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

[TrashcanDan]

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.

"I know it was here last week for a water pump, but that rear tire I've been putting air in every week for the last year is now flat. You had it last, so it must be your fault"

Not gonna miss that shit.

 

[appraiser]

"I know it was here last week for a water pump, but that rear tire I've been putting air in every week for the last year is now flat. You had it last, so it must be your fault"

Not gonna miss that shit.

 

[Mark from MA]

My FFL I pay a few bucks extra for transfers. He asks for 20, I give him at least 30. The savings in gas and hassle is well worth that.

A) He's 3 minutes from my house and open most times when I want an appt.
B) Hes easy to deal with in MA........like having the Mill at my doorstep.
C) I want to make sure he stays in business as much as I can help it.

I always check to see if he has something i want in stock, and would definately pay the few bucks extra if needed.
Having a good FFL 20 mins closer than my nearest Wal Mart is a blessing. Im not used to that convenience in my neck of the woods.

 

[mousegunfan]

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.

Name another product where you can't have it delivered to your house. Name another product where there is a law forcing you to use a in state store.

I support buying local. But sometimes they can't get what you want. Personaly I always ask if they can get it first.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

Name another product where you can't have it delivered to your house. Name another product where there is a law forcing you to use a in state store.

100% true.

We are fortunate shops understand this and don't take the position of "We sell product, we don't rent out use of our license".

 

[LTCRN]

How long does the process usually take, fifteen minutes, thirty at most? So the potential per hour revenue of doing transfers can range from a low of $40 / hr. to a high of $200/ hr., depending on how fast the transaction proceeds. Unless the shop is busy, like on the weekends, I would think that any revenue is better than no revenue at all. The potential for additional revenue in the present and future, is always there to, depending on the attitude of the owner or clerk.

 

[Mesatchornug]

How long does the process usually take, fifteen minutes, thirty at most? So the potential per hour revenue of doing transfers can range from a low of $40 / hr. to a high of $200/ hr., depending on how fast the transaction proceeds. Unless the shop is busy, like on the weekends, I would think that any revenue is better than no revenue at all. The potential for additional revenue in the present and future, is always there to, depending on the attitude of the owner or clerk.

Until someone drop ships something to your shop without telling you it's coming, shows up two weeks later, immediately before close on Friday, then gets delayed and throws a fit. Suddenly they're invested, and calling twice a day Sat-Wed: "can I come get it yet?" All the while, you have legal liability to protect their firearm.

Some customers are worth firing. Some, before you even meet.

 

[MaybeMe]

"I know it was here last week for a water pump, but that rear tire I've been putting air in every week for the last year is now flat. You had it last, so it must be your fault"

Not gonna miss that shit.

I’m an electrician and commonly deal with people who replaced a three way switch with a single pole switch and blow the breaker/lights don’t work and they say it’s always worked and now it doesn’t.

Don’t even bother passing that off, it’s easy to tell when someone who’s not an electrician has messed with something.

Same goes for tripped GFCIs. “We lost power to all our bathroom outlets or outdoor outlets!” Did you check for a GFCI in the garage or next to the panel? “We couldn’t find one anywhere.”

Okay, well $190 for me to have two guys go to your house to press the reset button and make sure boxes are filled with water.

 

[greencobra]

Until someone drop ships something to your shop without telling you it's coming...

this is exactly the reason the place i used stopped doing transfers. he told me people would try and have him order stuff that you had a hard time getting in massachusetts. interpret that as you may, but tell him they were ordering one thing and something else would show up. it just got to be a hassle so he stopped altogether.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

Until someone drop ships something to your shop without telling you it's coming, shows up two weeks later, immediately before close on Friday, then gets delayed and throws a fit. Suddenly they're invested, and calling twice a day Sat-Wed: "can I come get it yet?" All the while, you have legal liability to protect their firearm.

Some customers are worth firing. Some, before you even meet.

