FedEx 1: Rockwood 0

hoffmand

Got my 5 bags of Rockwood from Firecraft today.  The bag that shipped alone survived fairly well but the four in the large box, not so much.  Still looking forward to trying it out though. 

GATraveller

Geesh.......looks like they drop-kicked it to the front door.

jimithing

Have been thinking about trying rockwood but that right there is what concerns me.  It'll still burn obviously but I'm sure it's broken down into smaller pieces than it should be.  Were you an OO user before?  I'd like to hear a comparison if you were.

byrne092

Right...kind of defeats the purchase of lump size quality if its been turned to dust during shipping

The Cen-Tex Smoker

That's about what mine usually look like when they show up. I just sweep them off. sometimes the bag has a small tear or something but it does not really bother me. 

Legume

cue @Lit

SmokeyPitt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q6_9A90cUk

hoffmand

jimithing said:

 Were you an OO user before?  I'd like to hear a comparison if you were.

I have only used OO prior to this and these are my first bags of Rockwood. I'm running out of options in Central Texas though. Either mail order Rockwood and risk shipping damage or use BGE/RO.  I tried ordering a pallet directly from Rockwood but he doesn't have enough supply for that right now. 

Ragtop99

I've had it look similar, but still had only minimal chips and dust when I burned through the bag.  Open the worst looking bag first, and then see how the contents are.

Lit

What sucked the most when mine came like that is I had $40 worth of lump but $60 worth of rubs and the rubs were in a box that looked like that. 

HeavyG

hoffmand said:

jimithing said:

 Were you an OO user before?  I'd like to hear a comparison if you were.

I have only used OO prior to this and these are my first bags of Rockwood. I'm running out of options in Central Texas though. Either mail order Rockwood and risk shipping damage or use BGE/RO.  I tried ordering a pallet directly from Rockwood but he doesn't have enough supply for that right now. 

I tried to order a pallet from Rockwood also with the same result - "Sorry, it's all spoken for".

So I just went to Home Depot to buy a few more bags of everyones favorite - Royal Oak.

DoubleEgger

hoffmand said:

jimithing said:

 Were you an OO user before?  I'd like to hear a comparison if you were.

I have only used OO prior to this and these are my first bags of Rockwood. I'm running out of options in Central Texas though. Either mail order Rockwood and risk shipping damage or use BGE/RO.  I tried ordering a pallet directly from Rockwood but he doesn't have enough supply for that right now. 

ROAD TRIP

The Cen-Tex Smoker

hoffmand said:

jimithing said:

 Were you an OO user before?  I'd like to hear a comparison if you were.

I have only used OO prior to this and these are my first bags of Rockwood. I'm running out of options in Central Texas though. Either mail order Rockwood and risk shipping damage or use BGE/RO.  I tried ordering a pallet directly from Rockwood but he doesn't have enough supply for that right now. 

The Central Market mesquite lump is awesome for the money. I used it for years before i found Rockwood. I still do from time to time.

I imagine I will have to again as everyone is using Rockwood and OO is no longer producing as they were. RW is going to be harder and harder to get.

As a matter of fact, I recommend that everyone reading this take note the shoddy shape of the bags and move along to something else  

hoffmand

Ragtop99 said:

I've had it look similar, but still had only minimal chips and dust when I burned through the bag.  Open the worst looking bag first, and then see how the contents are.

Luckily the worst bag was already opened :-)  I dumped it into a bin and will use the bigger pieces from that bag first. 

McStew

Don't worry it will still burn just fine

Papa1058

My 5 showed up about 3 weeks ago and looked EXACTLY like that!!! 

EggHead_Bubba

Thanks for posting this... my fear exactly right here. I'm thinking it may be worth the extra $4 per bag to order from my local Ace Hardware and let them handle the shipping. My first few bags have come from them and they were in great shape.

Hungry Joe

Mine looked like that and had 4 to 5 lbs of unusable dust and chips all five bags from Firecraft. Charcoal is a hard item to ship. 

Lit

Hungry Joe said:

Mine looked like that and had 4 to 5 lbs of unusable dust and chips all five bags from Firecraft. Charcoal is a hard item to ship. 

Oh no your order was perfect I was the chosen one that got the only bad bag ever stlcharcoal said so.

Kyle919

To be honest...  I have had 5 bags of rockwood and never had any large pieces.  It burned well but was looking forward to the large chunks.

Hungry Joe

I didn't bother to weigh any others but this is the bag I cut down with the unusable dust and chips inside. I cut it down to get the good chunks by hand.

I'm won't place any blame on stlcharcoal. The good sized pieces were nice, a little softer and faster burning then my liking, but good stuff.

shadowrider

That's No Bueno.

I'll just stick to RO since I have all I want about a block from my house unless I find some RW locally at which time I'll back up the truck.  I'm in Oklahoma so I wouldn't think it would be that hard, but I've never seen it anywhere here.

Lit

Kyle919 said:

To be honest...  I have had 5 bags of rockwood and never had any large pieces.  It burned well but was looking forward to the large chunks.

Not possible all perfect pieces. Even the dust burns at the perfect temperature you are desiring.

Hungry Joe said:

I didn't bother to weigh any others but this is the bag I cut down with the unusable dust and chips inside. I cut it down to get the good chunks by hand.

I'm won't place any blame on stlcharcoal. The good sized pieces were nice, a little softer and faster burning then my liking, but good stuff.

