pathetic. again.

[chuck123wapati]

1 minute ago, JLSleather said:

See, IF a guy was shopping ANYWAY - he might pick out some hides fer the next guy.  Just have em sent right from the store, so there's no "trouble" there.

Only thing is, you'd have to know who's doin' the pickin'.  No offense, but i met some folks who wouldn't recognize a snake if it bit 'em... and maybe shouldn't be pickin' leather   And THAT was the point of the topic from the beginning.  Some folks DONT KNOW what good leather should look like, so the plan was to show 1) what the good stuff looks like and 2) what is unacceptable and you should not tolerate.

In the end, though.. that's a retailer's JOB.   I can't imagine I'd be in business very long if I showed people a picture of a shiny, well-fitted holster and 'fancy smancy" tooled belt, then took their money and sent them .... something other.  Not really somebody ELSE'S job to see that i do mine.  I'm pretty clear.. and I always say I don't mind PAYING premium as long as I'm GETTING premium. 

That's where a more personal partnership would help, yea you cant trust everybody or anybody  but you can trust somebody, its been done for centuries and still today businesses have buyers that handpick Think Japanese fish market just for an example. Its a sensible suggestion and would end your problems. Retailers obviously aren't doing it so have it done by someone you can trust.

[RockyAussie]

7 hours ago, TonySFLDLTHR said:

The stuff from HO is graded before it leaves STL. So, we sell it as what they send it to us as. Hopefully we will have a video showing grading and travel up to HO and have them share how they grade their leather because it is not the same way that import veg gets graded...from what I understand.

 

The pictures posted above do show the rough areas on the neck/shoulder. I will keep and eye out for your return and get it processed through. Also, so we can see the rest of that side, I will grab pictures of it from our photo department to share here.

We try very hard to make sure that we get it right, we are locally owned and have been from the beginning...in fact Kevin is here 6 if not 7 days a week (mostly in leather gathering...to teach our employees there on how to ask the right questions to get the right leathers out). We ship out any where between 300-700 packages a day, that is not to say we get it right every time, but we try. That is why we are so forgiving when we take returns and send labels out so you don't have to pay shipping back.

I'm glad that you reached out so we have a chance to get this order right for you. Seems though this is not the first order you have had that has come to this. So, if you want...we are a closer drive than PA...so come on down and you are more than welcome to hand pick your leathers out.

If anyone needs to express something different further up the line...here is Rusty's email: Rusty@springfieldleather.com

He said he is more than happy to talk with you. SLC was built on making sure we make our customers successful...so to do anything to negate that does nothing for us. 

Seems to me that when you do good business you grow bigger and gotta also get good staff to keep gettin better still. ( that can be hard) Being a paying site sponsor here ( helps keep the lights on) and  a frequent contributor I have to say that having a supplier that is prepared to pay the shipping back if they get it wrong is a very GOOD sign of wanting to get it right.  I have to thank @TonySFLDLTHR for sending me out (For Free) some snaps to try out awhile back and report that they were a lot better than the ones I bought here in Australia in recent times. I guess they can try to apply pressure on the original suppliers to mark the hides better but somewhere down the line them hides gotta go. Being able to go and pick through the best will of course leave the more suspect ones behind.  If I get something crappy I just give em a ring and normally they knock the price way back or tell me to keep it and send me another one if I need it. Sugar catches more flies than vinegar is what I have found. A free banner at the bottom sort of thingy if you get what I mean. As for followers and any influence that that may have, I have a bit more than a couple myself and maybe this may help give some balance perhaps. AS to who I follow ...I do that with a few but only those whose skills I admire and JLS is one of them few.

[JLSleather]

1 hour ago, RockyAussie said:

S to who I follow ...I do that with a few but only those whose skills I admire and JLS is one of them few.

Well let me say thanks for that, with the caveat ...

1 hour ago, RockyAussie said:

but somewhere down the line them hides gotta go. Being able to go and pick through the best will of course leave the more suspect ones behind.  If I get something crappy I just give em a ring and normally they knock the price way back or tell me to keep it and send me another one if I need it.

I  will not tell my customers 'here's some low end, less than what you paid for goods... it all has to move".  If I got it from a supplier that way, that's who I need to take it up with (not the customer). 