+1

Then there are mistakes on both sides. I had someone who transferred a gun to me ask me how he liked the gun. What gun? ..... I sent it to your FFL months ago.

Showed up and there it was - right in the back room with my name on it. Everyone thought someone else would call me to tell me it arrived.

And then there was the time I transferred several handguns to a NY shop for transfer. The recipient was at the shop being told "not here". I spoke to the guy running the shop who told me "I've looked everywhere except under the display cabinets". .... "Ok, I'll wait while you check" ..... "Found em".

And I never expected my shop to accept legal liability for a transferred gun as long as it was not related to shop or employee malfeasance. If I ran a shop, I would require a transfer contract covering this point.

 

[upcountry]

In AZ, it's usually $25 to $35.
But with interesting variations.
My first transfer was interesting. I paid $25, If I did not have an LTC, it was $35.
When I filled out the 4473, he said "You're all set".
When I asked if he was going to call it in for the BGC, he said "No, you have an LTC so it's all set".
They just keep the 4473, if no LTC they call it in for $10.
Do that they do that in other states?

 

[Mesatchornug]

In AZ, it's usually $25 to $35.
But with interesting variations.
My first transfer was interesting. I paid $25, If I did not have an LTC, it was $35.
When I filled out the 4473, he said "You're all set".
When I asked if he was going to call it in for the BGC, he said "No, you have an LTC so it's all set".
They just keep the 4473, if no LTC they call it in for $10.
Do that they do that in other states?

There's a law that allows certain states' LTCs to exempt the holder from a NICS check. MA is not such a state, sadly.

 

[Coda]

I have not had a gun transferred in years. I did it a few times but felt awkward about the whole procedure.

Something about asking one dealer to do all the legal paperwork so another dealer can make the profit on the sale.

The last transfer I did the FFL charged me $30, I gave him a 50 and told him to keep the rest. I know most think I am nuts but we tip for many other services, so why not a transfer?

 

[Garys]

"You're not paying me for what I do, you're paying me for what I know."

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.

 

[drgrant]

How long does the process usually take, fifteen minutes, thirty at most?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCsVOO_3EUU



Lol, it can range anywhere from 5 minutes to hours of bullshit. You are not including all the FFL time wasted on things like:

-"hay I got muh gun onlyne and UPS sez u got it 2 minutes ago can I come pick it up (5 minutes wasted on phone, while you have people in your shop waiting)
-"hay I BOT A GUN from PUDZ and DID IT COME YET and im asking you this all without telling u I was sending you a gun and im too stupid to find tracking number (another 5 minutes)
-"hay im a f***ing retard and bought a gun even though im a PP or dont have an ltc so the transfer bounced and now I hab to hab u send muh gun back so I can get muh munny back (of course the fun is if someone will pay for shipping) another 10-15 mins of bullshit just to deal with a botched transfer. Maybe more. (thankfully most dealers can pre filter this problem)
-"hay my buddeh sent a gun to you so I could get it transferred to me " (and the dumb motherf***er didnt put a photocopy of his drivers license in the box, WONDERFUL) This is the blow
your brains out thing BTW, because good luck getting that shit from the remote. Honestly I would charge someone $100 for this offense, its that shitty. This f***s up your entire
logging and transfer operations. Now you have a loose gun in your shop with no accountability. This is bad juju.
-"hey I had a gun sent from retardmoron FFL to you" (and now its missing because they put the wrong address or something on the label etc) so you waste time trying to figure out whats going on etc (even though this really isnt your problem, you know the ATF is going to be calling you and burning your time when the gun ends up at mary hairnets house or something) more wasted time.

-Also when someone gets delayed you have to make MORE PHONE CALLS so they can come pick up their shit etc. (this isnt the customers fault but its still annoying) That can turn a 5 minute frame transfer into another minor annoyance, which by itself isnt a big deal but stack up a pallet of minor annoyances and they become a bigger annoyance.

