully looked after during the return process.  I emailed them and asked why this was the case, as from the conversations we had the agreement was to get a new pistol. They claimed that it was a fluke, and that they had just picked a new pistol off the shelf, 'serviced'* and lubed it, and sent it off. So that gives the impression that products that are known to have been used and found faulty are sat in the same area as brand new products, and that there is no differentiation between them. If this is to be believed, the brand new gun that you are ordering could in fact be one that has been RMA'd. The other alternative is that they had hoped I wouldn't have noticed it was the same one. 

After a brief discussion I asked that I get a full refund on the gun and the magazines, so I can't fault them at all on that front, although I do worry that somebody will end up purchasing the troublesome TM and some used mags. 

All in all, a mixed bag. Comms and the return process was good, but other things have left me reluctant to buy any guns from them in the future. 

 

[Cromulon1994]

I visited the shop last Saturday. 

It used to be great about 3 or 4 years ago, when ratty was there along with a few others who knew their stuff. Customer service was also decent, I had a lemon of a mac 11 which was sorted immediately in store. They had a good grip on stock and had pretty much anything you wanted. 

Saturday I wanted to buy a spas 12, yes it's only a 50 quid gun but I literally wanted to pick it up on the way through from Darlington to Stoke. I waited, probably around 15 minutes, enough to start feeling awkward, people working there just ignored me, hiding in the back rooms. Tried to ask someone who was mincing around in the back room, who sort of mumbled and walked off. I was with Gemma who said "let's go, get it elsewhere" 

Love their little cqb site Halo Mill but the shop is awful. 

 

[Hedzshot]

I spent a great deal of money with Patrol Base when I started airsoft. It would have been a great deal more had they been able to get the srs a1 ( which on first contact they said they could source ). The order was split despite being told stock was there. Which was a ball ache as I was playing that weekend - which they knew.  The scope came a few days later, but the wrong one. They were fuckin terrible about getting it back and replacing it, so I thought I’d cut my losses and make do until I could get my hands on a Vortex.

Setting up the incorrect scope I found that it would not sit on the rail flat. It has a fixed base rather than turrets. So the cross hairs are pissed, like leaning tower of Pisa pissed. 
At this point I received an email from them saying they had got my scope back - it had gone out on an incorrect delivery. First thought was, that’s cool someone could have quietly kept a new scope but had the integrity to return it. Further on in the email I was asked if I wanted a refund or if they should send it out. Again I could have said yeah send it out / refund me but I replied I had received a scope all be it the wrong one.  So I called them up. Went through the boring story of what had happened AND that the scope was as useful as a chocolate tea pot, but also that they may want to check the other scopes they still had to see if this was an issue with the batch / all of them.  They couldn’t have given less of a shit, they had my money, I had ‘something’ to show for it. They weren’t going to do anything about my scope or any of the same scopes that they are still selling.
 

The rest of our kit was bought from Surplus store, about 1500 quids worth - ( a mate bought his ML G spec vsr, I grabbed my srs from them too )  and although their website runs on 2 anorexic hamsters, they couldn’t have done enough to get our kit out, answer questions and generally just be stand up fellas. The difference between the 2 is vast. Patrol Base cut their nose off to spite their face and missed out on what has been and will continue to be a lot of money. 

TLDR; Patrol Base are pony

 

[Noobmaster69]

Guys anyone used site called patrol base? Seems like they got some good stuff on atm!

 

[E21A]

https://airsoft-forums.uk/search/

 

[sonofsammo]

If any of it's in stock

 ????

 

[AlphaBear]

To be fair they are good, well from my experience they have been good... ! But their stock does seem to move fast!

 

[MiK]

Pre-lockdown next day delivery was bang on and everything was in good order - Super helpful in the phone and pleasant with it.

In-lockdown delivery is 5-ish+ days - I ordered a MK23 & a few bits on Wednesday and the delivery “should” be Monday 25th (crossed fingers).

 

[Weeman]

I’ve found them to be the best I’ve used pre lock down always fast and on the ball when it’s a large order 

 

[leadly]

I've used them quite a bit recently and have never had any issues. Everyone comes well packaged as well!!

 

[L3wisD]

Guys anyone used site called patrol base? Seems like they got some good stuff on atm!

Hello mate,

I've merged your topic with the existing one. 

There's lots of existing posts about Patrolbase, so hopefully this helps.

Cheers,

Lewis