Haha, not surprising that Olympic is declining participation. They must hate this chart more than anyone.
Official and complete Olympic Arms reply, and all they officially authorize me to include.
“For more details Olympic Arms welcomes all inquiries made directly to the manufacturer at 800-228-3471”.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone decided to become legalese-ally hostile regarding this issue. It’s unfortunate that some people want to play that way, but understandable given the source.
The way I read the situation is that some would rather be in control of how they spin their answers than be confronted with having to clearly state yes or no. They would not even entertain looking at the questionnaire in any way shape or form.
As Pat Rogers says “those not required to hold to a standard, rarely do”.
It almost as if the breakdown of the original chart roughly correlates to there mfg responses to rev 2–those with “good quality” (as a rough approximation) seem to be more than happy to reply to information and those with “sub quality” seem to want to give the run around.
In retrospect I shouldn’t have expected anything different.
Now, for example, one manufacturer is even “requiring” that I remove all mention of them from the old Chart.
it really was only a matter of time.
Hopefully people will take the time to read the EofF, and the new expanded EofF when it’s released, and educate themselves to the point that they can ask the hard questions and sniff the answers they get when they call the manufacturers directly. That way when they ask “are your barrels all MPI?” and the answer they get is “yes, our raw barrel steel is MPI” they will understand that this is meaningless and be able to ask about how one would go about HPT-ing the raw steel… :blink:
Can they even really do that? Chuck you Farley comes to mind…:big_boss:
He could always remove them from the chart and add them to a list instead. :big_boss:
How legitimate is their legal “requirement”. Wouldn’t this be like IBM telling a reporter what they may publish or “else”.
I agree - CHUCK YOU FARLEY!
For the time being I am content to honor their request as I think it says a lot in and of itself.
That’s a wise decision. Depending on the position of their legal team they could claim libel and sue for damages if provoked. Of course they will need to submit evidence on why the information on the chart is false and how it caused damages, like lost sales. They may never be able to prove this but I’m assuming the company has deeper pockets than you, meaning they can afford an expensive lawsuit even if they lose.
That’s also food for thought regarding Smith and Wesson. Their marketing and legal teams are weighing the risks of giving out additional information regarding their products. Not so much in the sense of libel but how much risk would they be in if their product failed injuring someone and that person’s attorney used the chart to the cause of the failure and sue for damages. The attorney would most likely take the stance that Smith is knowingly negligent in poor manufacturing techniques leading to an unsafe product. Smith cannot deny their manufacturing techniques since they gave the information to you. Again this could easily be solved by increasing their quality processes which will increase the manufacturing costs of the product. This is where marketing comes in. Marketing will evaluate the equity of their brand and whether they can withstand price increases.
Sorry for the rambling but I wanted to give another perspective regarding a company’s participation in the chart.
Its sad that a company will doesn’t want their specs speak for themselves.
Well there is something to be said for the liability side.
Apparently in Texas, they now destroy your handgun shooting test and record only pass/fail as an incident related to a shoot came down to the shooter’s score on the CHL test. Never underestimate the power of lawyers.
Not saying I agree, just saying I understand…
But as a counter-punch if people start buying exclusively from those that release their specs, it will encourage some of the lawyer-phobic to come around when it hurts their bottom line.
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I read that with S&W will “substitute” parts, if their inhouse parts become hard to get. It was from some poster on this Forum saying how he toured the S&W factory and asked them if they had “two lines” - LE and civilian. They responded that normally they do not BUT if parts get hard to come by, to meet the demands, they do substitute parts on the civilian models.
I can see that S&W’s policy could make answering Rob’s Yes/No questions a little difficult.
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I completely agree with you. Having dealt with corporate attorneys I can tell you that their first concern is to protect the company from lawsuits regardless of how that affects sales. To do that they have control over any information released and normally the deeper the company’s pockets, the more paranoid the attorneys.
I love the chart as it’s a nonbiased and factual comparison manufacturing processes and controls. It helps inform the consumer to make a decision and it can also reinforce consumer decisions after the purchase. As a marketer myself, I see great potential in the chart as it can also be used to level the playing field for newer entrants or smaller businesses.
That kind of thing really torques me off. My company makes both military and commercial parts. We don’t get to pick and choose which specs we want to follow if we’re having trouble. Every part is built to the same specifications only the designs are different. Why firearm companies get away with this is beyond me
We should all call them and ask all the questions on the chart! The simple fact they refuse to answer means they know their stuff is not up to standards.
I think before we get carried away with this line of discussion someone needs to verify that this is the case with S&W.
Not to keep bashing them, but i was just reading DPMS’s post on TOS, and have to laugh a little at the line; "Our 5.56 NATO Stainless barrels are available in 1x8 or 1x9 twist. The barrel markings should indicate whether it is chrome-lined or not. "
I mean why would you offer crome lined SS barrels, and they do not… this alone makes me wonder how truthful a company like this can be.
Here’s an interesting profile on Sionics:
http://vuurwapenblog.com/2010/10/17/sionics-sar-15/
It sounds like they get a large portion of the critical components from Daniel Defense.
FWIW, I got an email from SIONICS today saying that they no longer source any of their parts from DD. I guess he read the thread discussing same over on TOS.