Well after seeing a post about another bad vender (on another site), I thought it was about time we let everyone know about our experience with Griffon Model.

Normally, we don't like to get involved in these types of discussions but we have no other recourse. Sometimes public shaming works.....

First, some back ground information. I am the owner of The Barrel Store and we deal with lots of different suppliers around the world. We (meaning me)try to stock a variety of interesting and useful after market items that are not always available to everyone everywhere. We have a very good relationship with all of our suppliers but occasionally hiccups occur and we have worked through them with every one except Griffon. Repeated e-mails and faxes get minimal attention and after almost 1 year of delay enough is enough.

Back in February 2012, we placed a restock order for the Griffon items we had listed on our site plus additional items we would be carrying. By mid March, we received a response acknowledging our order and an apology for the delay because Griffon had been busy preparing new items for release. Not a problem, totally understandable!

The end of March we received their invoice and payment instructions for wire transfer of the funds. We had this account set up already with our bank so it was not an issue. It is standard business practice for some suppliers to be paid this way and we had ordered from them before. The payment was wired to them March 31, 2012.

On April 1, we received notice that the items were shipped to us along with a tracking number. So now, we waited for the items to arrive. 4-6 weeks is common for shipments of this size to come from the Pacific rim.

At the start of June, we were starting to get a little concerned about the shipment. Follow up with the tracking number revealed that the items arrived in Canada April 8 but they were refused by Canadian Customs because of improper documentation and returned to Griffin Model on April 15. Subsequent e-mails went unanswered.

Finally in November 2012, we received an e-mail from Griffon stating that they had transferred their e-mail server in June and were having issues with it. Apparently, they had not received any of our e-mails as they ended up in their Spam folder. The owner of the company apologized again and would look into the situation. We asked for a refund as we never received the package and the owner replied that it would not be a problem.

This is where the trail goes cold....No package, No refund,....Nothing. No response even after acknowledging the problem!

We have all of the e-mails and tracking information to prove our claim. Now as part of our e-mails, we stated that we would go public with this information if it was not resolved. Unfortunately, we have come to that bridge and are now crossing it.

So, because of this vendor acting in bad faith, we are posting this for public knowledge. We have decided to drop the line and not support them any more. We urge you to take this into consideration next time you buy any items from Griffon Model. We have noticed that other Vendors had carried the line but seem to have dropped them as well. We wonder if this is a recurring problem?

Being a small business, this does hurt the bottom line. We will absorb the loss and move on from here.

Sorry for being a little long winded....but we had to vent.

Ed Kubiak