Gun Shop transfer fees - the good, the bad and the ugly!

[Rover51]

Was talking to a friend of mine the other day about a new gun he bought on line and the transfer fee he paid for the "service" was $50!
It got me wondering what different gun shops charge for what is mostly a bookkeeping exercise.
I did some cchecking around NH and found transfers ranging from a low of free to $50+ dollars.
Now its reasonable for a gunshop to charge a person for services rendered, but at what price does it stop being a service and become a rip off?
What more service do you get for a $50+ fee over a $15 or $20 fee?
I'd like to hear from the group what you pay and why a higher transfer fee is better than a lower one.
At what level do you think the fee is just a gun shop rip off?
Yes you can call around for rates, but some people are limited by location to only a few shops.
(as for the Gun shop with the free transfer fee.. sorry you have to do the digging on your own to find them)
Your thoughts?

 

[Amputee Marksman]

I've paid from $25 to $40. $40 seems to be a pretty common charge.

 

[free]

What the market will bear. Ask the fee in advance. Free country, no one forces you to use that shop. The shop is in business to make money, not to provide a non-butt-hurt experience for sensitives.

 

[Mesatchornug]

In pretty sure @drgrant has no thoughts on this at all.

 

[Rick O'Shea]

I know a shop that says no transfers of any kind,.. he says its not worth the time and trouble.

 

[DW357]

I gladly pay $50 per transfer all the time at one of the shops at the mill. Worth it to get offlist stuff when many others won’t transfer it. Pay for the convenience etc. I’m not a skinflint pissing and moaning about spending $25 vs $50 for a transfer. Short money compared to the guns I’m transferring

 

[DW357]

What the market will bear. Ask the fee in advance. Free country, no one forces you to use that shop. The shop is in business to make money, not to provide a non-butt-hurt experience for sensitives.

Yep

 

[Mesatchornug]

I gladly pay $50 per transfer all the time at one of the shops at the mill. Worth it to get offlist stuff when many others won’t transfer it. Pay for the convenience etc. I’m not a skinflint pissing and moaning about spending $25 vs $50 for a transfer. Short money compared to the guns I’m transferring

I dunno man. That's like 5% on a Glock

Or 10% on a Shield!

 

[drgrant]

Was talking to a friend of mine the other day about a new gun he bought on line and the transfer fee he paid for the "service" was $50!
It got me wondering what different gun shops charge for what is mostly a bookkeeping exercise.
I did some cchecking around NH and found transfers ranging from a low of free to $50+ dollars.
Now its reasonable for a gunshop to charge a person for services rendered, but at what price does it stop being a service and become a rip off?
What more service do you get for a $50+ fee over a $15 or $20 fee?
I'd like to hear from the group what you pay and why a higher transfer fee is better than a lower one.
At what level do you think the fee is just a gun shop rip off?
Yes you can call around for rates, but some people are limited by location to only a few shops.
(as for the Gun shop with the free transfer fee.. sorry you have to do the digging on your own to find them)
Your thoughts?

It's called a free market you can, and SHOULD go somewhere else if you don't like the price. It's not a "rip off" unless its accompanied by shady business practices. (like some guy saying it was one price and then trying to charge you a higher one after the fact etc, or not fully disclosing terms up front etc. ) Don't pay it, vote with your wallet and operate the market that way.

The fee assessed is based on the dealers value of their time, overhead (including labor costs, rent, electricity/heat/utilities, insurance, licensing and legal fees) and general/perceived aggravation level. All factors are going to vary from dealer to dealer. Joe KitchenTableGarage dealer charges $15 because hes retired and his overhead is the equivalent of discarded coins found near a sewer in some big dump city. On the other hand a shop that charges you $50 is doing so because they've determined the time cost value of doing a $15 transfer is dog shit/poor/waste of time.

"Time Cost Value" embrace the concept a little and it all becomes clear.

Also a lot of dealers see this "I bot my gun onlyne cuz it wuz cheapah!" skinflint trend customer as a general minus. These people literally will never buy anything from you becuase most of them are too busy flinting. Ironically I have to laugh my ass off because most of these people could have gotten very close to the "onlyne" price with the local guy. That $50 guy probably sees a lot of these people. The transfer is $50 because they know like 50% (or more) of those people will never buy anything from them otherwise because they're too busy flinting on the
internets.

Also Protip: if you actually buy shit from a shop on the reg and ALSO use them for inbounds (and build a relationship with a dealer) a lot of the time your transfers, like magic, will suddenly become cheaper. Or staff might say "hey if you pick that up on X or Y at P or Q time I can give you a big cut off the fee" etc, so on and so forth.

Point of contrast- I run a small PC service/repair business on the side from my day gig. I have VERY low rates compared to avg. I still charge $65 just to show up and thats for people who are already a big customer. The one offs are $100-$150 minimum. That's before even doing any work. If they can't even buy me a whole thank (now its like 2/3rds a tank lol) of gas or sometthing I literally can't even be bothered to show up. I make exceptions for friends and family but that's different. that's not a money thing thats an "I appreciate you existing in my life and I want to do something to help you" thing. Hell in a TCV sense I lose money on all of those but I dont care about the money in that context.

