I never take it upon myself to do so without permission.
It's not theirs until they pass a background check and pay the transfer fee. No reason to get their permission. We may be a little lenient if it's a high grade gun, but for the run of the mill types, we open and verify. Once or twice, we had to tell the customer that the paperwork and gun didn't match (S/n) and we couldn't transfer it until we straightened it out.