-Oh lets not forget, delay guy like forgets and doesnt care, he goes into default proceed but waits too long (30 days?) and the entire background check times out and you have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN if they don't come to pick their shit up. this is rare but it does happen

So on and so forth. There's a bunch of ways that "transfers can go wrong" and "take up more than fifteen minutes" I'm not going to bore you guys with the other half dozen or so common examples I've omitted here. All of this stuff is "dealers start contemplating perhaps using the product on themselves" kind of event (I'm kidding obviously, but it is maddening).

I will concede - do most transfers involve any of the above? No. Depending on shop and their pre-filtering or pre-curating of clients.... 90% probably go smoothly. But its that ONE GUY being annoying that will f*** up your entire workflow. It is those events that basically drive people to start doing stuff like charging $50 or more, or not doing transfers at all.

The gun shop consumer doesn't understand any of this because they never have to deal with it themselves, on the whole.

The only "sure thing" is if the guy standing at the counter is one of your regulars, a frequent flyer, and is smart enough to know how to not cost you extra overhead. he also figured out
that he can stop by your shop on his monday lunch break from work because he knows its low iimpact. Those are the guys you want coming
back, all the time. They also will buy shit from you once in awhile or put a gun out to bid with you FIRST as a courtesy. Nearly all of them do, unless they know you dont carry brand X.

That's literally the one reason a lot of good shops try to keep transfers cheap because they're really catering to those guys, not the bottom feeders.

So the potential per hour revenue of doing transfers can range from a low of $40 / hr. to a high of $200/ hr., depending on how fast the transaction proceeds.

Tucker Carlson voice "No, it's not." (usually) Not when you consider the TCV balancing act. The totality of the circumstances and labor.

Fun example- a guy does 20 guns on the side in a week at $35 a pop. (this is about what people who dont like punching themselves in the dick will charge an average smoe) Sure that's 700 bucks. For arguments sake lets allocate 20 minutes per customer, including the time to retrieve the gun, log it in, and assuming ONE PHONE CALL (which it never f***ing is, unless its a frequent flier, actually some FFs can be ZERO calls, maybe a text at best) thats going to suck up 20 mins total. To deal with those 20 guns you have to spend almost 7 hours total. And that's not all at one time, which may have other TCV implications for you. For arguments sake thats 8 hrs of bullshit spread over maybe a few days. Profitable, sure, but it's not "easy". And it gets worse if you throw a few delays, callbacks, or other problems in the mix.

Also charge the cost of real estate, gas, licensing fees, utilities, etc against that and it ain't $200/hr anymore. And if you have paid staff its going to be even less.

Unless the shop is busy, like on the weekends, I would think that any revenue is better than no revenue at all.

It is but "winning" that revenue sometimes costs more than you would realize.

The potential for additional revenue in the present and future, is always there to, depending on the attitude of the owner or clerk.

Depends on the shop etc and it depends on the clients (and how those clients are curated or acquired etc) In many cases 50-80% of the inbound transfer customers will /never/ buy anything else from you no matter how good you treat them etc. You could give the customer a coupon for an asian massage parlor across the street and send the guy over there for a free rub and tug and the faggot skinflints still wont pay $20 extra for a gun from you. From a retail LGS point of view that bottom 50% pool of people is a waste of time for other than
transfer business.

 

[240Geezer]

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.

So I've never had a local ffl charge me less for a transfer if I bought in house vs an internet purchase. Never.
They're time is valuable? Because otherwise they'd be doing something else?
Like what? Rag chewing with Freddy Fudd?
Yes I do vote with my feet because throwing business at virtually anyone these days gets you zilch, zed, nada, nothing.

