Cabela’s -Hoffman Estates

I have felt that the employees are condescending, and if you are not in agreement with them, you are wrong.
I don’t like being lied to, and feel that many times I am being lied to, or that they cover for their lack of knowledge with arrogance.

Never ever been to a store like this before, but it was necessary to pick up Sig P238 I found online and had shipped there, as out of state purchases need to be sent via 3^rd parties, FFL (Federal Firearms Licensee) to FFLs.
First 2 visits, I waited a minimum of 10 – 15 minutes waiting for service, or even acknowledgment… the only time I had any sort of customer service, I had to interrupt to get help.
Let me summarize my impressions from these visits:
VISIT ONE
First visit — stood around, looking at a lot of tan shirts walking around, half of them seemed to be doing something, others stood there and seemed to be socially chatting.
I stood there for 5 min or so then interrupted a cashier… he walked me over to the gun counter to the left, and showed me a deli ticket number machine, and said that was the method to get service.
The deli ticket number I pulled was 186, and the counter was on 179, but there were only 2 people at the counter ahead of me. I stood there for another 10 minutes, then asked this 3^rd tan shirt who seemed to be playing with a PC and a phone 3ft away… ‘excuse me, is that the correct number? I don’t see 7 people ahead of me!!!‘
The had not been updating the numbers… was there 1 hour to get 10 minutes of questions answered.
VISIT TWO
Yay, I was able to find Sig P238 I wanted, at an excellent price in Ohio. Had it shipped to Cabela’s and it had arrived. So guess what? I waited… again… 20 minutes, number in hand… at this gun counter… it was a Sat, and busy… but JEEZ… all I needed to was to start paperwork.
This time I immediately asked what was going on with the numbers, and if I had to wait for sales people when I just needed to start the pickup paperwork… this time I was only 7 numbers behind… but guess what? I just had to be on the checkout line, not the gun counter.
So waited again and this visit took 45 minutes.
NO ONE BOTHERS with customer service here. No one asked, have you been helped… are you looking for sales help, and there is NO SIGNAGE to explain or direct either. ITS A CLUSTER FUBAR operation of the most ridiculousness. ‘
VISIT THREE
My background check and all that, with the waiting period is way over… its been a week, I call to check and see that its all good for me to pick up my P238… someone answers after 5 minutes, and puts me on hold. Yeah… so I am driving in, and I let that hold music play…
I get there in 17 minutes, still on hold… and after holding a ticket number at 198 with the ticker is at 176… so yeah I get right on a female tan shirt at the checkout counter and ask if I need to wait for 20 tickets to be done to PICK UP MY GUN, and where I am supposed to be waiting… She checks on it, and gets my gun, then directs me to the checkout counter. Thank GOD.
Yeah while waiting the 15min in line, I ask to speak to a manager… Duck Dynasty «Andy» listened to me vent about the poor customer service of the gun counter people and how I am STILL ON HOLD on the phone… yeah now 30 minutes… this place!!!
SUMMARY
CABELA’s gun counter is a chaotic hot mess of disorder, inefficiency and confusion. Hire enough people or TRAIN your staff better, POST SIGNS so people know WTF to do to get the services they need… and the fees you charge for services (I mistakenly thought they took FFL transfers for free — I swear they told me this on the phone once and during visit one)… so I ended up paying $ 50, but whatever MOFOS.
Maybe I need to stop by Outdoor Man or whatever that place is at Gurnee to be a true orange to orange comparison… but I know I will trek up there for ammo, because I am not spending one more cent at this place.
This place SUCKS. Hear that? Most freaking annoying place ever… OMG Ugh.
Who manages this? Oh yeah, I got the name… Sean Benson.

Had my first experience with Cabela’s today. Great great service in the women’s section. Explained what I needed and the price range I was comfortable with and was led to exactly what I needed to purchase. The woman gave me a discount as well since the product was placed in the wrong section with wrong advertising! Yay! Walked me to the register to make sure it was accounted for. Will be coming back!

