NRA not FUBAR, much

Back on St. Paddy's Day, I wrote about an email I'd gotten (along with the 30,000 other trainers in the NRA) that all shipments of training materials had been shut down.

At the time, the NRA declined to tell us why this had happened. Today, three weeks later, they finally 'fess up: it was their drop-shipper that quit in the middle of the contract. Quit on some other spendy companies, too, such as the Olympic Committee and the Smithsonian Institution, to name only two.

OK, that explains why we can't get materials.

It does NOT explain why the NRA couldn't have told us about the drop-shipper in the first place.

So, there's still something amiss at the NRA: Communications. Why they didn't see fit to inform us that their drop-shipper had gone out of business is a mystery that remains unexplained with their second email on the subject:

Program Materials Statement

After a disruption in the availability of all training materials and other NRA products ordered from the NRA Program Materials Center, NRA is now accepting orders from its program materials online via the web site http://materials.nrahq.org.

The disruption in service was due to the sudden closure of AB&C Group, a contracted facility in West Virginia that served as a warehouse and fulfillment center for NRA and other organizations, including the Smithsonian, Paragon and the United States Olympic Committee, among others. This closure came without warning to all of AB&C's customers, including NRA.

To learn more about the circumstances surrounding the closure of AB&C Group's West Virginia operations, please visit the Hagerstown (MD) Herald-Mail at www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=188761&format=html or the Martinsburg (WV) Journal at journal-news.net/page/content.detail/id/504903.html.

NRA thanks you for your patience and apologizes for any inconvenience.

The NRA, as I've said before, spares no expense or expertise when it wants us to buy something from them that will net them a tidy profit. They don't seem to have the smarts to hire a smart high-school graduate when it comes to everyday communications, though, and that's a shame.

A word to the NRA: I presume you subscribe to normal business models, and if you do, you have someone in charge of exterior communications. That person is a dummy, and should be terminated immediately. See to it.

Comments

[Morenuancedthanyou]

They do not realize that they have a trust problem.

[Rivrdog]

The NRA forgets it's own "Prime Directive", that gun-owners are a COMMUNITY. The success of ANY community is based on the efficiency of it's communications.