The hidden side of choosing a pepper spray

So far on this blog, I've spent a decent bit of text talking about the science of pepper sprays and the results of my subjective tests of various pepper sprays. However, when it comes to choosing a pepper spray, there is an aspect worth consideration that is only indirectly related to anything about the performance of the spray itself, and that is the disposition of the company towards its customers.

Some brands of pepper spray are completely manufactured by a single, visible company (Sabre and Fox Labs are two good examples of this). Others don't seem to be tied to anything resembling a company at all (Wildfire is a good example of this; it just seems to be a brand name on a bunch of canisters of sprays floating about the internet).

Now, in general, visibility of a company is a splendid thing. With visibility comes (usually) accountability. After all, there's a company to point our fingers at. That's not always the case, though. Sometimes a large, visible company is big enough that they don't care if one person complains to them.

So, with that said, I figured I'd write up a little post that compared the major manufacturers on this score. I have sent out inquiries to most of these companies, and they have had quite different levels of (non)response.

Fox Labs was amazingly responsive. I sent an email asking some questions about quality control and the like, and within a day I had a phone call with the owner of the company! He was a little pushy/salesy, but I suppose that's to be expected. Still, a response from the owner of the company to little old me? High marks for that!

On the other hand, Security Equipment Corporation (the company behind Sabre Red), has yet to respond to the phone inquiry I made regarding the potency of their sprays (I mentioned that I had made this call in the post where I reviewed three of their products). Perhaps this was just bad luck, but when combined with the fact that they don't even list an email on their site, I'm a little underwhelmed by their customer service.

UDAP has yet to respond to an email I sent 4 days ago, so I'm losing a little faith in them as well.

I just sent an email to guardpd, so we'll see how responsive they are.