pocketartillery.com Contractor Supply Group Pocket Artillery Canon is a RIP OFF! Little Rock, Arkansas

Perhaps you've seen them on Techcrunch or The-Gadgeteer web sites. There are several videos on YouTube all showing an amazing and inexpensive miniature canon that shoots .177 caliber BB's with a little bit of black powder and a standard fireworks fuse. The videos are fun to watch as they show a tiny canon popping balloons, puncturing soda cans and bottles, and making a nice bang in the process. 

I went ahead and ordered one of these miniature canons and would like to share my experience in the hope that others don't waste their money like I did.

It took 10-days from the day I ordered the canon to the day I received it. The canons are sold by pocketartillery.com and your money goes to a company in Little Rock, Arkansas called Contractor Supply Group. Upon receipt I opened the box to find a miniature canon sitting in a bed of shredded cardboard along with an instruction sheet. Upon first glance the canon looked impressive, a nice shiny polished stainless steel barrel and a red base with brass screws. The machine work looked fantastic and I couldn't wait to try it out. The problem is, the brass screws were TOO SHORT to mount the base to the barrel and that's how they shipped it to me, with the pieces just sitting in place. Obviously no one bothered to test fit the canon prior to shipping.

After messing around with the canon a bit and determining that I just needed longer screws I located an email address on the pocketartillery web site and requested that they simply send me longer screws. That email was ignored, they never responded even to this day. I also tried contacting the merchant through a link provided in the Google Wallet receipt but the link is dead. In addition, when I check the status of my order on their web site it still shows as not yet shipped. 

Going back to the YouTube videos I noticed complaints in the comments section by people who recently ordered from pocketartillery and received the same unusable junk canon, and started conversing with someone who was also ripped off by this company. All negative comments and complaints have been marked as spam and deleted since but I've stayed in touch with this person and found that not only did their requests for a refund or replacement go ignored, but a couple of their friends as well. In addition to the short mounting screws, some canons are shipped with bores smaller than .177 and won't accept a BB at all.

Apparently, judging by the reviews and videos on YouTube pocketartillery was shipping a usable product at one time but they aren't now, and they're definitely not customer friendly. Note that if you visit their web site there is a message at the bottom that reads, "WARNING: For safety, we do not accept returns under any circumstances." 

Based on my experience with pocketartillery and the experiences of others that ordered their product I STRONGLY recommend avoiding them.