A quick follow-up on my earlier Dick's rant (the one about the Millbury store which had been out of "state forms" when I'd tried to make a gun purchase):
A couple weeks back (on the MA tax-free weekend), I decided to give Dick's one more chance. I called down to the Millbury store, and spoke to the store manager about the situation. He turned around and transferred my call back to the gun dept., where the guy behind the counter informed me that, after two weeks, they were still out of the state forms. When I offered to bring an FA-10 of my own with me, he refused along the lines that their forms were custom printed, and the form numbers were serialized to their store. I figured that this was almost definitely BS, but wasn't about to argue the point. Instead, I called around and found that the Natick store had the gun I was looking for, at a lower price than I'd originally tried to purchase it at, and the guy in the gun dept. promised that they had a couple of cases of forms on hand.
When I showed up, I stood around at the gun counter for about 15 minutes waiting for a clerk to wander within shouting distance. Finally, I called the store and said I had a question for "The Lodge", and a few minutes later, someone came by to take my call. It took a long time to get through the sale due to the stream of people jumping in to ask questions while we were filling out forms (My favorite: A guy who wanted black fly repellent, who walked up and demanded "Do you have anything against black flies"? Clerk's response: "Yeah. I hate 'em".), but the clerk got me through the ordeal. In the end, I walked out with the gun I wanted, at a better price than I thought I'd have gotten for it.
Even though I'm satisfied with my purchase (a no-frills O/U for casual skeet and clays), I'm not sure that my savings were really worth the effort. Next time around, I will definitely take my money to one of the several great local dealers with whom I've done business in the past.
A couple weeks back (on the MA tax-free weekend), I decided to give Dick's one more chance. I called down to the Millbury store, and spoke to the store manager about the situation. He turned around and transferred my call back to the gun dept., where the guy behind the counter informed me that, after two weeks, they were still out of the state forms. When I offered to bring an FA-10 of my own with me, he refused along the lines that their forms were custom printed, and the form numbers were serialized to their store. I figured that this was almost definitely BS, but wasn't about to argue the point. Instead, I called around and found that the Natick store had the gun I was looking for, at a lower price than I'd originally tried to purchase it at, and the guy in the gun dept. promised that they had a couple of cases of forms on hand.
When I showed up, I stood around at the gun counter for about 15 minutes waiting for a clerk to wander within shouting distance. Finally, I called the store and said I had a question for "The Lodge", and a few minutes later, someone came by to take my call. It took a long time to get through the sale due to the stream of people jumping in to ask questions while we were filling out forms (My favorite: A guy who wanted black fly repellent, who walked up and demanded "Do you have anything against black flies"? Clerk's response: "Yeah. I hate 'em".), but the clerk got me through the ordeal. In the end, I walked out with the gun I wanted, at a better price than I thought I'd have gotten for it.
Even though I'm satisfied with my purchase (a no-frills O/U for casual skeet and clays), I'm not sure that my savings were really worth the effort. Next time around, I will definitely take my money to one of the several great local dealers with whom I've done business in the past.