I tell my son "let's get out of the house" and we hop in the truck. I hope to catch the gun store up the street before they close, but I look and we missed them by 20 minutes. There's another shop down the street from them and we head there.

We walk in, and I get maybe ten seconds to look around before there's a guy behind an island counter who asks if he can help me find anything. I tell him it's been a long time since I've been in and I figured I'd see what was new. He says there's a lot of new things and pushes the "can I help you find anything" again. I tell him I was looking for a Bren 2. His eyebrows go up. "Well, we can order one for you." I tell him I know that, but I thought I'd look around and see if I could possibly find one used first. Eyebrows go up again and this time, his eyes roll beneath them and he belches "well good luck with that." I decide I don't like the attitude and say something I normally wouldn't, "Shop down the street from you had a 14" on the wall for $1,400 last month, so it's not impossible." He gives me a flat, dead look and then a lady behind the other counter decides he's flubbing it, she needs to take a turn with me.

I can't remember what she said to initiate it, but after a few remarks that didn't help settle me, I ask her for a quote on what I was looking for. $1,950, and they can have it for me next week. I tell her I would let her know. She continues to engage, and I let slip that I have one in an 11" that I need to paper. "Don't. Don't do it." I just look at her. She goes into the spiel about the 88 days and the automatic felony, and I realize she's assumed I'm going to do the amnesty thing, so to play devil's advocate, I tell her "look, NICS does 100 million background checks a year" and asshole from the other counter cuts in, weary and irritated tone with "it's not just NICS, it's FBI." I find that I'm arguing with two people I don't owe an explanation to about what I think I might do. She goes on, and I'm just staring her straight in the eye while she explains how they're a one-stop NFA shop and do fingerprints and photos and deal with the ATF all the time like I don't know shit, or can't find out shit on my own. "We just want everyone to think really hard about this and be real careful. Pay the $200. There's lawsuits and blah blah blah." I thank her for her time and we walk out.

First of all, the guy's attitude really pissed me off. I'm not doing business with someone who's going to talk to me like that. Second, I never asked anyone what I should or should not do about anything.

I thought briefly about leaving a Yelp review, but every negative review of that place (most of them with similar stories) is replied to with a flurry of nasty insults from the shop owner. That's ok, I won't be spending thousands of dollars with them, that much is assured.

A good lgs is right up there with a good mechanic, a good Dr, a good lawyer. Treasure them.

Some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard has been uttered at gun shops.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

I thought briefly about leaving a Yelp review, but every negative review of that place (most of them with similar stories) is replied to with a flurry of nasty insults from the shop owner.

They are driving away even more business by doing that. One thing I look at even closer than positive reviews is how the owner responds to negative reviews. I like to patronize businesses that respectfully respond to even harsh reviews and make an effort to resolve issues. IMO, a well-handled response to a negative review says a lot about a business.

quote:

Originally posted by CoolRich59:
They are driving away even more business by doing that. One thing I look at even closer than positive reviews is how the owner responds to negative reviews. I like to patronize businesses that respectfully respond to even harsh reviews and make an effort to resolve issues. IMO, a well-handled response to a negative review says a lot about a business.

Here's some responses from the owner to a few complaints:

quote:

You were by far the worst customer we've had in 6 years of business. Take a shower before you choose to frequent a public location again, and that includes the ladies of the night you rated on Google and Yelp. As for our receipt practices, we do not put firearm information on paperwork outside of the legally required documentation for customer privacy, and we will not be changing that practice because you want to be petty about it. Your lies about deceptive sales practices are total trash, and we have carbon copies of our written receipts to prove it. We have NEVER marketed a consignment firearm as new, and if you took a moment away from smelling like a used gym bag to pay attention instead of taking unauthorized pictures of firearms, their serial numbers, and those of us working here, you would have heard every detail thoroughly explained to you.

You went fullretard because of a receipt. I hope your pettiness catches up with you one day.