 

[240Geezer]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCsVOO_3EUU



Lol, it can range anywhere from 5 minutes to hours of bullshit. You are not including all the FFL time wasted on things like:

-"hay I got muh gun onlyne and UPS sez u got it 2 minutes ago can I come pick it up (5 minutes wasted on phone, while you have people in your shop waiting)
-"hay I BOT A GUN from PUDZ and DID IT COME YET and im asking you this all without telling u I was sending you a gun and im too stupid to find tracking number (another 5 minutes)
-"hay im a f***ing retard and bought a gun even though im a PP or dont have an ltc so the transfer bounced and now I hab to hab u send muh gun back so I can get muh munny back (of course the fun is if someone will pay for shipping) another 10-15 mins of bullshit just to deal with a botched transfer. Maybe more. (thankfully most dealers can pre filter this problem)
-"hay my buddeh sent a gun to you so I could get it transferred to me " (and the dumb motherf***er didnt put a photocopy of his drivers license in the box, WONDERFUL) This is the blow
your brains out thing BTW, because good luck getting that shit from the remote. Honestly I would charge someone $100 for this offense, its that shitty. This f***s up your entire
logging and transfer operations. Now you have a loose gun in your shop with no accountability. This is bad juju.
-"hey I had a gun sent from retardmoron FFL to you" (and now its missing because they put the wrong address or something on the label etc) so you waste time trying to figure out whats going on etc (even though this really isnt your problem, you know the ATF is going to be calling you and burning your time when the gun ends up at mary hairnets house or something) more wasted time.

-Also when someone gets delayed you have to make MORE PHONE CALLS so they can come pick up their shit etc. (this isnt the customers fault but its still annoying) That can turn a 5 minute frame transfer into another minor annoyance, which by itself isnt a big deal but stack up a pallet of minor annoyances and they become a bigger annoyance.

-Oh lets not forget, delay guy like forgets and doesnt care, he goes into default proceed but waits too long (30 days?) and the entire background check times out and you have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN if they don't come to pick their shit up. this is rare but it does happen

So on and so forth. There's a bunch of ways that "transfers can go wrong" and "take up more than fifteen minutes" I'm not going to bore you guys with the other half dozen or so common examples I've omitted here. All of this stuff is "dealers start contemplating perhaps using the product on themselves" kind of event (I'm kidding obviously, but it is maddening).

I will concede - do most transfers involve any of the above? No. Depending on shop and their pre-filtering or pre-curating of clients.... 90% probably go smoothly. But its that ONE GUY being annoying that will f*** up your entire workflow. It is those events that basically drive people to start doing stuff like charging $50 or more, or not doing transfers at all.

The gun shop consumer doesn't understand any of this because they never have to deal with it themselves, on the whole.

The only "sure thing" is if the guy standing at the counter is one of your regulars, a frequent flyer, and is smart enough to know how to not cost you extra overhead. he also figured out
that he can stop by your shop on his monday lunch break from work because he knows its low iimpact. Those are the guys you want coming
back, all the time. They also will buy shit from you once in awhile or put a gun out to bid with you FIRST as a courtesy. Nearly all of them do, unless they know you dont carry brand X.

That's literally the one reason a lot of good shops try to keep transfers cheap because they're really catering to those guys, not the bottom feeders.



Tucker Carlson voice "No, it's not." (usually) Not when you consider the TCV balancing act. The totality of the circumstances and labor.

Fun example- a guy does 20 guns on the side in a week at $35 a pop. (this is about what people who dont like punching themselves in the dick will charge an average smoe) Sure that's 700 bucks. For arguments sake lets allocate 20 minutes per customer, including the time to retrieve the gun, log it in, and assuming ONE PHONE CALL (which it never f***ing is, unless its a frequent flier, actually some FFs can be ZERO calls, maybe a text at best) thats going to suck up 20 mins total. To deal with those 20 guns you have to spend almost 7 hours total. And that's not all at one time, which may have other TCV implications for you. For arguments sake thats 8 hrs of bullshit spread over maybe a few days. Profitable, sure, but it's not "easy". And it gets worse if you throw a few delays, callbacks, or other problems in the mix.

