The Northern California Fly Fishing Board

From what I saw during the tour of Winston, folks aren't in any hurry to build any of the rods, much less repair the rods. Depending on what they did for your repair. Lets say that they have to replace a section of your rod, they end up building it from scratch. They have stainless mandrels laying around for all of their rods, the graphite is rolled, wrapped, baked and finished before they get sent out for guide placement and thread wraps. The guy building ferrules and assembling sections wasn't in any hurry when I was there for the tour. They send out all of their thread wrapping to mostly stay at home moms/women in the community, who wrap rods for extra money. Some only do 10 rods a month. After inspection, they go into the epoxy room. A gal sits there with a respirator on all day and works her wonders covering the thread wraps. I found this out after the tour of the company last Monday when I initiated a conversation with a woman that I noticed was wrapping a rod on her lap. She had worked herself up from a stay at home mom wrapping rods for the company to a supervisor. She felt she did a better job of wrapping, tension wise than with a rod wrapping stand. She did a remarkable job while I observed her technique and I wasn't going to doubt her response. They did say that they let epoxy dry for a couple of days as well.

So with this knowledge, I don't quite understand what you refer to as customer service, unless it is how fast you get something returned. Sometimes the craftsmanship involved takes a little longer.

BTW, I only noticed three or four rods in for repairs being worked on for new cork and guide replacement. Yours might have been sent out to one of those stay at home moms depending on the extent of the repair. There is only one guy doing repairs and the supervisor whom I spoke with that will sometimes jump in to help him out. The pace was remarkably slower as well. The gal that writes all of the serial numbers on the rod sections wasn't even in to work. Sounds like a nice place to work as well.

Hope this helps in understanding what you termed as a delay.