Ordering a BRN-4 upper from Brownells has been such clusterf*ck that I am almost left speechless. I had no idea that when I ordered on 12/2/22 I would still be trying to get this order right over 4 months later.
So I placed the order on 12/2/22 and it was shipped on 12/9. Great!
On 12/14 I received an email that says to check the kits because they were shipped incomplete and to contact Brownells if anything was missing. No fault of Brownells but thanks to the US Postal Service the kit was shipped on the 9th finally arrived on the 20th. I was out of state and didn't check the kit for completeness until the 12/27. The kit was missing the magpul dust cover. No big deal.
On 12/27 I emailed customer service as instructed and notified them that the dust cover wasn't sent out. 12/28 received a reply that the Magpul dust cover was out of stock, and isn't part of the order. I replied with a correction that it is one of the SKU's in the kit. No response received from Brownells.
On the 30th I received an backorder confirmation for the dust cover. Great! Problem solved.
Then on 1/3 I was contacted by another customer service rep once again reiterating that the SKU for the Magpul dust cover is not part of the kit. I once again corrected them by sending them links to the kits on their website where not only was the dust cover referenced in the product description as well as pictured in the product photos but this specific SKU was mentioned in the original email when Brownells notified me of their goof up.
On Jan 5th. 3rd customer service rep was now involved in this email chain and said that they would send me one out but they were back-ordered.
On Jan 7th I received a back order confirmation from this 3rd rep. Cool, glad we got that sorted out. I received my dust cover sometime in Feb. Then, I received a second one. Apparently the first back order was still in the system. That last email chain was pointless and wasted everyone's time. But it was an error in my favor. Cool. Deal is done and my kit is complete. I can move on.
Or so I thought.
Fast forward to today, 3/9/2023. I received an email from Brownells' accounting department. The order was never paid for and they just billed me because "the cause of this situation is the payment processor failed to capture the preauthorization of your credit card"... Uh, WTF? I sure as hell remember seeing the hold on my cc card back in December. So I go through my statements and sure enough Brownells never completed the transaction. So now I'm out an unexpected $1506. My fault I guess, I should have checked the statement of that card more thoroughly. But what the hell, man? Y'all need to figure out wherever the communication break down is within your company because this whole situation has been an exercise in ridiculousness.