 

[greencobra]

i know someone very well who owns a ffl business, a legitimate 9-5 b&m business. he charges 60 bucks to do a transfer. i asked what he'd charge me to do one, expecting him to say it was free, but no, friends and family, $50. he says doing transfers is a waste of his and his employees time and the cost doesn't even cover the amount of time one of his guys spends with the customer during the transfer. so, he prices himself out of the market but if someone is willing to pay his price, he'll do the transfer. and some people pay it

 

[Rob Boudrie]

Name one other type of store you can be taken seriously when you tell the owner "I've found an online supplier, but I want to run it through your business license since it cannot be sold to me directly and I want to pay a fee that is much smaller than the markup you would get selling an item at that level in your normal retail trade".

There can be a difference in attitude when you have found something the dealer just can't get - like one of the Lew Horton 4"/6" BOA snake gun pairs (limited edition snake gun, very pricey, more than you make in a month, but not made in Austria out of ceramic) vs. trying to beat him/her out of the usual margin.

 

[PATRON]

Time,and liability that is what it cost the FFL for a transfer. As we all know in any job time is money, and it takes time to do your transfer.
Next we have liability, once that firearms goes threw that FFL anything that happens with that gun could fall back on them.Thus having to
deal with the police,or ATF which will fall back on time to deal with all that.

 

[jaymce]

Why is it, in this day and age, that everyone is entitled to make plenty of $ except for the guy providing someone a service?

Is $50 really too much to ask someone to drop what they are doing, spend probably 30 min to fill out paperwork for you, in a space they pay for which includes rent, heat, electric, internet service, insurances, their or an employee's time... gee! where did all the small businesses, whom I wanted free stuff from go? I don't understand???

 

[Hailstorm]

Try being a mechanic. "You charged me $175 to install that part, it took you 35 minutes. You charged too much" Because years of experience, thousands of dollars in tools mean zip.

 

[EJFudd]

Putting incoming transfers of (cheaper bought) brand new guns aside for a moment, I have always felt that if Big Government wants to impose a requirement on us, they should also provide a means for that requirement to be met that does not depend on the goodwill and time of small business people... literally making the small business people do something they don't want to do and potentially costing them lost sales money.

The problem, of course, is that we would never want a Big Government "RMV" type of operation set-up for transfers.

Is the answer a special non-retail-focused "transfers-only" class of FFL? One whose primary or only business is facilitating transfers for a set fee?

Probably not. The real answer is allowing more F-T-F transfers, but good luck with that idea in anti-2A Massachusetts.

 

[Saltydog]

My LGS (Mom and Pop) charged $20 for years and just raised it to $25 because they just weren't covering their costs. I always gladly paid them $40 because (1) it was worth it to me for the convenience and (B) it was the right thing to do..;

Dig deep, Skin Flints !!

 

[greencobra]

i certainly have no issue paying, and have paid, up to $40/transfer. there's no benefit charging 10-15 bucks. what is that going to accomplish for the ffl business? chances are they'll never see that customer again. if they do, the customer thinks they're doing the ffl a favor by buying a few targets or a bag of cleaning patches.

 

[DW357]

Why is it, in this day and age, that everyone is entitled to make plenty of $ except for the guy providing someone a service?

Is $50 really too much to ask someone to drop what they are doing, spend probably 30 min to fill out paperwork for you, in a space they pay for which includes rent, heat, electric, internet service, insurances, their or an employee's time... gee! where did all the small businesses, whom I wanted free stuff from go? I don't understand???

As Drgrant says, “skinflint”

 

[Bt74]

I usually pay $25 -$30 for a transfer in NH. I DID get cornholed for $50 once......way back when most FFLs were charging $15-25. It was so long ago that the incoming TGI AMD65 cost me a whopping $400 (worth about $1500 now) . The guy got pissed because I didn't need any ammo. Fughim, never set foot in his shithole store again, and have made sure I give him plenty of advertising. Dave's in Plaistow NH. This was after Dave sold it.

 

[paul73]

$20-$25 would be a reasonable fee for any on the list item, $50 for lowers. some are known to request $100 for a lower, at which point it becomes, well, less competitive.

 

[MisterHappy]

OP - what business are you in? Do you say, "[pronoun] Customer, what do YOU think I should charge for my [insert good or service]?"

Yes, it's a few minutes of paperwork, but there's an opportunity cost to doing your stuff, when they could be doing something else!

 

[FalArAk]

Was talking to a friend of mine the other day about a new gun he bought on line and the transfer fee he paid for the "service" was $50!
It got me wondering what different gun shops charge for what is mostly a bookkeeping exercise.
I did some cchecking around NH and found transfers ranging from a low of free to $50+ dollars.
Now its reasonable for a gunshop to charge a person for services rendered, but at what price does it stop being a service and become a rip off?
What more service do you get for a $50+ fee over a $15 or $20 fee?
I'd like to hear from the group what you pay and why a higher transfer fee is better than a lower one.
At what level do you think the fee is just a gun shop rip off?
Yes you can call around for rates, but some people are limited by location to only a few shops.
(as for the Gun shop with the free transfer fee.. sorry you have to do the digging on your own to find them)
Your thoughts?