The scale must be off.

i am pretty sure the picture from the OP all that dust is photoshopped in. That or he sat there with a very fine pen and made a charcoal stipple design. 

4Runner

Just file a claim with FedX....certainly not a Rockwood issue.   

4Runner

Lit said:

What sucked the most when mine came like that is I had $40 worth of lump but $60 worth of rubs and the rubs were in a box that looked like that. 

Your issue is with the carrier and not Rockwood.   Your rant about this is becoming tiresome.  Since this is my issue, I will do my best to ignore  going forward.

RRP

Why is it that no body is addressing the 800 pound gorilla in this thread? Seems to me Firecraft is doing a crappy job of securing their shipments! Especially when people are saying their packages of rubs and other contents are also coated in lump dust. Granted shipping and bad handling is a culprit here, but if an entire order is merely dumped in a large box and shipped it's no wonder! But Firecraft is equally to blame IMO.

Lit

My issue was how stlcharcoal made it seem like I was the only one he had ever heard of getting a bad bag even though posts just like this happen all the time. I have stated in multiple threads it was most likely the shipping that caused it but it really pissed me off his posts lately. If you order Rockwood from firecraft you have a decent chance of getting the exact same crap the OP got here but he made it sound like it has never happened. This right here is redemption though I wasn't just complaining I had this same crap happen and then the supplier isn't sympathetic at all instead he writes me off and pretty much says why are you still bitching about that. That right there is great customer service. 

DoubleEgger

I agree with Ron. Why would Firecraft put 80lbs in one box and 20 in the other? You're gonna piss off a lot of delivery drivers with 80lbs in a bulky cardboard box. You ever try to carry 4 bags of charcoal at once? Also, surely Firecraft could bag/box the other items to protect them. That's just laziness on Firecraft's part. 

Acn

RRP said:

Why is it that no body is addressing the 800 pound gorilla in this thread? Seems to me Firecraft is doing a crappy job of securing their shipments! Especially when people are saying their packages of rubs and other contents are also coated in lump dust. Granted shipping and bad handling is a culprit here, but if an entire order is merely dumped in a large box and shipped it's no wonder! But Firecraft is equally to blame IMO.

Firecraft seems to be putting in the amount of care one might expect from a free service.

Dobie

Ordering from Firecraft is hit or miss depending on your location. I had the same results to FL previously and thats the way they do it, 4 bags in one box and one in another. Rubs thrown in the big box with some bubble wrap around the couple jars of Blues Hog I got.
Its not a Rockwood thing. I buy 200 lbs a pop locally now and the lump is large chunks and bags are clean.  Others get great delivery but FC isnt packing the boxes to help with the shipping issues.

stlcharcoal

Lit said:

Oh no your order was perfect I was the chosen one that got the only bad bag ever stlcharcoal said so.

Lit said:

My issue was how stlcharcoal made it seem like I was the only one he had ever heard of getting a bad bag even though posts just like this happen all the time. I have stated in multiple threads it was most likely the shipping that caused it but it really pissed me off his posts lately. If you order Rockwood from firecraft you have a decent chance of getting the exact same crap the OP got here but he made it sound like it has never happened. This right here is redemption though I wasn't just complaining I had this same crap happen and then the supplier isn't sympathetic at all instead he writes me off and pretty much says why are you still bitching about that. That right there is great customer service. 

That's not what I said......I said that only a few have ever complained TO THE EXTENT that you have.  And no one has ever called it anything like "garbage charcoal, with crappy pieces."  Anyone with remotely that much of a problem has contacted us directly, rather than take the passive aggressive route and post hate in every thread that mentions Rockwood.

I would have gladly taken care of the problem if you would have contacted us a year ago.  Last week I even made and offer in a previous thread to still try to resolve the issue--no contact from you.  Doesn't sound like you want us to fix the problem, or you want to be a customer.  And that's your purgative--but don't expect me to stand here and let you continue to attack our company and product when you never asked for a resolution.

The reason everyone is dogging you about this is because you have used ONE BAG.  You claim to have had two, but said you gave the other away.  Everything else is second or third hand you are posting.

The OP's bags did not leave our place beat to hell like that.  And if they were damaged in transit to FireCraft or there was concealed breakage amongst the bags on the pallet, they would have been set aside and sent back to us once they accumulated 30 ripped/torn bags.  Firecraft did not ship them looking like that.  If there was internal damage from a shipper setting something weighing a ton on top, how are we going to know?  Everything that went into that bag at the plant was over the certain screen size.  It's not like we're dumping fines and dust in the bags--those have just as much value as the lump does (in a very different markets.) 

FireCraft is one of our largest customers, selling hundreds of pallets a year--if this problem with FedEx was prolific, you would see a lot more complaints here, and FireCraft's and our mailbag would be full.  Yet, they continue to sell TONS of it to return customers.  These folks obviously did not and do not have the same experience you did.

So what do you want me to do?  You have solved your side problem by not buying the product.  Do you want me to shut the company down or stop selling to FireCraft so no one else has the isolated misfortune that you did?  We have thousands of satisfied customers and have been #1 on TNW for over two years.  Your experience with our product was rare and unfortunate, yet you refused to contact the people would have made you whole (FedEx, FireCraft, and us.)   I can't control how FedEx handles nor what your local dealer charges--if you don't like either, you can exercise your right not to purchase it.