Also charge the cost of real estate, gas, licensing fees, utilities, etc against that and it ain't $200/hr anymore. And if you have paid staff its going to be even less.



It is but "winning" that revenue sometimes costs more than you would realize.



Depends on the shop etc and it depends on the clients (and how those clients are curated or acquired etc) In many cases 50-80% of the inbound transfer customers will /never/ buy anything else from you no matter how good you treat them etc. You could give the customer a coupon for an asian massage parlor across the street and send the guy over there for a free rub and tug and the faggot skinflints still wont pay $20 extra for a gun from you. From a retail LGS point of view that bottom 50% pool of people is a waste of time for other than
transfer business.

Cry me a river. That's business.
Go punch a clock if you can do better.
I'll take the hundo an hour to make a couple calls, texts and look over the paperwork.
Sounds like a decent retirement income.

 

[drgrant]

I have not had a gun transferred in years. I did it a few times but felt awkward about the whole procedure.

Something about asking one dealer to do all the legal paperwork so another dealer can make the profit on the sale.

The last transfer I did the FFL charged me $30, I gave him a 50 and told him to keep the rest. I know most think I am nuts but we tip for many other services, so why not a transfer?

There is nothing wrong with asking a dealer to do an inbound for you. It is a service. And the dealers that want to do it will treat it as
such. If you're courteous and low overhead they will like you. Especially if you are "2 short phone calls guy" or less.

transferguy: "Hey mr LGS guy I have done transfers with you in the past I am buying an XYZ from an FFL in kentucky businblah precision it should come next week"
FFL: "Oh, I know them, I got an FFL copy from them via email and I sent them one back this morning no problem. I'll call you when it comes in gimme ur info."
transferguy: "Jake Deusendubah 978-123-4567. same as old num you probably have"
FFL: "Great, ill call you when it comes in and give you hours for pickup"
transferguy: "perfect thank you!!!"

Also "transferguy" already called this dealer a few weeks ago and gave him opportunity to make sale, but FFL said " I cant get that for you its BOed eveyrwhere"
etc. not a necessity but dealers appreciate this, especially ones that do more than just mostly transfers.

an even more streamlined version of this that only involves 1 phone call from the dealer to the transferguy indicating its ready for pickup. Or even
better, a mutual understanding. transferguy watches tracking, gives dealer an extra day or two to log guns in, then shows up during bus hours at FFL shop. no
phoan calls, just business.

 

[drgrant]

So I've never had a local ffl charge me less for a transfer if I bought in house vs an internet purchase. Never.

Not sure given on poor context. If you're buying a gun from someone they shouldnt be charging you an extra transfer fee.

Or you mean preferential treatment. Well you probably just dont draw enough water, sorry. I've gotten discounts all over
the place. I've typically politely refused and just given the guy the full amount..

They're time is valuable? Because otherwise they'd be doing something else?

The days of gun dealers sitting around smoking cigarettes in their shop and drinking coffee with fred suspenders fudd sitting on a stool constantly trickling out wet farts in their store for endless hours every week are mostly gone. A lot of them have lives or businesses outside of selling or transferring guns. In all but a few cases, most of the FFLs I know on a personal level have at least 2 or 3 different things they are doing. Unless their operation is what I would consider "big frontage retail" (example your shop is in a highly visible area etc and you're open 7 days) nearly all of these people have some other gig they're doing. Especially considering that guns etc is cyclical and profits are going to rollercoaster.

Like what? Rag chewing with Freddy Fudd?
Yes I do vote with my feet because throwing business at virtually anyone these days gets you zilch, zed,

If a dealer sucks by all means go with a better one. Everyone wins.

Some dealers are straight up retarded about transfers and need to pick one of two things, they either need to just stop doing them or actually charge what its worth to them. If they
picked one of the two options everyone would win. There is tons of room in the industry for different business models.

