Someone asked about “Reason #4” in the last post, “Internet sellers usually do not know as much about gun safes and vault doors as a good local dealer . . .” Here is why that is true.
Internet sellers offer no service. They show a picture of a safe, a brief description, the price, “click here to add to cart”, and it gets dropped off outside your home. They may have inventory or it may be drop shipped from the factory. But they don’t learn the products intimately.
A good safe company/dealer will work with the gun safes and vaults on a whole different level. Local safe companies are the people who see the safes after a fire or burglary attempt — the internet sellers don’t. Local dealers see which units survive or fail in a fire. We know which locks are prone to failure because our technicians are the ones that open safes when locks quit working. We know which safes are easy to drill or pry open, which ones have effective relockers, which ones have effective “hardplate”, which ones have drywall insulation that is pieced together from construction scraps, etc. Local safe businesses are the people who go out to perform warranty work, not the online seller.
Occasionally, we hear people’s anger when they discover that the safe they bought online was misrepresented. Pictures on a website may look good, but poor quality is more apparent when the safe shows up in your driveway. Disappointment is especially common with vault doors purchased online. A local business is likely to be more truthful because they have a hometown reputation to protect.
The product knowledge issue also applies to gun stores that sell gun safes as a sideline. If they do not have real safe technicians with the ability to service safes, they just do not have the same knowledge that a safe company has.
Buy your safe locally from a full service safe and vault business!