Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire You're in a store and someone walks in to sell a gun you want.......

i agree and anyone threatens to throwm me out will never get my business again

I would have told the seller I wanted the gun, then asked the store owner how much to do the transfer. Win-win-win.

I keep thinking of someone going onto a carlot and offering to buy a customer's trade in for what the dealer offered the customer for it. You'd probably get asked to leave pretty fast.
You're at someone else's place of business, trying to take their business away from them.

would you guys hang around a car lot and offer $100 more than a dealer paid for a trade in? Would you hang around a restaurant and offer 50 cents more for what the owner paid for his steak? If you saw how much the man in a clothing store paid for his suits would you offer $5.00 more? At the feed store when you saw the price of hay bales would you offer an additional quarter? If the jewerly store owner paid $400 for a diamond ring would you expect to get it for $425?
Most businesses need 20% minimum to stay in business. Some like the jewerly store markup 200%! My friend at a local gun shop says 25% markup on guns is normal. That makes a $725 gun over $900. Unless you own a business you have no idea what you are talking about.

Serendipity. The guy just happened to be there. It's not like he was camped out in the store trying pick off sellers as they walk in the door.

The store owner is short sighted. Does anyone usually just buy a gun?

"How about a scope (gun case, reloading dies, powder etc. etc. ) to go along with that?"

Make a customer for life, or piss one off that never returns.
It's a free country.......

I think you did the right thing by not stepping in. That being said, if any dealer, salesman, proprietor-whatever you want to call them, ever threatened to throw me out over something like this, they would never see one red cent of my money ever again, and I would go out of my way to let everyone I knew know what an azzwipe this guy really was. There's ways to make business, and there's ways to keep satisfied customers coming back, and this wasn't one of them.

I don't have a problem with a dealer having a good markup, but the language and comment about kicking him out of the store would cost him in the long run. You don't make money off the customer the first time he comes into the store, you make it off him for years; every time he comes into the store. Who buys just one gun?

Dealer had the opportunity to buy the gun and low balled the seller. Seller turned to DJ and said, "do you want to buy this gun?", and the majority here say it's wrong to say, "Hell yes, I'll buy it!"
Dealer took the deal off the table when he low balled the seller.
I have alot of gundealer friends but I'm not queer for any of them. Business is business and an offer to sell is an offer to sell.
My dealers have profited off me big time so they wouldn't think of throwing me out the door.

i'am with T Lee on this one ,and the guys that get most of my money deal,and they get respect and friendship from me and recomendations .

quite often its a personality thing,for example ,i walked into this store for the first time,started talking to owner,walked out with a sav carbine and stith set up for under 500.oo he now saves all his savages for me and i buy,seems like he wants to sell guns

. Coming from a store owners perspective which I am. This would get you asked never to come back. He did not lowball the seller he was simply buying the gun as cheaply as possible which is how you stay in buisness. I cannot give the same for a gun as you can because I have hundrends of thousands of dollars in overhead and I have to charge tax plus background fees. Once these are added the gun I just lowballed I might make a 15 to 20 profit which is alot on a gun these days with gun broker and buds gun shop around. Now with that being said I would not have told you I would have kicked your butt out even though I would have. I also would have sold you the gun at a discount since you watched me buy it to keep good relations. Also if I would have not got the gun bought I would have told you that it was okay for you to buy it. This happens alot and generally the customer does the right thing and I will remember that in future negotiations with that customer. I have had people sit in the parking lot till after the deal and I don't agree with that either since around 80 percent of customers will come back in the next hour or so and sell it to me just another part of the buisness. They usually go home and tell their wifehe wouldn't give me enough for it and she sends his ass back up to the store. Not trying to rant just giving another side to look at.

That's a quick turn around.

Did the store owner check the gun into his FFL book?

Then call to make sure then SN was clean?

btw, I think you did the right thing but the owners threat to you was crass. I would have walked out and not come back.

I certainly wouldn't be doing business with a guy that threatened to throw me out of his place....I work to hard for my $$$to deal with rudeness.

As an example there is an Army/Navy store 1 block from my office and many a day on the way back from lunch I'd stop in and chat with the owner...bought 3-4 Case knives and a Ruger pistol from him...one day I go in and the owners over by his register looking at a clipboard and I ask about the caliber of a nice wood blue Ruger 77 behind the counter, he looks up and say .25-06, so I look a second or two longer and say how much are you asking for it? He snaps his head up and angrily says It's XXX DOLLARS WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO BOX IT UP FOR YOU? I simply said no thanks, and walked out! That was 4 years ago and although going by the place 3-4 times a day, 5 days a week I haven't and won't ever set foot back in the place! He lost 2-3 guns sales a year, probably 10-20 knife sales and I tell everybody i get a chance that he's a jerk!

Mike

When I ran the store and there was someone around trying to short stop a deal I wasn't happy. And turning a gun quickly just because someone was there and saw it go down is not always a given either.

I had lots of customers I had a BOLO for certain weapons and I could get full price the next day, why would I give away profits because some chute rooster happend to be hanging around that day. The guy knows his business...let him be. Buy it or not.

Those mud butts were the same guys that would brag about ripping off their dead buddies widow for a 101 or or BT-99...sad examples. We'd always offer fair prices even to someone who didn't know what they had.

I have been in a gun shop many times, almost every time, when someone comes in to sell a gun. I have NEVER interfered in any way with their dealings. I mostly go to the farthest neutral corner and let them conduct business.
In the case with DJ, the seller initiated the intent to sell to DJ after he refused to accept the dealers offer.
Makes a big difference.
Not hard to understand.

Your manners far outshine the store owners. Unfortunately his attitude seems to be that of many gun shop owners nowdays. Not someone I would do business with nor recommend to others. Gun/pawn shops rely on repeat customers business, that is not how your get it. GW

Just because he refused the dealers first offer doesn't mean the negotiating was over as you can see the dealer got the gun didn't he. Go your local gun shop and try this see how far it gets you. I know other dealers that go ape shI when this happens I mean like fighting mad. It happens but it is usually the guys you don't want hanging around anyway the ones who don't want anyone to make a dime off of them

The dealer should have been more greatful for your courtesy you were the better man and handled yourself well

During the negotiating with a customer, I would remind them that If they sold to me they were off the hook for anything that might happen with the gun after I ran it thru my books. They might be able to get $50 more selling to some stranger on the street, but when the cops came looking, they'd have some splainin to do.

Actually, it does mean the negotiating was over... an offer to sell, a price offer to buy and a refusal to accept the offer and that ends it. Negotiations over. Then he offers it for sale to DJ who is standing there, starts a new negotiation. Whose ass should be booted, if you are into that sort of thing, now?
Like I said, I never interfered with a transaction before... and you still don't understand.

At this point I would have just smiled at the dealer and left his store never to return again. You did the honorable thing. The only thing I wish you would do is to PM me the name of the store so I won't make the mistake of darkening his door myself.