Over the past few years, I’ve been purchasing suppressors and I have suppressors that cover almost every caliber that I shoot consistently. At this point, I almost exclusively shoot suppressed and I guess if you only shoot suppressed, the day will come when you will inevitably damage a suppressor. That day has come for me.
On one of my outings to the range, I went to zero in my Radian Weapons Model 1 with some new to me, Gorilla Ammunition Silverback, 300 Blackout, 205gr self-defense rounds. Everything went great. The gun ran the ammo perfectly and my optic zeroed as it should. Then when I got home and it was time to put the gun away, as I moved the gun, I could hear some small particles bouncing around. When I pinpointed the noise to being inside the suppressor, I just had that “Oh Sh*t” moment because there could only be one reason for this. So, I proceeded to dismount the suppressor and as I tipped it upside down, out poured a bunch of bullet shrapnel. Yup, it was a baffle strike. If you’re unfamiliar with this, this essentially means that somewhere between the suppressor and the barrel, things weren’t aligned properly and as a bullet was fired, it essentially hit the internals of the suppressor, the baffles, and tore things apart.
This can happen because of a myriad of reasons, I haven’t determined why it happened in my situation but it is what it is. Of course, the first thing that I did was Googled “Dead Air Baffle Strike Warranty” and one of the first hits was someone from Reddit asking the same question because they also had a Dead Sair suppressor baffle strike. Well, luckily someone working from Dead Air responded to this Reddit post and said that it was covered.
So, I was feeling better and found my way over to Dead Air’s dedicated warranty claim form. This form is pretty straightforward. You fill out your contact information, your product information, what kind of issue you’re having, gun and ammo information, and upload some requested documents. Again, pretty straightforward. However, when I tried to submit my warranty form, the website gave me an error saying “You don’t have permission to access this resource.” I have no idea what that means but at that point, I tried to contact Dead Air’s customer service.
Unfortunately, the phone number that they listed on their website for the warranty department was disconnected and the general phone number just leads to a full voicemail box so that didn’t help. I filled out the website’s contact form but didn’t get a response so after a few days I emailed info@deadairsilencers.com which is what I would suggest you do if you need to get ahold of Dead Air because that’s the only means they seem to answer by.
Now, once I got ahold of customer service, the struggles weren’t over yet because the website error wasn’t just on my computer, but they had the same issues when trying to submit a warranty claim. It would seem like they’re using the same portal. So we went back and forth, with customer service sending the error to higher-ups and the IT team in an attempt to fix this. On my end, I was getting frustrated because I didn’t understand why Dead Air customer service just couldn’t manually open up a claim for me. That would be the logical approach. But I kept getting non-answers about how they’re trying to sort things out with the website issues. Well, after over 2 weeks of back and forth, of me saying to just open a manual claim, they finally did that and sent me a shipping label with an estimate of 50-60 days for repairs after arrival. So, I shipped the Nomad L off that same day with the requested documentation. Now that the suppressor was in Dead Air’s hands, all I could do was wait.
To me, Dead Air customer service kind of sucks. They didn’t try and keep in contact to let me know what was going on. It was a lot of me, actively, checking on the situation. Then when the 60-day mark came around and I didn’t hear anything from Dead Air, I had to contact them for an update. The reply that I got was that the suppressor was in the repair process but they had to wait for parts that are expected to come any day, but they don’t have an ETA for me. Then another month went by and still no communication so I had to reach out again. A week went by with no answers, so I reached out again. Two weeks went by with no answer, so I reached out again. A week after that so about 3 weeks after sending them an email and about 2 months since they told me any day now, I finally got an answer. But the answer was that it’ll take another 3-4 weeks for completion. Well, alright. Nothing I can do but wait again.
Knowing what I know about Dead Air’s customer service I made sure to ask what the return shipment process was and basically, it’s signature required by the recipient. This is good since I wouldn’t want a suppressor just sitting outside to be possibly stolen. Then just to be safe, I asked what the return address they had on file was and they gave me something completely different from what I gave them originally. So again, it was a good thing that I asked considering my experience with Dead Air customer service but not a good indication of my expectations.
Flash forward exactly 2 weeks since my last email with Dead Air, my doorbell went off and it was a signature-required package for something I was not expecting. I opened the box and there was my suppressor, again, completely unexpected. To me, you’d think that if you’re sending stuff to someone, it would be common sense to give them a heads-up. Especially, considering that you’re sending an NFA item that’s heavily regulated and has to be signed for. But luckily I was working from home that day so I was able to receive the package.
In summary, I was quoted 50-60 days for repair but it actually took 125 days or a bit over 4 months. Essentially, double the estimate.
