I ordered well before Christmas. November 22nd. That means I ordered before the Black Friday specials and the resulting large number of orders. How anyone can say that is 'around Christmas', I have no idea.
As it turns out, it was built and shipped only a couple days late. It showed up at my FFL on December 13th. So there goes your "they were swamped" argument. They were nearly on time. They said 10 working days, it was 13 by my count.
Problem turned out to be they shipped it with someone else's name on it. If i had gotten an email with a tracking number, I would have been at my FFL much earlier and would have found out the problem.
Instead, I was calling my FFL every couple days, and they would say "nothing with your name came in". The sheet that DID come with the gun, didn't have a phone number or address on it so the gun just sat there among many others.
Palmetto finally sent an email this week with the date it was delivered. With that info, my FFL started opening packages until they found it based on description. Then they cross referenced the name on it and found out that person had also ordered a gun from Palmetto. Whoever was in charge of filling orders at Palmetto put the other gentleman's name on two guns, instead of his name on his gun, and my name on my gun.
The gun itself appears to be exactly what was advertised, I am pretty happy with it. I haven't had a chance to put any rounds through it, however on disassembly everything looks good.
But I am really disappointed with the shipping mess. I ordered it in plenty of time to receive it before Christmas as I expected, and ended up not getting it until the other night.
So overall, I am pleased (pre-firing it) with the product but that's the extent of my happiness.
It doesn't help that they forgot to put the D&H PSA 30rd magazine (listed as included in the order in the first post of this thread) in the box when they shipped it. The only mag in the box was the pmag I ordered along with the rifle.
You know I wasn't going to air this out, I've had the gun a couple days and i was going to stay quiet, until you tried to blame me for not giving them enough time somehow.