Review: The Products and Practices of CBC Industries,
Inc.
On
July 4th, 2016, I ordered an AR-15 upper
receiver from CBC Industries
for their 4th of July sale.
The upper receiver was well packaged and came with a packing slip
indicating its quality inspection.
In
accordance with NJ state law, the moment it arrived on the 22nd, I
had a compensator pinned and welded at an expense of $73. It was there, the gunsmith made me aware of
the manufacturing mistakes made on the upper.
The side of the handguard has over-milled and the assembler had taken
divots out of the upper receiver clumsily installing the forward assist
retainer pin (see pictures). These are
not things that occur because of mishandling, these are issues that occur in in
manufacturing. The over-milling on the
handguard could only have happened before the part was anodized at the factory
(as the issue was anodized as well). The
damage around the pin hole generally occurs during assembly (done by CBC
Industries), when the assembler does not use the correct type of pin punch when
putting in the pin. The denting is
caused by the incorrect pin punch sliding off the top of the pin when its being
struck with the hammer (by the assembler at CBC Industries).
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I first attempted to contact CBC Industries on
July 22nd (the day it arrived) with a copy of the first picture and
the following text:
Good Afternoon,
Was the rail that came on this upper supposed to be a blem or did it get past quality control? See attached.
This message was ignored completely. I then sent a second email from a military
email address:
Good Afternoon,
This is my second email in regard to order number
15650. I have issues with both the quality as well as the workmanship of
the lower I received last Friday (see attached pictures). If this is not
the correct department to contact, please send me the contact information for
the correct one.
V/r,
In
response to the email I send from my military address, I received the following:
From: Sales CBC Industries [sales@cbcindustries.com]
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2016 1:00 PM
To: <redacted>
Subject: [Non-DoD Source] RE: Order number 15650
Sent to returns/refunds
I assume this email means that they
have forwarded the email to the returns/refunds department. Since I never received anything from any
returns/refunds department and given how completely unhelpful this email was, I
(tongue in cheek) send the following back:
Is that part of an
email address?
To which, I received no reply.
The only point at which I received any real
engagement with CBC Industries was when I voiced my concerns publicly on their
Facebook page, where they made it clear that they were not willing to fix the
issues with my upper, and that my only course of action with them was to send
it back for a full refund (after I invested $73 in compliance work) because, as
they put it, they could “sell it via scratch and dent for $239 and my customers
would be in a line at that price” (exact words).
I’ve written this page so that anyone who does business with CBC
Industries knows what kind of company they are dealing with. It is my opinion, as the part had passed
their internal quality inspection, they have no problem trying to pawn off
their defective parts during sales on unsuspecting customers (and customers
they think will be unwilling or unable to complain), without disclosing them as
defective or blemished. And in my case,
they are not willing to stand by these products. Based on my experiences with CBC industries,
I recommend that people avoid this company.
If you too have had issues with CBC
Industries’ products or customer service, and are willing to share your story,
feel free to email us at cbccomplaints@cbc-industries.com.
*****
Failure by cbc to address
my complaint concerning the free floating forearm on
my upper:
To make a long story short. The forearm is too
wide to accept the scope mount from The Nikon manufacture P series for the AR
platform rifles. I called CBC and left message with the
customer service. Received call back, discussed the problem that the
forearm was too wide for scope mount but fit the receiver. Measurement, approx.
.864 compared to .826 for receiver. We will check and get back to you
later today. This was on the 2nd of May, no return call
the 2nd or the 3rd. I called and left messages on the 4th and 5th, no
response. On the 9th I called and left a message with customer service,
no response, called again and talked to sales, they forward me to another
answering machine that could help. I contacted CBC again and this time I
got an answering machine for the operator. I then tried sales again and
they were not talking calls. Appears that they might be a a outlet for other companies as my
upper and forearms does not have a manufacture identification label. They
claim to be veteran owned and operated by vets! this I question. I
will be contacting the Montana state consumer protection and filing a complaint
with them, as it seems that there are a lot of sales that are a gross
misrepresentation of their product.