You know who secretly would like to see the "gunshow loophole" closed?

 

[hpm]

Businesses don’t exist to do favors, they exist to make money. I have no problem with a business that values their time accordingly.
A photographer in CT who had risen to fame with fashion and magazines, started his career as a wedding photographer.
At one point he decided that what you get for a wedding isn’t worth his time and stress (dealing with bridezillas etc) anymore and started responding to wedding requests with $50,000 price tags. That’s the number that makes it worth for him to deal with weddings.
He still gets 2-3 clients a year that would pay those $50,000!

 

[FalArAk]

Businesses don’t exist to do favors, they exist to make money. I have no problem with a business that values their time accordingly.
A photographer in CT who had risen to fame with fashion and magazines, started his career as a wedding photographer.
At one point he decided that what you get for a wedding isn’t worth his time and stress (dealing with bridezillas etc) anymore and started responding to wedding requests with $50,000 price tags. That’s the number that makes it worth for him to deal with weddings.
He still gets 2-3 clients a year that would pay those $50,000!

Do you have a problem with gov charging $200 for a NFA tax stamp?

It's a service and all

 

[hpm]

Do you have a problem with gov charging $200 for a NFA tax stamp?

It's a service and all

I do have a big problem with this. Government is not a business - they work for us.

 

[FalArAk]

I do have a big problem with this. Government is not a business - they work for us.

In theory they work for us, in practicality they work for themselves in order to justify their services.

Businesses can charge whatever they want, but the problem arises when the service they are charging for is mandated by the gov, it will be abused.. Revisit this thread when the "loophole" is closed and you can't get a personal transfer done for less than $75.00

 

[jaymce]

Try being a mechanic. "You charged me $175 to install that part, it took you 35 minutes. You charged too much" Because years of experience, thousands of dollars in tools mean zip.

Mechanics got it easy...

Try to get paid to make a gas tank for a 1935 Amilcar.

Or build the above into a 40 Willys and get paid for a fraction of your time.

 

[appraiser]

Name one other type of store you can be taken seriously when you tell the owner "I've found an online supplier, but I want to run it through your business license since it cannot be sold to me directly and I want to pay a fee that is much smaller than the markup you would get selling an item at that level in your normal retail trade".

There can be a difference in attitude when you have found something the dealer just can't get - like one of the Lew Horton 4"/6" BOA snake gun pairs (limited edition snake gun, very pricey, more than you make in a month, but not made in Austria out of ceramic) vs. trying to beat him/her out of the usual margin.

Lots of repair facilities deal with this because of Tire Rack, and people looking for cheap (crappy quality) parts online and then wanting us to install them

The parts markup is part of our total profit equation and the parts markup subsidizes the labor rates, especially in a body shop.

As a rule we don't install customer supplied hard parts, because if they don't fit, are the wrong part for the application, are bad out of the box, etc. we don't want to deal with the BS.

Someone shows up with 4 tires they bought somewhere else, we are charging time and materials and making them take the old tires with them unless they pay the disposal fee which is ten dollars a tire. That type of work also goes to the back of the line... if we take it at all.

Expect the bill to be a minimum of $120 dollars including weights and new valve stems. Re-setting the TPMS if required is additional.

 

[EJFudd]

In theory they work for us, in practicality they work for themselves in order to justify their services.

Businesses can charge whatever they want, but the problem arises when the service they are charging for is mandated by the gov, it will be abused.. Revisit this thread when the "loophole" is closed and you can't get a personal transfer done for less than $75.00

It's an ugly prospect for sure. How 'bout at least letting 03 FFLs do in-state personal transfers for folks once F-T-F is eliminated altogether?

No, I'm not holding my breath.

 

[EJFudd]

Lots of repair facilities deal with this because of Tire Rack, and people looking for cheap (crappy quality) parts online and then wanting us to install them

The parts markup is part of our total profit equation and the parts markup subsidizes the labor rates, especially in a body shop.

As a rule we don't install customer supplied hard parts, because if they don't fit, are the wrong part for the application, are bad out of the box, etc. we don't want to deal with the BS.

Someone shows up with 4 tires they bought somewhere else, we are charging time and materials and making them take the old tires with them unless they pay the disposal fee which is ten dollars a tire. That type of work also goes to the back of the line... if we take it at all.

Expect the bill to be a minimum of $120 dollars including weights and new valve stems. Re-setting the TPMS if required is additional.

I was surprised when one of my mechanics told me he prefers to do repairs on a labor fee only basis. And yes, I'm sure he adjusts his fee so that he makes just as much money as before, if not more.

I've now used him for my last 3 vehicle repairs. He is happy. I am happy. Win-Win.