Russ Simpson Co

Been a customer for years. Frank has always been one of the most sincere and helpful people, taking time to help me as a poor college student, and now through my professional career. Wish there were more like him.
Mar 10th, 2021

Oct 13th, 2017

Jul 27th, 2017

Family owned and highly knowledgable and curtious these people know how to do business!
Jun 9th, 2017

Russ Simpson is s small company with a half dozen employees. Everybody knows everybody.  Before retiring about five years ago, my mother, Fran, worked at Russ Simpson Company for thirty five years, twenty of them alongside the current owner Frank (Fran/Frank different). She worked the phone placing orders and receiving them. If you're a long time Russco customer, you know my mother. I myself worked there alongside Frank in the 90s.  I know the phone number by heart as I'd called my mother there countless times over the years back when you had to remember phone numbers.I'm a Gulf War veteran who's been teaching English in China for nineteen years, married with three kids. (Yelp incorrectly IDs my city as San Francisco because I use a VPN from China. I've never been there and the place makes my skin crawl. Despite living overseas, I'm a Macomb County boy through and through)  As I type this, the coronavirus has been spreading throughout China for the last ten days. My city is a small provincial city with nine confirmed cases. A few days ago, the lady at the Health Ministry reached out to me because I'm one of the few foreigners in our small city, maybe only a dozen of us, she says "the system is backed up on N95 masks, maybe you can get some, we desperately need 1000." And so I volunteer my time and efforts to try to get her some N95 protective masks. Well the first place I think to call is Russ Simpson because I know that they carry these, I even know the shelf they're on (unless it's changed).Now, because of the time difference,  I waited a few hours after getting tasked with this request, I call them first thing in the morning when they opened.  I talked to Terry, who I don't know but who knows my mother and we have a nice chat. He tells me that they have six boxes of twenty.So I place an order for all six (120 masks) and tell.him I need them shipped overnight highest priority because the situation is pretty dire over here and if he can backorder another 44 boxes, great. Although no promises, understandably, since they are hard to come by. Terry gives me Frank's email address to pay and give him a shipping address so I promptly emailed Frank.Frank doesn't reply to my email, so I'm hanging by my inbox and stay up late waiting, I call back at 2 AM my time because I'm worried that my order won't get on the plane and am told that "Frank's not been in the office all day."  I go to sleep, wait another all day and call first thing in the morning again.Frank refuses to sell me the N95  masks. "Sorry. I need them for my customers." Well I am your customer. (full disclosure: I didn't pay, and so I didn't need money reimbursed but I had reached an oral agreement and was a returned email away from providing credit card information and a shipping address) But not only that, I'm a former coworker and the son of a woman that worked alongside Frank his entire career until five years ago. Russ Simpson isn't a family owned company. Both of Carl's sons are dead. Tom handed off ownership of the company to Frank when he retired. And you can see how "family" it is in how Frank treats me and my family when we need him in a life and death emergency. Our city had doctors and nurses treating seriously sick people with a deadly virus with who knows what for supplies. We have first responder police officers dealing with the unknown in four day old surgical masks that are supposed to be one time use only.Russ Simpson is a family owned company? Ask Frank why he backed out of an agreement to sell N95 masks to his career-long coworker's son living in a pandemic emergency and working for free as a volunteer who got "hey, would you mind doing me a favor"ed to work as a purchasing agent for a desperate city government's health bureau. Ask Frank why, after knowing her for twenty years, he chose to put three of Fran's grandchildren at risk for their lives because he backed out of an agreement and refused to ship six boxes of desperately needed protective masks to their father. Seriously, Frank what's the matter with you? People are dying over here. I hope many of the people/customers my mother made friends with over the years read this and I hope this one star review haunts you the rest of your life.
Jan 31st, 2020