This hide free of charge saves them some shipping charges back (which they paid), but doesn't aid me.  There was no part of it i wanted to use, so free doesn't help.  Kinda like being punched in the eye - just cuz it's free doesn't make a guy want another one. 

My issue at the moment is that order WILL go out RIGHT, but it WONT go out ON TIME.  MY FAULT for letting that weight get down to cutting it that close, so I'm gonna bear that.

In the end, I don't mind paying MORE than i pay at HO in  exchange for the storage space and convenience.  But I need the leather to look like that picture of the stuff I get from HO.  I've always been clear about what I want - top shelf stuff ALWAYS.  Pretty simple to just say you don't have that if you don't have that. 

 

5 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

Its a sensible suggestion

It IS a good theory, I'll say that.

[Mark842]

I do regular business with Hide house using their oil tanned and Chrome tanned leathers. They are fantastic people and the leather I get from them is great. Trust me though, don't bother trying their veg tan if HO A quality is what you are after. It's a lot better than what you just received but it won't compare. My main complaint is major fluctuations in thickness. They think when you order a 4/5 that a 4/6.5 is Ok. not to mention you can order the same weight in veg 3 different times and 3 different thicknesses.

[BigSiouxSaddlery]

1 hour ago, Mark842 said:

I do regular business with Hide house using their oil tanned and Chrome tanned leathers. They are fantastic people and the leather I get from them is great. Trust me though, don't bother trying their veg tan if HO A quality is what you are after. It's a lot better than what you just received but it won't compare. My main complaint is major fluctuations in thickness. They think when you order a 4/5 that a 4/6.5 is Ok. not to mention you can order the same weight in veg 3 different times and 3 different thicknesses.

That is exactly the same experience I had with Hide House's Hermann Oak strap.  I think I ordered a 4/5 and got a 6/7.  No matter because I did end up using it all anyway, and it was pretty good stuff.  But I'd did need that 4/5!  My main gripe with Hide House is that it takes forever to get my order.  I know I'm a long way from Cali, but it's 2 or 3 days before they even ship after getting my order.  It's easy a week or ten days from order to delivery with them.  I tried Panhandle last week for the first time ever, because HH was out of silver metallic.  I ordered from Panhandle on Friday, my leather showed up Tuesday morning.  The guy sent me two or 3 sets of pictures on my cell phone because he really wanted to make sure he was sending what I needed.  Pretty good service, I might go back.

[ohio]

Have you tried Goliger leather Company 1-800-423-2329 ?  My last three orders of HO sides were as advertise grade A. Its a premium price but you get what you pay for.  Very friendly people and they have a close relationship with HO so they are able to satisfy there customers. Please give them a call and ask them about HO. 

[RockyAussie]

7 hours ago, JLSleather said:

In the end, I don't mind paying MORE than i pay at HO in  exchange for the storage space and convenience.  But I need the leather to look like that picture of the stuff I get from HO.  I've always been clear about what I want - top shelf stuff ALWAYS.  Pretty simple to just say you don't have that if you don't have that.

Fair enough. I had a look at their new banner thing at the top about HO and that is amazing that you guys can get it even by the square foot or even just the size and shape you need ......and as you see in this picture finding the best ones can be a little tricky.

Here is a link to the story - https://www.springfieldleather.com/hermann-oak

 

[JLSleather]

Well, I don't see those banners.  Musta turned it off good while back. DOn't remember how to put it back, nor care.  But it's a bit hard to see selling me "C" leather at $16/foot as a "favor" even if they'll cut me one foot

Whatever.. apparently works for the 'hobbyist' who is not on a time table and doesn't really give a hoot if it's the good stuff.  Or more likely, doesn't know any better.  My mistake - I find myself frequently attempting to educate those who don't want to know (silly eh?).

2 hours ago, RockyAussie said:

and as you see in this picture finding the best ones can be a little tricky.

While I appreciate humor (really!) that looks like a management issue to me. Well done, that would show 3 piles, all smaller and more manageable.  The piles would have been previously sorted by .. oh, let's say ... the number of defects per square foot (meter if you folks prefer).  We could come up with a name for it.. like in America people might call it "grades" or some such   There'd be no "digging through the pile" because all of that pile would be the right ones plus/minus a mark or two.  Just spitballin' here, clearly.