Rich
*****
Hi,
I got in my CBC 24" wylde
chambered bull barrel upper. I brought the rifle to the range with
my buddy who has a different brand but otherwise identical rifle. My
rifle would not lock back and would jam frequently. We swapped all of the
parts but nothing changed. I called, and CBC
took back the upper to repair and I thought "good company". I
get the upper back and it is worse.
I take it apart an find the gas block is .003
oversize. I call CBC and am lectured about tolerances. I am told their
tolerances on barrel and block are .004 about 10 times worse than anyone
else. I found the barrel undersized but within spec. I called CBC
and was told to reprint the first label and bring it back to FedEx. When
I got to FedEx they laughed, a label could not be
reused. I tried to contact CBC about a new label but got no
answer. I no longer thought "good company".
I ordered a gas block from Primary Arms,
reassembled the rifle and brought it to the
range. Better but still unreliable and under gassed. Drilled out
the gas port from .093 to .098, now I got reliable operation on all ammo but am
hitting the deflector . Will go to .101 next.
The set screws in the CBC gas block were so soft
that you would be unable to go more than finger tight.
I am with
you. CBC techs are ignorant and condescending and
do low quality work using substandard parts.
Lance
*****
CBC Industries
To whom it may concern,
I'm
writing to (CBC) concerning the assembled upper I received from you this last
week. When I received the upper in the mail, I took it out of the box and first
thing I noticed upon inspection was the screws holding the handgaurd
on were not flush and seemed very poorly machined. I ended up having to replace
one of the screws with a completely different one I bought because it was so
bad. One of the allen key screws seemed to be almost
stripped out right out of the box. Scratches all around the handgaurd
screw holes. I decided to overlook that because I was excited to actually finish my AR 15. I put my gun together, cleaned,
oiled it and was able to go to the range this past weekend. The first shot I
took with my newly assembled gun went well but when I went to pull the trigger
for the second time, nothing happened. I was concerned because why would my
brand new upper I just purchased from you not be firing. The gun was not
cycling and ejecting the spent casing after firing. Essentially, I had a bolt
action AR 15. After every round I fired down range I would have to manually
cycle my gun to eject the round and load the next round to fire. I was
concerned. I had my range partner fire the gun while I shot a slow motion video of the gun firing. The first video I took
showed that the bolt carrier group was not evening moving whatsoever. The
second video I took was of the gas block region of the upper and that's where I noticed something was terribly wrong. Why
would the gasses be escaping the barrel at the gas block and causing a flaming
action? Why was my handgaurd becoming discolored? Why
did it seem like my hand was getting burnt through my gloves every time I fired
it? I was not happy and very frustrated that a company could possibly send a
product out to a customer that was not even close to being assembled correctly.
Especially since CBC Industries says multiple times on the website that it
prides itself on superior quality of parts and finished weapons. I took my
rifle home and disassembled the handguard only to find something I couldn't believe to be true. The gas block wasn't even covering the hole in the barrel! No wonder my
gun wasn't functioning properly. All the gas from each
shot was escaping the barrel, burning my hand and
discoloring my handguard. I was furious that was even possible from a company
like yours. I removed the flash hider and gas block and correctly positioned it
over the hole and now it fires exactly like it should have been out of the
box. For a company to state that every gun is made to order, you would
think that quality control should be superior to other companies doing the same
type of work, but after seeing what I was sent, I don't believe that to be
true. I took pictures of what was wrong with the gun and will be attaching them
to this email for you to see. I am very disappointed
and will never order something from you again. I will make sure every single
person I know of in the gun industry gets my story of your product and never
have them buy anything from you, a company who can't
even put a gun together correctly. I would love to hear back from you and I might change my mind and maybe give you a second
chance. I want to know what you have to say, as a company. Sending products to
customers that can possibly be very dangerous and hurt
them, is not okay. I'm lucky I was wearing gloves or
else I would have been severely burnt. Thanks for reading my letter and
hopefully I will hear back from you soon. I hope I can get this to reach the
CEO of the company and everyone that needs to read this.
Thank you for your time,
Brady
