Vanguard quality.....

[LSThiker]

There is a person at NHQ who is CAP's contact with Vanguard. Call them. Also call Vanguard tell them what happened and tell them you want a replacement ASAP, or you will have your Credit Card reverse the charge.

Who?  All I see on NHQs website is a general email address for Vanguard and it's phone number.

[MSG Mac]

There is a person at NHQ who is CAP's contact with Vanguard. Call them. Also call Vanguard tell them what happened and tell them you want a replacement ASAP, or you will have your Credit Card reverse the charge.

Who?  All I see on NHQs website is a general email address for Vanguard and it's phone number.

vanguard@capnhq.gov

The phone number is VG's the e-mail is CAP. If they don't work let Don Rowland know that they are high in price and rock bottom on quality

[Stonewall]

So I went by Military Clothing on base to pick up some rank and they were out of the "AAFES brand" but had the Vanguard brand.

Cost difference:
AAFES:  $5.55
Vanguard: $20.50

They look exactly the same!!!!!

[THRAWN]

Threads like this make me really miss The Hock Shop...

[UH60guy]

So I went by Military Clothing on base to pick up some rank and they were out of the "AAFES brand" but had the Vanguard brand.

Cost difference:
AAFES:  $5.55
Vanguard: $20.50

They look exactly the same!!!!!

I've noticed that Vanguard seems to be worming its way into the clothing sales store too. First, the Ira Green (decent quality) stuff started disappearing. Then Vanguard brand came in a little at a time in its place. Now they have computer systems with rackbuilders (with the Vanguard brand all over) creeping in.

So weird, I'm being slowly forced to pay more for less quality.

[Eclipse]

Threads like this make me really miss The Hock Shop...

Just for the record, they weren't any cheaper and a lot of their stuff was lower quality then the official sources.

[NIN]

Threads like this make me really miss The Hock Shop...

Just for the record, they weren't any cheaper and a lot of their stuff was lower quality then the official sources.

Tom's prices were competitive, and yeah, his Taiwanese insignia with the heavy duty backing was a bit of a pain (why won't someone sell pre-folded insignia? I mean, 1/8" is 1/8".. just fold it!), but I could order something on a Tuesday and have it in my hot little hand on Thursday via 1st class mail.

[MIKE]

I don't get how the quality can be so vastly different between "customers."  My cloth stuff for the CGAUX is not that bad.  Though I have seen pins break off more than once on the metal stuff.  CAP should have just found a way to tack the stuff on to an Air Force contract from the start.  I mean compare the CAP stuff to the CGAUX and similar items for the rest of the military etc.

[RMW14]

I have to agree with NIN here. Why can't they fold and sew the badge/rank/whatever to the correct size? It would make everyone more "uniform" with everything the same, correct dimensions. I would even pay an extra buck to have that trouble eliminated!

[NIN]

Had a cadet come in to the office last night looking for some help.

Seems he'd gotten gigged for having "two different chevrons."

"Two different chevrons?" I asked. "What do you mean? Are you wearing C/A1C on both sides?"

"Yessir, but my chevrons are different."

So I had him take them off, and sure enough, they were different! (see pic #1)

Normal USAF chevrons have a curve to the actual chevron part.  CAP chevrons used to be USAF metal chevrons with the shield glued on top of them BITD (a Wednesday it was, then), and several years ago, Vanguard started manufacturing our chevrons as one piece.  The look was the same, but the 3D effect was lost (not a big deal).

But now, it appears, they've started manufacturing the chevrons without the curved USAF-style chevrons and the chevron part is, in fact, essentially straight.  It is also not as apparent in this first picture, the blue color in the chevrons is not a USAF dark blue, but more of a lighter blue.

Plus, the silver part of the chevron itself is, well, not even.  Look closely at the A1C chevrons, especially the left side, and you'll see the lack of "parallelness" between the two silver parts.

I looked in our supply box and didn't see much in the way of difference. We did not have a huge stash of A1C, and on my cursory inspection I did not see another corresponding chevron.  Which means some poor A1C in the unit has a similar set of mismatched chevrons.

Later that night another cadet came in to trade in some rank insignia.  Having recognized the chevron issue from earlier, I looked more closely at the chevrons he was trading in.  One of the C/SrA chevrons was similarly "weird" (see pic #2)

The color difference jumped out at me then, and the stripes, well, they look even WORSE than the A1C! At least there was a *tiny* bit of a curve to the chevron itself, but only a little bit more than the A1C and still not as much as the older USAF-style (I should have flipped the insignia over, as they straightness of the chevrons is obvious from that view without the colors to visually disrupt).

