Anyone ever use E.Arthur Brown for a custom shop barrel?

I'm trying to get to the bottom of a complete disaster with E. Arthur Brown right now. I ordered two 6.5x47 barrels for myself and a friends Encores. The order was placed at the end of April of 2012, they charged the credit card instantly 200.00 for a deposit, on May 12th the order was processed and the receipt and their website clearly read "Current estimated delivery is 16-20 Weeks"
By mid october I heard nothing from them and had hopes of using the barrel during deer season,..main reason I ordered them so early. Multiple,..and I mean multiple calls and emails went unaswered,..on Oct 11th,..I finally got an email from "Jill" reading

"Due to barrel blanks being delivered to us at a very late date the batch your barrels are in have been delayed. I am afraid the two barrels may not be done by mid Nov. The shop is shooting for getting them all shipped by Christmas. We are very sorry as we estimated the delivery time to be 5 months. We were not able to get the blanks when we wanted as all barrel companies are backlogged. We do have the barrels here now and they are working on quite a few custom barrel orders due to the delay."

Well,..Christmas is here and gone,..I shot them an email after the holiday,...Dec 27th to be exact,...8 days later (understanding the holidays and the gun craze may have slowed things down...but again,..8 days to answer) this is their reply

"The barrels are late, they still are not done. It will be some more time before they are done, possibly 8-12 wks. I am sorry they are late, we are working hard to get this large batch of barrels done.

Thank you,"

If this time frame holds correct,...and I seriously doubt it will,..I'll be waiting over a year for an Encore barrel?? I was just curious if any of you folks have delt with these yahoos before and how would you deal with it at this point. I replied to the last email basically asking for no more emails and a phone call from a manager is expected.

Personally, I would call the credit card company and dispute the charge. They will either produce said barrel or you will have your money back to try again with a different vendor.

I think that you need to make a decision as to whether or not you are willing to wait for your barrel.
Right now you have a contract between you and EAB for the barrel.
When they notified you of the delays, your non-response was, in effect agreeing with them that the delay was acceptable.
If the delay is unacceptable, you should notify them of that fact and cancel your order (before they actually start working on your barrel), making sure you back up any phone calls with written correspondence.

Please remember that once they actually start working on your barrel, they might be less willing to cancel the order and refund your money. I don't know what their policy would be in that situation.

Once you cancel your order in writing, if you don't get a refund on your credit card within a reasonable time, then you should contact the credit card company and dispute the charges.

It seems, from reading the posts on this forum, that a lot of barrel manufacturers are backlogged.
One suggestion that I read was to find out what was in stock and only order only in-stock barrels. Obviously, if no one has your particular desired barrel in stock, that does present a problem.

I hope this all works out for you.

If they didn't start them yet, I would try to get your money back. I ordered a 260 Rem barrel from them years ago the blank was terrible inside and they would do nothing for me(Luck of the draw type thing). I also waited three times the wait I was told. I sold off the barrel and got one from MGM that they had in stock, It cost more but you get what you pay for in terms of Encore barrels, they have those barrels in that caliber ready to go.

http://matchgrademachine.com/home.php?cat=272

This may not help you right now, but I regularly check to see what the custom barrel makers have in overrun barrels. Mc Gowan for instance shows their stock here http://www.mcgowenbarrel.com/onsale.htm and I know that they regularly update that page. Their overrun barrels sell very cheap and they can then be cut to length, profiled and chambered.

The pistol barrels are listed here http://www.mcgowenbarrel.com/catalog6.htm but they clearly state that they do not add the action block, but that is a rather straight forward gun smithing job that you should be able to get done locally.

In most cases, I prefer working directly with the barrel maker to get the barrel itself.

MGM uses Shilen and McGowen blanks, you can't buy a blank and have someone weld on the hinge,ream,crown for the price they charge I've tried that route. Plus then you have two party's involved with one barrel. MGM stand's by their stuff and they are very good.

Yeah.....I'd call 'em and cancel. If they give you "stuff", call your credit card company and tell them you did not receive what you were promised. There will be paperwork to sign, but no big deal. Just sign it, get your $$$ back and move on to a quality barrel maker that will get you your barrel in a timely manner.

I used Bullberry once. I wouldn't recommend that guy to build a chicken coop.

Dave

I sent an email to them last night asking them to cancel the order, refund my money and forward me written proof before the end of the working day on Monday. If not,. I've saved everything they've said over the last 8 months, should make it easy if I have to push the issue. I ordered one from MGM last night,..showed to have the 6.5x47 in stock,..
The thing that gets me is how poorly Eabco is run. Since I ordered the 2 barrels from them, I've ordered 2 from Wilson combat, 1 from Shilen and 1 from White Oak, none of which were in stock,..and I received and used everyone of those with complete satisfaction. How come these other companies can fill orders in a reasonable amount of time?
I understand these are challenging times,..but there's no excuse for pi$$ poor customer service. How on God's green earth can they tell me after waiting 7 months, on Oct 11th the blanks where in, and should be shipped by Christmas,..then the email the other day basically says they have no idea, and it could be possibly 8-12 more weeks? It's mind blowing they can't walk into the shop after this amount of time...see what orders are filled, which aren't and and do the math based on dailey barrel completion....makes sense why so many quality issues have come from their custom shop. I wish I would have looked into them a little harder and gone to MGM 8 months ago.

Ordered a 300-221 ( whisper ) from them a couple of years back. Took a little longer but shoots great. Now my 375 cheytac is a different story, 11 months Bartleen barrel, 11 months suppressor ( make sure barrel is contoured right before nitriding ) 14 months for action.

Your CC will not have any issues with you when you go to dispute the charges. You have all the info.
EAB will have 45 days to respond & if not you will be credited your deposit.
I wont hash my EAB issue, but got my $$ refunded in 4 days when I called my CC & disputed it due to non shipment of item.

I ordered from AEB last spring and items were in stock and in my hands in less than 2 weeks. Sorry about your troubles.