On a whim yesterday I called the guys that sold me

the Combat Laptop and explained what happened. I was promptly floored. They told me to send it back to them and they would replace the hard drive for little more than the cost of shipping.


That ain’t a bad deal in this day and age and as soon as I can get ashore I’m going to stuff it into a box and shoot it off to them. There are not really a whole lot of people out there that would do that for an old surplus rig like that.

I attribute their willingness to do this for me to the fact that I dealt with them with no indignation or anger and because I had reasonable expectations.

First of all, I bought the rig pretty much with no guarantee other than it would not be dead on arrival and therefore had no leg to stand on. I didn’t call them up a-spittin’ and a fumin’ and ranting and raving. I simply called them up and told them what happened and asked them if they happened to have another hard drive for the rig in stock.

I also told them that I was not holding them responsible because I knew it was a surplus rig to begin with.

I simply wanted to buy the necessary parts and information necessary to repair the little rig.

Then on a whim I asked him how much he wanted to repair it and he quoted me a price that was little more than the cost of shipping. You can’t beat that.

I’d have to buy the parts AND snag an operating system disc to get this going and then download a slew of drivers and on and on. It would probably take me a day if I was lucky.

Of course, he has all of the tools so he can do the job in a few minutes.

Needless to say I have not even sent the combat laptop in yet so I really do not know how this is going to work out but as of now it looks like the old warrior is going to be back on line soon.

I’ll keep you guys posted on how this works out and after it is all said and done with I’ll write a little review on how this worked out.

If it works out you can bet that I will name the company and recommend them highly as good people to do business with.

It is the least I can do if they treat me as well as I think they will.

I’ll keep you posted.

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Several years ago I bought an AR-15 rifle set up in a National Match Service rifle. When I first got the rifle it shot dime-sized groups at 100 yards but after a little more than 1000 rounds the groups opened up. I also noticed that the float tube was not concentric with the barrel as it was when it was new.

I had expected to get between 3500 and 5000 rounds before the groups started to open up which is about the norm for the type of barrel I had purchased.

I also noticed that the float tube was well out of concentricity.

Now I was aware of the fact that many rifles are sent back to the factory simply because the owner can’t shoot straight so I handed it off to a Master class shooter who confirmed that the rifle was not up to snuff.

I sent the company a letter along with the rifle telling them that I was having problems with it and shortly after got a phone call from the company problem solver.

I confessed that I had altered the trigger and had shot little but handloads out of the rifle. Both of these voided the guarantee of course, but he didn’t try and pull the cheap shot and bail out of his responsibilities based on that because neither of those had anything to do with a faulty float tube or a shot-out prematurely barrel.

I was forthright and honest and he decided to look into my problem because it seemed legitimate.

I had also done MY homework in that I had gotten a box of Black Hills Match ammunition, which is an industry standard of sorts and handed the rifle off to a Master to shoot to back my claims up.

I also didn’t have unrealistic expectations from a commercially made rifle, either. I did not expect it to shoot as well as a hand-fitted custom rifle because it wasn’t. It was a factory made job and when I got it back everything was up to snuff.

In fact it was more than I had bargained for as they had taken the liberty to install many of the new modifications that came with hand fitted custom rifles along with a letter explaining that they had since improved their products.

The rifle shot as well as many custom jobs and stayed in tune until the barrel wore out after about 5000 rounds.

I attribute this to making it easy for them, being pleasant and simply not being an indignant jerk and expecting too much.

It is surprising what you can get by simply being patient with people and giving them the opportunity to do the right thing.

While there is certainly no shortage of jerks out there who would rather cheat someone out of a quarter than make an honest dollar, there are a lot more people out there that are willing to bust their ass to do the right thing if you approach them decently.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/