Long time customer of Bud's, with purchases of Smith & Wesson 460XVR, H&K 40, Smith & Wesson M&P40, Rohrbaugh R9S, Taurus Judge, Mosin Nagant and have come to the conclusion that his store is now apparently too big for my business. Several years ago, I went into Bud's store in Paris and was met with rudeness when I asked to see a 3rd gun, the employee said ""sir, we can't let you look at all these guns!"" I looked at my wife and said (so all around could hear), ""Can you believe this guy is treating a customer this way?"" She said she wouldn't buy anything from them and I was glad she said what I was thinking, so we walked out the door. At the door, I stopped and turned and said so that all could hear, ""It's pretty sad when a guy comes to a store with over $1000 in his pocket and he can't even look at a couple of guns to decide which one he'll want."" One of the other guys said, ""Sir, I'll sell you what you want! What do you want to look at?"" I kept walking. Saw Bud at a gun show at Heritage Hall a couple weeks later and told him I had a funny story to tell him. He got a funny look on his face and said, ok... I told him the story and he said he had heard it already and suspected that's what I was going to tell him. He apologized profusely and gave me his cell phone number and said to call him before I come and he would personally show me any gun I wanted to look at. When I went back to the store, Bud was there and made sure I got the best customer service and I made my first purchase at Bud's. You can see that my experience with Bud had a lasting impression and I even patronized the store more than a few more times, for the next few years later. In the last couple of years, though, I couldn't help but notice that Bud's doesn't attend gun shows anymore and, even at the retail store, I've not seen Bud at all. In the last 2 years, whenever I've gone into the store, I've been met with the same 1st time rudeness and the employees seem more intent on stocking new guns on the shelves and answering the phone, rather than graciously accepting money from customers waiting at the counter. I have to wonder if Bud Wells is even affiliated with the store that carries his name, anymore. I still have the cell phone number Bud gave me, but I'm not one to keep giving those chances if I'm not sure he's affiliated with the store anymore. I get an occasional email from Bud's Gun Shop / The Gun Warehouse and even from at least one of his competitors, since one of his former employees appears to work somewhere else and to have taken my email with him or to have sold it to someone else. I won't even get into my having to wait on the phone with the automated service and having it say my call was the next one in line and then it just randomly dropping me to number 3 for 15 more minutes before I gave up and hung up. I couldn't help but notice that on the web site you can now pay an additional member fee to be considered a ""VIP"" - maybe that would have kept my call in first-come-first-served order... Future purchases will be made at Evan's and other local stores who obviously still want local business.
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