Shellback Tactical’s Blowout Deals page always has some great deals on it but they have taken it up a notch by adding a ton of Outdoor Research gear. It is rare to see OR gear marked down at all, so be sure to check out the sale at ShellbacTactical.com.
Here is a little free advice from all of us consumers out here – If you don’t plan on replying to emails, don’t post an email address.
I correspond with a ton of gear makers and sellers on a daily basis. Some of this is accomplished on the phone, but most is accomplished via email. Like many people with money to spend, I work a normal work week which happens to take place during normal business hours. My work hours are basically the same as many retailers business hours so I can’t always place a phone call and email is very convenient. I suspect this is true for a lot of people.
There are few things that are a bigger turn off to a potential customer than sending an email to an email address like customerservice@joestacticalwidgets.com or info@billybobsnylongear.net only to find that they never receive a response. This certainly can’t be considered providing customer service or info. It is the very definition of a blown first impression.
I understand what it is like to be buried in email. I understand that it may take a few days to respond. However, if you aren’t going to respond at all, just remove your email address from your website or delete your contact form. You will save us all a lot of time.
The good news is that most gear makers and retailers in the industry are great about returning emails. Everyone of the advertisers you see on the right side of your screen are happy to answer questions and generally respond very quickly. Many of them even answer emails long into the night.
So again, if you won’t respond to emails, don’t publish your email address. I would rather not waste my time and the lack of an email address will be a great clue about your lack of customer service.
Jon and I are really very blessed that all you Trigger Jerks out there take time to read what we write. Jerking the Trigger has provided us some great opportunities and the chance to meet some great people. I thought it might be a good idea to take a minute and tell you a little more about what we do here at JTT and how we go about doing it. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, just read the bold parts.
JTT has always been and will continue to be a predominantly gear focused blog. We like gear and we like talking about it. More than that, we like helping the people who make the gear. We also believe that training and mindset are extremely important (gear can not replace either) and so, from time to time, we post about those topics too.
The driving factor for starting this blog was to shine a light on small businesses, manufacturers, and anyone else who is really innovating in this industry. We have always been here to support these ventures and the products that they produce. In our time with JTT, we have helped uncover new companies, we have hooked up manufacturers with customers, we have hooked up manufacturers with dealers, and whatever else we could do to support the mission.
JTT requires money to keep doing what it does. To supply this money, we have advertisers and take part in some affiliate programs. We typically refer to advertisers as partners because we don’t let anyone advertise with us who we don’t trust with your money. We have turned advertisers down before. We have even refunded an advertisers money in full when there was even the slightest question about their business practices, even though I myself would continue to buy their products in a heart beat. We like to talk about our partners because we owe it to them. After all, they do keep the lights on. Jon and I both have regular jobs. We don’t even come close to making a living from this blog. We love doing this, but if this was about an hourly wage, we would have folded up shop a long time ago.
One of the perks of doing this is that, occasionally, someone will send us some gear to review. Sometimes we get to keep that gear and sometimes we don’t. We have never asked for free gear (unless you count a handful of times when someone contacted us and asked us to choose something that they make to review) and we have never lacked for offers to receive review items. We have turned down a lot of gear that we didn’t think was of good quality, sound design, or worthwhile. We try to remain as objective as we can but we do acknowledge that bias is always possible even if we are sinking our own time and money into reviews of “free” items. That is why we disclose who provided us the product and that we didn’t pay for it. If you don’t see a disclosure in a post that is denoted as a review, it means we bought the item.
Whenever you see a post that is titled something like “Review: Super Duper Tactical Widget,” it means that we are reviewing the item – we have spent time using it with the purpose of getting to know it well enough to form opinions about it. If you don’t see “Review:“, it is a news item (kind of like a press release) which means that we may or may not have experience with the product that we are writing about. We try to use language that indicates that we don’t have hands on experience with it.
No one pays for reviews on JTT. Any time we mention a product on JTT it is because that product interests us. We do not charge per mention.
I hope you now have a better idea of what JTT does and how it operates. If you have any questions, feel free to use the contact form. We love to hear from you guys! Thanks for trusting us with your time. It means a lot to us and we take it seriously.
Tactical Distributors is now offering a 10% discount to all you Trigger Jerks out there. If you haven’t checked out their website yet, this is the perfect time to drop in and view their wide variety of tactical, outdoor, and survival gear.
Just use the discount code JTT10 at check out. There are some restrictions on products and the promo cannot be used with another offer. Sometimes, it pays to be a Trigger Jerk.
Check out TacticalDistributors.com!
SAVANNAH, GA—July 12, 2012—Blue Force Gear® introduces MOLLEminus: MOLLE minus the weight, MOLLE minus the bulk, MOLLE minus the complexity. MOLLEminus is the thinnest, strongest, lightest modular load carriage standard on the market: half the thickness of a dime, over 4 times as abrasion resistant as air textured nylon and formed from a single piece of Blue Force Gear’s proprietary ULTRAcomp™.
“After working with ULTRAcomp for several months we realized there were a lot of benefits to be had by using it for the substrate of the MOLLE compatible platform, as well as the pouch backers,” said Stephen Hilliard, Blue Force Gear’s Director of Product Development.
Fully backward compatible with legacy MOLLE, MOLLEminus supports existing MOLLE and PALS compatible pouches including Blue Force Gear’s revolutionary Helium Whisper™ Attachment System. MOLLEminus plus Helium Whisper pouches provide the versatility of modular load carriage with less weight and bulk than sewn options.
RACKminus™ is the first MOLLEminus product that Blue Force Gear will unveil at the 2012 ADS Warrior Expo East. RACKminus is the simplest modular chest rig on the market and it weighs in at half the weight of a loaded M4 magazine. RACKminus can be mounted to most MOLLE armor carriers using two female repair buckles and two tee mounts. MOLLEminus mesh lined shoulder straps are free breathing, MOLLE compatible and provide routing for communications wires, hydration tubes or antennas.
Check it out on BlueForceGear.com. JTT will update when more details are available.