 

[drgrant]

I'll take the hundo an hour to make a couple calls, texts and look over the paperwork.
Sounds like a decent retirement income.

No, you wont, because I can tell from your post you've never been involved in this business before in any meaningful way.

Because if you did you would know better.

BTW one of my favorite kitchen table "retired from his punch clock days" dealer guys is default-grumpy most of the time, in large part likely becuase of the stuff I've just outlined. I think he is going to retire a 2nd time soon though.

 

[Bt74]

this is exactly the reason the place i used stopped doing transfers. he told me people would try and have him order stuff that you had a hard time getting in massachusetts. interpret that as you may, but tell him they were ordering one thing and something else would show up. it just got to be a hassle so he stopped altogether.

 

[Broc]

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?

Tell your friend to call the gun shop first next time.

Stop complaining.

 

[drgrant]

In AZ, it's usually $25 to $35.
But with interesting variations.
My first transfer was interesting. I paid $25, If I did not have an LTC, it was $35.
When I filled out the 4473, he said "You're all set".
When I asked if he was going to call it in for the BGC, he said "No, you have an LTC so it's all set".
They just keep the 4473, if no LTC they call it in for $10.
Do that they do that in other states?

Apparently AZ is a NICS bypass w/carry license state.

Most states in the US are not, but there are a handful where a CCW/LTC/etc "counts" as an automatic NICS check.

MA even in theory could do this, but they never would because it would cost money to actually do it. (contrary to popular belief, MIRCS is not a "hot background check" kind of
system. Plus the license term in MA is too long (according to ATF regs it has to be 5 yrs or less term).

 

[EJFudd]

I have not had a gun transferred in years.

The last transfer I did the FFL charged me $30, I gave him a 50 and told him to keep the rest.

You might feel differently about those $20 tips (and $50 total per transfer cost) if you were importing a lot more and more often. Just sayin'.

 

[btnh6668]

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 think that is an important detail. If the person is getting something odd ball for me, i will absolutely pay the cost. If im bringing in a sig 365 ill save $25 and go elsewhere.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

"You're not paying me for what I do, you're paying me for what I know."

$175 for 35 minutes of work can be a hard sell if you shop has a "95/hour" labor sign posted.

 

[Garys]

"Carrying charges my boy. Carrying charges."

$175 for 35 minutes of work can be a hard sell if you shop has a "95/hour" labor sign posted.

 

[DW357]

I think that is an important detail. If the person is getting something odd ball for me, i will absolutely pay the cost. If im bringing in a sig 365 ill save $25 and go elsewhere.

Agreed

 

[Talon3]

There's a law that allows certain states' LTCs to exempt the holder from a NICS check. MA is not such a state, sadly.

Its because mass ltc s are good for 6 years. To qualify a license cannot be valid for more than 5 years.

 

[KBCraig]

In AZ, it's usually $25 to $35.
But with interesting variations.
My first transfer was interesting. I paid $25, If I did not have an LTC, it was $35.
When I filled out the 4473, he said "You're all set".
When I asked if he was going to call it in for the BGC, he said "No, you have an LTC so it's all set".
They just keep the 4473, if no LTC they call it in for $10.
Do that they do that in other states?

It's not uncommon in NICS-exempt states. It costs them practically nothing, and common courtesy says the customer buys some ammo or accessories (typically profitable items for the LGS).

The NICS process costs the FFL the same whether it's a drop shipment or something they've had in inventory for years. There are non-stocking dealers (The Mill, anyone?) because it's profitable to move product through the system, and not tie up capital in product that might or might not sell.

My LGS is a great guy, but once I bought a funny-themed PSA lower (late at night, I probably found it hilarious), and had it shipped to him without asking first. He charged me $40 for the transfer.

Okay, good lesson learned. Next time I'll ask him to get it for me. I'll probably get it at the same retail price, without transfer fees. How that makes sense for him? I dunno.