I'm a little disturbed that the quality of the chevrons coming out of Vanguard is slipping this badly.

Many years ago, my old Sq had a patch that had an F-15 Eagle on it. Over the years, the original artwork had been lost and the patches had been re-ordered using a patch as the guide, with the expected loss of fidelity.  Eventually, the F-15 looked more like an F-14 with a really bad problem in the wing-sweep mechanism.  This looks like the same kind of thing.

What happens when ribbons start showing up and the colors don't match from one ribbon to the next?  Like, say, the red in the Loening looks more orange than the red in the Yeager (my Loening and Yeager are atop one another. It would be obvious).  Or it becomes easier/cheaper to manufacture the bronze clasps without the raised tri-prop, so now they're just little bronze triangles with an imprint. 

We've already seen how poorly the embroidery looks.

I want to know where Vanguard manufactures our stuff. Is it off shore? Are we buying Chinese-made chevrons?  We were joking around about The Hock Shop's Taiwanese-made insignia, but are we right there with Vanguard having our stuff made elsewhere and not paying a lick of attention to the quality they're getting back because now they're getting them for pennies on the dollar?

[NIN]

Eventually, we'll have these:

[The CyBorg is destroyed]

The upshot of all this is...VG's quality stinks like a roomful of people who have just had a big meal of baked beans, and CAP members are getting ripped-off.

Those cadet chevrons are awful.

Monopolies in most forms are usually detrimental to the buyer; VG has nobody to compete with so of course they can slough off on their "quality" because they know we cannot go anywhere else for most of the insignia we need.

[UH60guy]

NIN- even the center of the propeller has changed back and forth between having the central hub/circle thingy to being just blades meeting (in your second picture) so there's yet another variant.

[NIN]

NIN- even the center of the propeller has changed back and forth between having the central hub/circle thingy to being just blades meeting (in your second picture) so there's yet another variant.

Totally!

In the 2nd pic there are two "new" insignia (the A1C & the far right SrA) and the only good consistency is inconsistency.

Annoying.

[MHC5096]

What happens when ribbons start showing up and the colors don't match from one ribbon to the next?  Like, say, the red in the Loening looks more orange than the red in the Yeager (my Loening and Yeager are atop one another. It would be obvious).  Or it becomes easier/cheaper to manufacture the bronze clasps without the raised tri-prop, so now they're just little bronze triangles with an imprint. 

Over the years I've already seen differences in colors depending on who was manufacturing the ribbon. The Unit Citation and Arnold Achievement Ribbons immediately come to mind. I've seen Unit Citations ranging from dark pine green to bright lime green. The Arnold has ranged from dark navy blue (almost black) to a brilliant sky blue.

[Storm Chaser]

Poor quality and high prices; what an awful combination!

I think it's time for NHQ to appoint a QA person to monitor and ensure the quality of Vanguard's products. If they can't deliver quality products at a reasonable price, perhaps we need a new vendor.

[VNY]

Its not just quality - its misleading.

Vanguard carries a series of $40 "Tactical Polo Shirts".. Why?  These aren't uniforms.  By using the word "Tactical" they make it sound like they are.  Members buy these "Leisure Wear" items and then show up at a SAREX wearing them. Usually these are new members who don't know any better.

And getting booted out of the exercise because they aren't in an actual uniform when probably everybody they can see is wearing something different doesn't make them want to come back later either.

[SarDragon]

Great pics. Now send them, with a non-hostile description of the problem,  to the Sales Manager at the Carlsbad address.

[a2capt]

..and typically when an owner/company/something places an order for something, there's some SQC in place that makes sure what was manufactured matches the order.

Just like the ID card being modified by the vendor at their behest, and not because the customer says "can you do this?" .. we have apparently the Big V making changes to our devices.

Yes, that thing looks awful, and even the propeller in the blue section looks just nasty.

Is anyone at NHQ actually in charge of what we order, because if we got that back at the unit level, you can bet that would be raised with the supplier and the order refused.

NHQ should be sampling each batch somehow, against a spec and reference piece. Not, "looks good enough" to one person, who may not care.

[Fubar]

Is there really another company out there other than Vanguard that wants our business? Whenever Col Lee speaks on the subject, it sounds like our contractual requirements to produce everything in our catalog, including the items that don't really sell at all causes issues with most potential vendors.