Has something happened to Fortress Anchors?

[Dutch01527]

I recently bought a 2nd hand Fortress FX-16 which did not have mud palms. No problem, I thought, I will buy some from Fortress and with their legendary customer service, I should have them within a week or two.

I filled out the order form on their website, waited, emailed them, waited, sent a PM to “Fortress” on this site, waited, filled out another order on their website, waited, used the contact form on their website, waited and finally tried to call them with no answer.

I hope that they have not gone out of business, they are normally an excellent company with excellent customer service.

Anyone got any FX-16 mud palms for sale?

 

[JumbleDuck]

I recently bought a 2nd hand Fortress FX-16 which did not have mud palms. No problem, I thought, I will buy some from Fortress and with their legendary customer service, I should have them within a week or two.

I filled out the order form on their website, waited, emailed them, waited, sent a PM to “Fortress” on this site, waited, filled out another order on their website, waited, used the contact form on their website, waited and finally tried to call them with no answer.

I hope that they have not gone out of business, they are normally an excellent company with excellent customer service.

Anyone got any FX-16 mud palms for sale?

I have had precisely the same experience.

 

[Neeves]

Their longstanding marketing executive Brian@Fortress departed company 6-8 weeks ago. Anything sent specifically to him at his email address might not invoke a reply. Americans have raised the same issue, about 3 week ago, and they have employed someone to 'replace' him and American issues seemed to have been resolved - unless something else has developed in the interim.

See here:

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f118/fortress-anchor-customers-service-200681.html

Brian@Fortresss WAS Fortress (as far as the customer base was concerned), I think he had been with them since the early 90s, maybe even late 80's, and his absence is only having a negative impact on their image.

I hope it is resolved soon.

Jonathan

 

[Dutch01527]

Thanks Jonathan.

I had used their website email address (not Brian@) and order form.

I will try the email addresses in the link you gave. I hope that they are getting their act together, a reputation takes years to build and weeks to damage. That would be a shame.

 

[Neeves]

Good Luck, let us know what happens.

It is difficult to understand what they think they are doing.

Jonathan

 

[JumbleDuck]

It is difficult to understand what they think they are doing.

The process of ordering spares is/was weird anyway. Instead of list, select, add to basket, pay, done you had to get as far as select and then wait for them to contact you, Bizarrely inefficient. I think someone there must have visited Foyle's bookshop in the days of Christina and triple queuing and thought "Now THAT's the way to treat customers".

 

[Neeves]

It is not getting better.

From the CF thread it appears someone is trying to keep in touch with marketing (though from this thread - not with 100% success) but in addition to Brian@Fortress leaving (that's how most of knew him ) his assistant also departed. My understanding is neither role has been formally filled (though this is anecdotal - so treat with caution). They have developed immense goodwill over the decades and hopefully they will return to normalcy sooner rather than later. They had one of the best 'replacement' policies of any anchor maker. Patience and tolerance might be needed. Brian also offered sage, unemotive and reasoned comment on forum. Fortress were also one of the few, only, anchor makers to conduct a number of tests on a series of anchors, the most recent being the Chesapeake Bay soft mud tests - to which they invited independent observers - obviously Fortress chose the seabed - but their policy was an example and challenge to their competitors - that has not been repeated.

Interestingly - from one of my many recent threads - many bought a Fortress because of its light weight and simply did not seem to consider the alternatives FOB Lite, alloy Spade or alloy Excel - basically Fortress had that market to themselves (and also the market for anchors on racing yacht). Having dominated the 2 sectors (interrelated by light weight) they are leaving themselves open for someone to fill the gap - 2 months is a long time to take to employ replacements.

I'm not very impressed - hopefully it will all change for the better.

Jonathan

 

[Dutch01527]

I called Fortress today and spoke to a very helpful lady who took my order for mud palms over the phone. $10 plus $23 postage. Happy with that.

I mentioned the issues and she checked and my earlier orders/emails via the website were not registered with them. She seemed genuine, looks like a system glitch and she will report it to the website guru.