AR-15 BS Thread

Mine charges $70

 

Yeah, that is a little high. We charged $20 as well.

 

Yeah, he caught me off guard when I had something shipped to him. What am I gonna do, it was there.

He used to charge $30 which is realistic. I will be looking for another place to do transfers.

 

Ouch. My local shop does $40, only use them once. I have a buddy who charges $20, I now have everything sent to him.

 

Cant you trespass the guy?

 

We charge $25 for the first gun and $15 for any subsequent ones in the same shipment.

Sometimes I wish we didn't do transfers at all.

 

I don't disagree, but cheap or free FFL transfers have also made me continue to do business at places. I had 2 places that did free FFL transfers for me. One of them closed (not b/c of their free transfers) but the other I make sure to give my business to for all other purchases if they have the item I need. And I always check before I get it somewhere else and have sent much business to them also. I know that may not be the norm and some people will just use them for free transfers and never spend a dime with them but I have to believe there are others like me that they get much more revenue from b/c of their transfers getting us in the door.

 

Fair policy IMO. As for the dick head, I'd ask him to take his business elsewhere, or tell him the fee just went to $50 each item haha

 

My LGS transfer fee is 40 for non members 20 for members indoor range facility membership $30 a month so 2 range trips a month would equal cost of membership. Discounts on ammo etc to.
It's 5 min from the house and all the employees are super cool.

Based on the area/market inventory is mostly complete rifles. No real separate lower/upper inventory and no aero precision. So usually just have my lowers transferred in

 

You'll get a few people like that but you'll also get people who pick up a $40 accessory and say "well it's $5 cheaper at [big box store 2 miles away]." When you respond "we're a local business that doesn't have the buying power they do so unfortunately I can't do anything about the price but I would love to make every other aspect of your visit top notch" they sneer and walk out the door. In my experience these people were more common than the people who have loyalty to local businesses.

We were in a pretty competitive location too. We were a gun shop and range within 5 miles of 2 big box outdoors stores and another local outdoors store. Employees at the other local store were cool and we used to give each other a heads up on sketchy buyers (on multiple occasions if we declined a sale they would go straight there and vice versa) and send business each other's way if we didn't have something in stock or if they had someone that wanted to shoot before buying (we had a great rental selection and they had no range). Good luck getting any help at the big box stores and if you do their employees can't tell you the difference between a Glock G19 and G19C even if they were holding one in each hand. Seriously. I actually had that happen.

When Gander Mountain down the road had their big closing sale we had people come into the range and say "I just got this at Gander for 70% off and I want to shoot it on your range" only to find that our normal price was $15-20 cheaper than Gander's "70% off" price.

 

Most of the local gun shops around me charge between 60-70 bucks for the transfer fee and the paperwork submission to TBI. I have one pawn shop that does my personal transfers for 10 bucks (military, police or first responder). About once a year, I will throw the owner a bone and buy a gun through the shop, but most of the time, I buy online and have it shipped in.

 

Our transfer fee is also $40 but we are really close to online pricing on guns, in a normal year we tend to do more special orders for customers than transfers because of our pricing and distributors, we’re the #2 dealer in our state by volume despite not having an online store.

 

It's sad but probably true this is the norm. Esp with all the new gun owners who don't see gun ownership as a community but more just look at what I have mentality.
My local store 5 mins away from my house has no issue inflating prices. They are fairly large operation with a range and big box store prices. If I want something I go to the place that does my ffl transfers b/c they have almost everything at fair prices. It's 45 mins away but they treat me right. I will always call them before I order anything that needs to be transferred to see if they have it first. If they do, they get my business even if it's more than the online price bc I know my money helps then stay around and continue to treat me well. Most cases they will the match the price if they can. I know with any hobby there will be the entire gambit of types of individuals in it and with ours the more the better in my opinion b/c its only a good thing have more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens no matter what their shopping personality is, but obviously my goal is to surround myself with gun people who treat it like a community rather than a status symbol.

There are people who own nice cars....and then there are car guys (parallel reference)

 

A former Marine opens a gun shop in one of the local strip malls. We have a local reserve base here, so you figure the guy would try to cater to those guys, local first responders, police and retirees. I walked in and the first thing I noticed was that not a single staff member of the 5x sitting behind the counter got up to help me. Finally, the owner comes around to show me the handgun I asked to look at. As I was looking it over, I inquired if they gave a military discount .....NOPE. Then I asked if there was a military discount on transfer fees .....NOPE. I asked him about the staff sitting behind the counter, and why did they only get up to assist his female customers, but could not be bothered to assist me. He looked at them, and there was dead silence. I handed him back the handgun, told him thank you for his time and informed him that he would never see me in his establishment again. This was 9 years ago. My cut is this. If you are going to charge MSRP for everything, you must not want to sell a whole lot. Sure, you will get the one off customer, but you will never get the community behind you and repeat buyers. I sure as hell will never go out of my way to give you my business, when you could care less about screwing your bothers and your community. And I will go out of my way to direct business elsewhere.

 

We don’t do any discounts besides the blue label program, but that’s because our markup is that low.
My boss is a firm believer in the customer isn’t always right and he backs it up, we had a customer demand 20% off a pistol because it was a display model and when he told them no discount and they started whining he told them they were welcome to leave and if they had that attitude we would be happy if they stayed away.

 

Snagged an aero m4e1 blem stripped lower for 92 shipped. Time to start another build I guess.

 

ZERO likes for this

 

I think the one i use is $35

 

Yeah, I get you gotta make an buck, but it's ridiculous.