So, I inspected the suppressor and it looked great. It actually looked better than before because it’s been completely recoated. Even when brand new, this suppressor’s coating wasn’t perfect because this one was on display in a case at my FFL so it had minor imperfections. At this point, it seemed like we were good to go. I was ready to go out and shoot again. That is until I looked at the suppressor mount which looked oddly small. That is because the suppressor was sent back to me with the standard 5/8-24 fixed mount. That’s not what I sent with the suppressor to Dead Air. I personally use the Dead Air Xeno mounting system for almost all of my suppressors so the suppressor that I sent them had the appropriate Xeno Mount attached to it so they could examine the setup that I used when the damage occurred. Well, this is now another major annoyance because I can’t attach my suppressor to anything because it doesn’t have the right mount. I’d only be able to use it if I take the Xeno brake off of whatever gun I want to mount this suppressor to then put it back on after. So it’s just a huge pain in the ass for me. Needless to say, this is just another example of Dead Air customer service to me. One step forward and two steps backward. It’s a constant cycle of back-and-forth emails that end up taking weeks to resolve because they don’t pick up the damn phone and their voicemail box is full.
In this situation though, I sent them an email about the wrong mount, and about 30 minutes later, I got an email saying that an order for a new mount was made for me. That’s great! I was getting a new mount for free but guess what? They’re shipping it to the wrong address. So again, one step forward and two steps backward. I have to contact them again to change the shipping address. They corrected the shipping address and the Xeno mount shipped. A couple of days later, I checked and tracking listed the mount as delivered but guess what? It was not delivered to me. I personally know my delivery guy and he assured me that I didn’t get a package. So, it’s very likely that the delivery address was wrong. Again, it’s back to contacting Dead Air about this. It’s been 2 weeks and they’re telling me a new one will be sent out but again, no ETA. This is a pretty frustrating situation but it is what it is. All I can do is wait and hope for the best.
I should mention that this is not the first time that I’ve had to deal with Dead Air customer service and the warranty department. The first time was when I originally bought the Nomad L. From the factory, the fixed mount that this suppressor came with had a defective coating. It wasn’t sticking right and I could literally rub the black coating off of it with my finger. I contacted Dead Air about this, they were very helpful and offered to send me a new mount. I was happy with this but then in typically Dead Air fashion, a lot of time went by with no word on shipment. I contacted them about this and it turns out that the mount was out of stock so they couldn’t ship it. At the time, I didn’t care because my suppressor was waiting in NFA jail. But then a lot more time went by, like months. So I checked the Dead Air website and the mount was actually in stock. I told Dead Air about this but it turns out, at least at the time, the web store’s inventory and warranty department’s inventory are completely independent from each other. The warranty department couldn’t send me a new mount even though it was in stock on the web store. This is of course inconvenient for the customer but it is what it is. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Then one day the mount just showed up. It took about 7 or 8 months for them to just send me a fixed mount for my suppressor. At the time, I wasn’t too upset because again, my suppressor was still in NFA jail. But taking 7 months just to send a part is pretty much as bad as waiting for an NFA item to clear Form 4. Just ridiculous.
Another occasion when I had to deal with Dead Air customer service was after placing an order on their website. For this purchase, I used my Capital One credit card which allows me to create a “virtual card” that’s linked to a real card that I own. The virtual card is made specifically for a website and cannot be used anywhere else. Well, one day I got a notification from Capital One that the virtual card that was created for Dead Air was trying to be used 4 times somewhere else. Which, again, is not possible. I knew the limitations of the virtual card so there’s no reason for me to try and use that card anywhere else but the person who stole that card number did not. It’s a good thing that Capital One is on top of its game and blocked the transactions with no loss to me. It was just extremely inconvenient because when this happens, Capital One considers the whole account as being compromised so they not only shut the virtual card down, but any real physical card associated with it. This means that I had to change all my billing info wherever I use my Capital One account. I contacted Dead Air about this and it was just a, thanks for telling us but there’s nothing we can do for you. We’ll deal with it on our end. No updates, no nothing.
At this point, it’s been about 3 weeks since I contacted Dead Air about the missing Xeno adapter and I’m back to emailing them every day about the situation with no response. I wish I could say that I’m frustrated but I’m more jaded because this is so typical of Dead Air. The lack of communication and the super slow response in any manner is just what I’ve come to expect from them. Maybe I’ll check back with you on this in about 6 months when I’ll eventually get the adapter. I personally think that Dead Air’s customer service is pretty shit and I’m kind of bummed that I invested so much money into their suppressors and accessories because every time something comes up, it takes months to get any resolution. But, that’s just my personal experience. Hopefully, it’s just me and you guys get good and fast customer care.
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