So, I was directed to a «kiosk» to place an order on something that looked like something out of the Jetson’s vision of the future, «trimmed» with stained oak. Wow. It took me and the customer service rep (who was helpful) to place a simple order. Other retailers have figured this out long ago. I also could not access my Cabela’s account from this UNIVAC where I had three items on my wishlist that I would also have ordered had Cabela’s been operating in this century. Even the staff knows this old school take looks like a joke today.
Everything looks very dated, uninviting, very old school. The store looks and is cluttered. There has to be at least 3,000 square feet of wasted space (ground floor and mezzanine level) with a kind of ridiculous display of labeled stuffed animals in some type of fantasy habitat. What a waste of better productive space. At minimum this would be a great place to provide a place for people to sit, grab some coffee, interact with Cabela’s through a Cabela’s portal and some demonstrations, research, and buy more stuff while you’re waiting for the firearms counter to clear, or, look at the cool aquarium which is hidden in a pointless cave! Oh, there is a ‘General Store’, stuck in a corner where no one can see it, but it’s better left there anyway because it’s more of the same with no one in it. I bounded up the stairs to the mezzanine level with great anticipation only to find a barren wasteland with empty «conference» space and more stuffed animals. For a retailer that represents to support the environment and habitats, the parking lot is a wasteland of concrete, no islands, bioswales, sending gas and oil effluent into the water system.
Way better shopping experience at other stores that understand that outdoors people also bring their families and others, and, that people carry communication devices today that allows them to add to the shopping experience online while shopping. No wifi. Other competitors have figured this out long ago. Firearms counter is a circus and with surly staff. I left.
Long and short the whole place is a missed opportunity to engage us at every turn and consequently had us heading for competitors. This is truly a shame because we want to be immersed and engaged as part of handing over our hard earned money. As mentioned, others have figured this out long ago and consequently, get our business. I suspect Cabela’s already is feeling it but they don’t seem to be listening based on similar reviews long before this one. Just a matter of time it seems.

****THE FOLKS AT THE GUN COUNTER DO NOT PRACTICE THE BASICS OF GUN SAFETY****
By that I mean that you always treat a weapon as if it is loaded and never point it at something you are unwilling to shoot. When you buy and again, after you’ve waited the ridiculous three day period, and you pick up your firearm you are given the opportunity to inspect it. Having spent too much time waiting in line I havewatched these folks handle the various firearms. By folks I mean the Cabela’s staff, and all of them treat them very nonchalantly. Pulling them out of the case and they do not ensure they are keeping the muzzle end away from customers and that is disturbing. They have video cameras behind all of the registers, I’d love to see some of that video. I’m not sure if they’ve ever had a ND or not, but it only takes one to carelessly end ones life or severely injure them.
Buyer beware. This is for the Gun Library only. I traded in a pistol and bought what was represented and advertised as a used G27. Spent an hour in line to pay for it and then 45 minutes to pick it up. When I got it home, the case identified it as a G26 and the serial number confirmed that. They did take it back. I hadn’t seen the G26 on the case until after I got it home and removed the Cabela’s tape that covered the designation. I also verified with Glock that it started as a G26, but there is no way to confirm the conversion or the history of the G27 slide. To cap it all off, I got to wait in line for another 45 minutes to get a freaking gift card that I will probably never use because the customer service here as a whole sucks. I got somewhat o an apology, but no real concern for the issue. Overall the biggest issue I have is that they could have at minimum represented that there was a modification to the gun and advertised it. This just feels really sneaky, deceptive, and even ignorant. Also, they did the bare minimum and made no real attempt to make it right.
I know that the G26 and G27 share the same lower so there was likely no real issues, but it’s the fact that they did no due diligence on there end that really bothers me.

I enjoyed my first Cabela’s experience at this location. The store is huge– very impressive looking for inside and out– with a significant variety of products for sale. Definitely fewer products for women than for men– but other than that, it was a pleasant experience. We were here to shop for high quality outdoor gear– and we found exactly what we were looking for– though at a price. Products here are top quality and top price– my new winter coat came in at around $ 200– but I know it will last forever. The service was great– very friendly and helpful in finding items we needed– and my husband and I both left happy and satisfied with the experience. We would definitely return if we needed similar items in the future.

