To celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, my wife and I decided to get away a couple months ahead of the anniversary to enjoy a little vacation.  10 years prior, we went to Sandals Negril Jamaica.  It was everything we could have asked for, and we have been looking forward to going back to a Sandals Resort at some point, and our 10th anniversary seemed to be the best time!  

Why didn't we go back to Sandals Negril?  Airline points!  Due to my wife's business, she had obtained a companion pass from Southwest Airlines, and had a decent amount of points accumulated.  Southwest had just so happened to finalize routes from Chicago to the Bahamas shortly before our trip! 

We made the couple hour drive to Chicago, hopped onto a plane, and flew straight through to the Bahamas!  The Sandals in the Bahamas, the Royal Bahamian and Emerald Bay, both looked amazing.  We settled on the Royal Bahamian by feel mostly, but we also knew that the resort was being renovated shortly before our arrival.  

As an unbiased reviewer, I've heard enough recent issues with order fulfillment and customer service responses that I feel the need to give an update and a caution.  

As you can see in the reviews below, some customers are experiencing issues with receiving their radio straps.  I've also received an email or two from his unhappy customers.  If you follow JP Custom Leatherworks on their social media, you can see that he's still working and fulfilling orders.  My guess... he's a little too busy for the orders he's taking, leading to delayed fulfillment and the inability to get to customer service requests as needed.  

I still believe in the quality of the radio strap I received.  I've continued to be very happy with the quality of my radio strap and how well it's held up over the last two years.  

I'm stoked to be able to write about the amazing customer service and stand out product from Joe at JP Custom Leatherworks! I worked with Joe on a custom firefighter radio strap and radio holster, something different than the standard Boston Leather and something more reasonable than the Second Alarm radio strap.  A handful of guys I work with at the fire department already have some radio straps, a few different brands, but nobody had ventured into Joe's products.  I couldn't wait to see how his products compared, and I couldn't be happier!

As a fire department, we use Motorola portable fire radios.  When we find ourselves in an IDLH (Immediately Dangerous for Life and Health) environment, this could mean a smoke filled room and/or a hot environment, we have to be prepared.  This is where firefighter radio straps are becoming popular.  Traditional placement of fire radios are in an exterior coat pocket, and the cord of the mic is exposed to the dangerous environment.  Recent changes and studies have shown benefit to protecting the radio in a holster and doing so with it under your bunker coat.  Then, the mic can be run through the opening of the bunker coat, exposing just what is needed, instead of the full length of the mic cord.  This has led me to try a radio strap in training and during fires.  

After a couple emails back and forth, Joe and I had decided on a leather type, stamps, and colors for the stamps.  I was really happy with the turnaround time as well.  All of the custom leather companies are 6-8 weeks out for custom radio straps, and JP Custom Leatherworks was no different.  Want to know what was different with Joe?  He actually emailed me a couple times throughout the process to let me know how the process was going!  I've mentioned this to a couple of firefighters I work with and they are all floored with this!  None of the other companies kept them updated.