AutoShip is BACK

When we started AmmoSquared waaaay back in 2015 we did some things differently. One of those things, other than vacuum seal individual rounds (remember those?), was to automatically ship your ammo when your trigger was hit.

We did it this way for many years and only with the pandemic shortages did we stop. There were of course some hiccups defaulting to an automatic shipment back then, but I’ll admit that it was a convenience that most people really seemed to like.

Why did we stop AutoShip?

The biggest reason was the mismatch of shipping triggers to inventory levels during the ammo shortage. Before the pandemic supply chain chaos, it was easy to figure out how much ammo you were getting each month and then set a trigger based on the number of months - for example: you want to get a box every month, every other month or every quarter - they went out like clockwork. Those shipments would be filled with enough ammo to make paying for shipping worthwhile.

Once ammo became more scarce, it wasn’t immediately available to ship and we added a queue. With this in place, we frequently found ourselves shipping out packages with just a box or two of ammo because the rest was in queue waiting to be filled. We even had customers with triggers that hit but had no ammo available to ship so it had to roll to the next month. The end result was that customers were expecting a timely delivery of ammo like we had done for many years prior and they just weren’t getting it.

So we removed the AutoShip feature and defaulted to system where customers would get an email and needed to confirm they were ready for their shipment. This way they could see how much ammo was available to ship and they could make a judgement call as to whether it was worth it to ship or not. That has been our process up until this week with the re-introduction of the AutoShip feature.

Why is AutoShip returning?

For a few reasons: first, the ammo situation is improving and while there may still be ammo in the queue, the bulk of popular rounds are getting filled faster each month. Our goal is to be under 30 days for fulfillment from queue across the board. Another reason is that because of their experience during the ammo shortage, most customers have switched away from a time based trigger (ie: every month, every 3 months etc.) and into a round or value based trigger. With the re-introduction of the autoship feature, these triggers make it much more likely that when a box goes out it will be packed with ammo and won’t be a waste of shipping (assuming it isn’t shipped with free shipping!). In our FAQ, we will now discourage the use of the Time Frame trigger and AutoShip.

The last reason is the most important - we’re making it OPTIONAL. It is a feature that customers can turn on for different crates and not others. This way they have complete control over it. This is unlike the past where we autoshipped everyone because we didn’t have the technological expertise to make it optional.

There is no doubt that the AutoShip aspect of the service was a huge draw in the early days - “ammo on autopilot”. Now that we have tweaked it and improved it, along with everything else in our system, I’m sure that many, many customers will once again enjoy and take advantage of true “set it and forget it” ammunition purchasing!

To learn more about our new AutoShip feature, check out our AutoShip FAQ.