Where to begin??? We first found this place when shopping for handguns. We purchased our Sig Sauer’s (2) spent about $ 2500 with ammo, guns, and some other goodies. They have a wide selection, however they are a bit over priced. Some times you get a good sales associate and sometimes you get the one who hates his, life and his job and would rather blow his brains out with the gun rather than show it to you.
We went to Cabela’s this weekend to get some 9 mm ammo and the hubs wanted to get the new AR Rifle. We pulled a number (which is sometimes useless because some don’t follow the numbers, they simply help who is standing there) our number was called and we got lucky and had Anthony S. as our sales associate. GREAT guy, knowledgeable, patient, friendly and not pushy at all! We originally went in for the Rifle and 2 more hand guns for our carry conceal. We ended up spending about $ 1100 and didn’t purchase the 2 pistols.
I lost the desire to continue shopping when one of the sales associates, I believe his name was Nick, very rudely interrupted the gentleman who was helping us to yell about not answering the phones and how proceeds to complain that hes helping people to and shouldn’t have to answer all the calls every time the phone rings. Very unprofessional and rude to do this in front of customers!
My personal opinion, if you have a customer that you are helping you DO NOT leave that customer to answer the ringing phone you let that damn phone ring!!! 9 out of 10 times the customer in front of you will be making purchase, NOT the caller who probably wants to know what time you close!!! Nick I hope you read this for your sake! So because of Nick’s inability to ignore the ringing phones and unload his frustration on the wonderful sales associate who was helping us, Cabela’s lost an additional $ 1400 in sales.
On and ending note, you really have to be a very patient person to shop here unless you go when they are extremely slow and not busy at all! 3 stars for the huge selection of things (not gun safes or cabinets though) and only 3 stars do to the lack of wonderful customer service and organization on how to handle customer service.

Sad to report, I had a really bad customer experience at Cabela’s gun section. I don’t live too close to their Hoffman Estates store, but looking for a used Mossberg shotgun and hearing they had one, decided to take the trek out there. I purchased it, and was given a time to pick it up the next day… and even though the sales clerk was less than friendly and had a most well-​rehearsed resting b*tch face, I left happy.
So next day, I drive out there to pick up the shotgun, and encounter a waiting line in which I stood for literally 40 minutes (with my wife and handicapped son waiting in the van). The line itself needs to be explained. They got 3 stalls to process customers, some buying guns (which means doing all the paperwork, which spells at least a 15 min. transaction), and some picking up their purchase after the waiting period (which takes significantly less time). An efficient system would be to break up these 2 processes into separate lines, but I digress. Main point here, although not a whole lot of people in line, there was a whole lot of wait involved.
I’m finally the next guy up in line, and there’s miss resting b*tch face again, who wobbles up to the line, asks who’s picking up. Me and a couple other guys. She asks for our FOID cards, is not even gone 3 minutes, comes back and tells me the state hasn’t cleared my background check so I can’t pick up that day… says it matter-​of-​factly, like no big deal. What?! You couldn’t have done your little 3 minute check more frequently than every 40 minutes, so people don’t have to stand there like it’s a shoe store in the soviet union?
When I asked her to clarify about the delay, she huffs and puffs like all bothered, then tells me I’m not the only one facing this, that the state has been slow lately. Ok, so you couldn’t tell me this yesterday, to call ahead and confirm that the state cleared, rather than having me drive out there 40 min. each way and stand in a 40 min. line? Dear readers, I tell her this, and she couldn’t give a flying frag! It was just epic with that arrogant bitchy expression of hers and the terse responses. Right then and there, I’m like no, I’m not giving them my business, asked to cancel my order… which btw took another 20 minutes or so, what a joke. Of course the b/​g check is non-​refundable, so I paid $ 4 for all this fun, such a bargain!
Anyways, so I was pretty pissed about the whole thing, I tell her thanks for wasting 3 hours of my time as I’m walking away from the counter, and she’s like «You’re welcome, have a nice day-​ee-​aye!», all sarcastic-​like. Whoops no, I don’t think so. I walked up to another counter, asked for the manager. The manager seemed a fairly nice guy, was really apologetic after he heard my tale. He offered me a $ 25 gift card for my hassle, and then said he’s going to go have a little chat with miss pleasant. Here’s hoping he gave her a well-​deserved reaming, but honestly, I have my doubts. I’m looking at reviews here form 2012 with similar complaints about slowness and poor customer service. If Cabela’s hadn’t fixed these issues in all this time, I just don’t know. Nope, I will not be shopping at this place ever again.