What follows is my experience with AIRSOFTSMITH.COM. If you don't want to read the whole thing I'll give you the gist now. AIRSOFTSMITH.COM are a high quality establishment who will treat you with respect, communicate with you in a timely manner and ship your package out so fast you won't believe it's humanly possible. Their customer service is spot on and I highly recommend them to any one in the continental US. What follows are the details you may as well read now (or get coffee and then read, it's long).
After my awful, dreadful, terrible experience with airsplat.com over the last three weeks I decided it was time to treat myself. a few Months ago my plan was to research and purchase the 'best' of the budget M-4's that are out now, get it in the mail and paint it camo to cover up the bad finish, cheap plastic... and to make it CAMO for my SF loadout! well I ended up deciding on the SRC since it was the least 'futuristic' of the m4 bunch (by that I mean it had the old style collapsable stock and no RIS rails or anything). I ordered one late on a saturday night and have regretted it ever since....
To make a long story short ( you will find this statement funny when you realize how long this post is) I never got the SRC, I did however, get to see first hand how bad the WELL R6 looks and feels and I had a long distance screaming match with a man I've never met (so embarrassing).
After all that nonsense, I was wounded. I was nervous. I looked through page after page of wretched and dated HTML code uploaded from all over the grid, Hong kong, New Jersey, California. Everyone has the same guns, roob. Everyones prices are similar, roob. How can you trust these websites?? I pictured the makers of the primitive websites, unclean people with decaying teeth, checking their rickety websites for barely secured orders on a decaying laptop behind the fleamarket stall they call home 4 nights a week. They giggle and grunt when a order comes in, and cram the first box of counterfeit plastic they can reach into the mail with your name on it.
It was Atilla who reminded me that fleamarkets sometimes have the most knowledgable people when it comes to airsoft, you just have to be smart about who you listen to.
So F- it I said to myself. Am I going to search for the rest of my life looking for one of these 'bargain AEGs' from some "we pass the savings on to you!" website? forget it. I got burned trying to do that last time. I decided this time I would just do it right. I would get the RIGHT gun and I would find the RIGHT website to buy it from.
The first question was easily answered. The right gun was the Tokyo Marui M733. The reason I wanted those M4's in the first place was so I could effectively make one look as much like an m733 as I could anyway. So If Im going to go to all the trouble... I might as well get my time and moneys worth. I might as well get the real thing. But where to buy it? Tokyo Marui dealers are a dime a dozen on the internet. So I started sending emails.
I asked questions like " how are the trade marks on your TM guns obscured?" (something I have never had to consider with budget guns)
I asked questions like " Do you have the M733 in stock?" (just because it says its in stock on the websites doesn't always mean it is)
I asked some other questions as well, and I was very intrested in all the answers, but what I was more intrested in was how fast they got back to me, and the manner in which they answered (good english, doesn't look like a form letter, doesn't give out misinformation... ect). I started sending my emails all over the net, to the sites I had found with the M733 on offer. This was saturday night about 6:00 (EST). Before I had finished sending every email, I received a response from somone... On saturday night?
That response was from a very polite and knowledgable airsoftsmith named PAUL CROSS. He told me everything I wanted to know and responded to my questions within a few hours over email. Before I went to bed I ordered the gun I had always wanted from Paul's company AIRSOFTSMITH.COM (as advertised on ASR). Their website is easy to navigate and done in a tasteful color palette. Prices are not the cheapest on the web but, they are also not in Hong Kong or Korea and you wont have to pay those kind of shipping prices, you wont have to worry about anyone soldering off the trademarks to get it in to the country, you won't have to wait for customs to play with in their office for a week, you wont have to worry about them shipping you a WELL R6 they thought you'd like better.
When I got up on Sunday morning (about 1:00 PM EST) I checked my mail and to my surprise, another two emails from AIRSOFTSMITH.COM! one was the automated one telling me my payment went through. the other was Paul Cross, he was writing to tell me my order had been packed and was ready to ship out Monday morning!
Thursday afternoon it was at my door. It was well packed. Inside the box the gun was better than I expected. the trademarks were covered with skateboard grip tape which was easily removed. The black metal flashhider was in there too. O the invoice there was a hand written letter thanking me for my order.
This is the experience you want when you are getting a product over the internet sight unseen. It came faster than I expected, they answered even my silliest question within hours, (once in minutes) and the condition of the gun was even better than I anticipated. I will definately order from them again and I definately recommend them.
My review of the M733 and its conversion to an m635 is coming soon, THANKS AIRSOFTSMITH.COM.
ROOB
