Looking at the Vandal Long and the Venatic in .300 WM. Which do you prefer, and why? This would be a hunting rifle, not a target rifle.

I handled a Vandal Long yesterday and I really liked it. Almost couldn’t give it back to the store. If it had a 20” barrel instead of 24” it would be in my house.

I had an interest in a Horizon rifle. Such that I emailed them to verify that they'd be at DSC this year. Then I sought them out and visited them at DSC.

One - no response to my email. Two - at DSC they couldn't seem less interested in talking to me.

I guess sales are so great that they don't need to bother. No problem, good for them. I'm just one sale. Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt they build a great rifle. But if I'm not worth even a boilerplate email response or [obligatory] sales pitch they are worthless to me. I don't care about whatever THF - Horizon circle jerk there may be.

Yeah, I agree.

I think Derek answers all the emails himself and he is a busy guy. I don’t know him nor have I met him in person but when I had email correspondence with him it took several days for replies. From what I can tell they are good people they are just dealing with growing pains from the rapid success of their products.

IMO, he is making a bad mistake. I’m an ex business owner. Now retired. If a customer or even potential customer wanted to talk to me, I’m all ears.

Why? Because they sign the front of the check and I sign the back. If they wot talk to me before the sale, they damn sure won’t after they have my money.

Customer service is part of my advertising budget.

All that may be true, but displaying a total lack of interest when a potential customer stands before them FTF at a show, where the idea is to exercise a rapport with customers, does not give one the warm-and-fuzzies. I'd walk away too.

Yes.

If you have so much work, you cannot take on anymore, then don't show up at a convention trying to drum up more work. My Dad told me "when you are good people will wait on you". Just be honest. Sir, I'd be happy to take on your project, but just to let you know we we are a year backed up. Or whatever the time-line is.

Yep, I'll wait for quality. A problem I see is when someone says, your on the schedule but there's a XX week lead time, then that time is doubled or more. If you have no idea, just say that. If you're that unorganized, it can lose you repeat customers. I wish Horizon all the best, but this thread will not be soon forgotten. It takes a long time to build a reputation and seconds to lose it.

I know Derrick is at SHOT .
I also know that the office manager has been out with Covid and I they are trying to hire additional staff to keep up with growth.
BUT still this shouldn’t happen.
Here is Derrick’s email I would reach out and knowing the person he is you will get a response.

derrick@horizonfirearms.com

I appreciate y’all sharing your concerns and frustrations. Yes, we have experienced some serious growth recently, but isn’t an excuse for poor customer service. I would like to try and get to the bottom of this, because even though I don’t answer every email or take every phone call anymore, how our customers (and potential customers) are treated is very important to me.

What day were you at DSC? I personally went on Saturday, I would like to narrow down who you were working with so we can handle that internally.

How did you try to contact us? We do monitor all of the sales emails and what we are seeing is that everything has been taken care of / answered. We have a brand new website so if you tried to reach out through that, I’m wondering if a form is broken that we need to look into.

Did you call the shop? If you did, can you PM us our phone number so we can check our call logs.

And just so y’all have a little bit of context, we currently only have 2 people that are on the phones. We are working on hiring 2 more, but right now their average call log is more than 70 calls a day EACH. And we have been having issues with our phone systems so much that we are actually switching to a new on before the end of the month. The new system will allow us to receive texts, voicemail notifications, and call logs directly to our cell phones.

I would also ask to anyone having these issues with Horizon, please email and let me know. I can’t guarantee I will be the person that will handle it, but I will at least get you pointed in the right direction.

Again, I appreciate y’alls patience as we work through this.

Derrick, I appreciate the response, thank you. I will respond privately and then you are free to publicly share whatever you want from the discussion as a follow-up to this thread.

Syncerus, I apologize for completely derailing your thread; hopefully it doesn't dissuade your interest because no matter what I believe they build solids products.

this is why there is a year wait for most custom builds.

No, this doesn’t have anything to do with that. Matter of fact, at this point Derrick controls almost all his own lead times and I bet could get you a new rifle much faster than a year.

Why there is a year wait on custom builds have more to do with parts and their associated lead times. Gunsmiths have to plan (if they are good and there are a lot of good ones in Texas) 4-6 months out because that’s minimum what stocks and barrels are taking right now and that’s better than where the industry has been. You want to not whine about build times…get all your parts rounded up and take them to your gunsmith. I don’t know any who are running much longer than 8-12 weeks if you do it this way. Many almost prefer this because they don’t make near enough on parts to warrant the headache from guys like you that think it’s them holding up their build.

^^^ that’s all serious…for my kick Buzz in the grapes parting shot

There aren’t many gunsmiths willing to sit years on a gay [censored] white stock waiting for that one old man to come in and buy it to match their velcro tennis shoes and sunglasses.

So far, this is the quote of the year!

That's my dawg!

I got what I needed out of this thread. Thank you to everyone who participated especially Derrick.

I met with Horizon at DSC on Friday, went up in their fancy trailer to discuss building at 22 Creedmoor for my daughter, gave them barrel type, length, thread, stock, trigger, and bottom metal I wanted they entered all my information in the computer...name, address, phone number said they would be in touch after the show. Ballpark $5,000 build. Never heard a word.

Business must indeed be good.

Derrick was spot on CS and timelines when he built my gun, and accuracy exceeded his guarantee . All I can add.

I worked with Derrick to fix a stock for me a couple years ago that somebody else royally screwed up. Not only was he awesome and reasonable, he brought the stock to Dallas personally so I could pick it up from him at DSC and ran it out to me so I didn’t have to pay for a ticket since I didn’t have time to enjoy the show. That was a decade ago, and I’m sure they have grown like crazy since then, but it made an impact.