 

[JLSleather]

5 hours ago, ohio said:

Have you tried Goliger leather Company 1-800-423-2329 ? 

Yeah, now that you mention it. Been a few years, I think his mother was straw boss back then. 

If I remember right, I ended up with a couple sides of "A".. I ordered ONE, and for some reason it went to OR instead of IA... tracking wouldn't even show up for days.  When I called, she sent me another one, told me I could send that first one back at her expense if it showed up. Long story cut, it did show up and it was nice leather, so I just paid for and kept it.  

Downside being, it was $300/side.  That's a 50% markup, which is a bit extreme (HO from HO is right around $200/side).  But, it was clean, firm leather, and GOOD leather at $300 is far better than BAD leather at $225-250.  That's like, we could sell you this perfectly good car, or for $50 less we could sell you this one that doesn't run

But we mostly got leather FROM HO, so didn't need to pay that markup.  For those times we need a piece or two, maybe should contact them again.

[Tugadude]

There comes a time when you just have to accept that your expectations don't and won't match up with reality.  Any supplier, I don't care who, pick one, has had mistakes.  So that is a given.  I've been in the business of construction chemicals my whole career, going on 35 years now.  In that time I have come to learn that you don't judge a person or a company by its failures, but by how they handle them.  In fact, I used to roll my eyes at the rep. from United States Gypsum Company when he said, "We don't have a problem, we have an opportunity."  Yeah, it really got old.  Turns out he was right.  Mistakes are going to happen.  It is important that you deal with them properly.  In doing so, it helps to build loyalty and confidence.  Many of my most "bulletproof" customer relationships were forged in the heat of a massive problem.

However, if you have had problems and they were taken care of and then had similar problems and so on, maybe it is time to punt.  And it works the other way.  I have had to sit down with customers and divorce them.  Literally.  I explained to them that no matter what, it seems that we aren't able to consistently meet their expectations, so we would be cancelling their account.  At then end of the day, having to deal with them was a time waste and unprofitable.  Thankfully I only had to do it a couple of times, but funny thing is, when I did I got phone calls months later telling me that they were facing the same issues with another supplier and that that supplier wasn't as easy to deal with.  And so it goes.

Perhaps that is what is going on here, I don't know.  What I do know is that it would be a shame if folks were to shy away from SLC based upon the experiences of one or even a handful of customers.  If everyone posted their positive experiences (which is rare) this thread would get lost in the shuffle.

Tony has been an active member of this forum.  He is by all accounts a stand-up guy and willing to try to make things right.  His post above is proof of that.  You can't get much better than dealers willing to pay return shipping, no questions asked.  And there is the fact that RockyAussie mentioned.  Springfield Leather Company helps us all by sponsoring this site.  That is worth something.  

However, if they either don't stock the leather you desire or cannot ship an appropriate quality leather in a reasonable amount of time, then like I said, punt.  Try others.  I'll be you find the same issues over time.  If not, great!

In general, I get frustrated when people air complaints.  Especially if they haven't exhausted all remedies with the supplier first.  And even then, rather than post about it, maybe just vote with your wallet instead.  I know that some folks appreciate these kinds of posts because maybe they have been stung too, or maybe they were considering buying from that supplier.  But again, I'd hate to see folks that have never had issues walk away based upon these reviews as being indicative of their usual business practices.  

It is easy to pile on.  After a post, folks begin to regurgitate all of the issues they have had.  Late shipments, wrong color, etc.  Then a few posts later someone will chime in with, "Yeah, but supplier xxx also screwed me over".  

All it means is that nobody is perfect.  

If you are in the market for a Cadillac and the dealership only sells Chevy's, it isn't the fault of the dealer if you aren't satisfied.  So long as they don't claim the Chevy is a Cadillac, right?

Maybe that is the case here, maybe not?  When someone posts a photo of a hide, how are we to know what they ordered?  We don't.  So the information is immediately questionable.  Especially in light of the subsequent post in this thread where someone bought an economy grade from SLC and it was actually better than the hide shown.  Obviously something is wrong.  Something doesn't match up.  

Buy from whomever you want.  But when you do develop a relationship with a dealer, remember that it is a two-way street.  They want your business and you want satisfaction.  Most of the time both can be achieved, a win-win.

In the rare instances where it can't be sorted out, time for a divorce.