Updated 26MAY2022: Did you ever get your gun back from the police department? Shame it got confiscated and you had to reach out to us to help prove you bought it from us.

quote:

You've never been in my shop, never ordered a product from us, and never attempted to engage in business with us. You are a Facebook troll with a chip on his shoulder, and anyone reading your reviews log can clearly see that. Yes, I was rude to you, and you earned it.

One guy said: "Great selection of firearms but the customer service is not there try buying some ammo and I believe the owner who is helping me kept getting distracted and helping different customers all at once I believe you should focus on one customer at a time and don't goof around." The owner replied with this:

quote:

As a shop that specializes in custom rifle builds, you might want to appreciate my attempts to triage with half my shop out because of covid. Custom builds can take an hour to plan with customers depending on their needs and knowledge base. If you want to sit for an hour just to get a single item so I can appear to have great customer service by your standards, try the MVD.

Another said "Over priced to the max not a wide variety of inventory. I went over to near by shops to price check and they all had better priced options." Owner's reply:

quote:

Name one product we have that is over priced. We have a ton of inventory, so it shouldn't be too hard to name something you deem "overpriced".

To his last comment, I didn't even get a chance to look at the inventory before I got pounced on, and I was too pissed off to even bother looking once I'd been gunclerksplained. The owner just sounds like a raging, agumentative asshole.

What is it with gun shops? There are some good people that work at shops, I've met a few, but by and large, they are completely inept sales people and when they aren't rude and dismissive, they're content to ignore you altogether. I accepted a sales job at Rainier Arms in Auburn a few years back, and wound up working at a machine shop instead because the pay was better, but the guys who interviewed me at Rainier as much as came right out and said that gun shops have a reputation for garbage customer service because they hire gun guys instead of hiring customer service-oriented sales staff. You can teach guns to anyone who isn't a total moron, but you cannot teach people skills, apparently.

I will always leave negative reviews, when I experience negative services.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
The owner just sounds like a raging, agumentative asshole.

And now we know why his staff is the same way.

Leaders set the tone and lead by example. And that's clearly the tone and example he's providing to his staff.

I was brought up to treat people like you want to be treated. If it goes south after that, so be it.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

And now we know why his staff is the same way.

Leaders set the tone and lead by example. And that's clearly the tone and example he's providing to his staff.

I see this over and over again, in my business. My customers are hardware stores, mainly Ace and a few True Value stores. I have been dealing with most of my customers for more than twenty years, so I know the store owners fairly well. Almost all of them are very pleasant people, nice to deal with, and the staff folks in these stores reflect a similar attitude. Pleasant, friendly, helpful.

There are a few, very few, store owners who are arrogant, belligerent, assholes. Staff people pick up on this and act accordingly; they treat customers as nuisances instead of valued sources of income. A couple of these stores have gone out of business; customers do not like to be treated this way, and it's easy enough to find a different store where the attitude is much better.

I went into a gun store years ago that I'd never been in and Mrs. Flash was with me as she loves guns.

Walked in, started to look around and a guy working there asked if he could help us in a kind of beliggerent way.

I told him no thanks, we're just looking for now.

He said, very loud, "If they don't want help, they want to steal."

I couldn't believe he said it and we immediately left.

Good God hahaha, why in the world would a man yell that out. Haha! damn he went nuts pronto!

Exactly V-Tail the folks in the first paragraph understand sales.
The second paragraph, not so much.

When I was in sales, I loved helping people get problems or concerns handled ASAP.

quote:

He said, very loud, "If they don't want help, they want to steal."

that's some highly evolved customer service

Well, I guess if you just immediately run off anyone that comes into your store, your workload decreases, as does your shrinkage.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:
I went into a gun store years ago that I'd never been in and Mrs. Flash was with me as she loves guns.

Walked in, started to look around and a guy working there asked if he could help us in a kind of beliggerent way.

I told him no thanks, we're just looking for now.

He said, very loud, "If they don't want help, they want to steal."

I couldn't believe he said it and we immediately left.

That's crazy. I'd have walked out too. I pretty much never ask for help with anything when I walk into a gun shop, unless I want to examine something behind the counter. I know what I'm interested in, likely have more knowledge about it than the clerk (not a knock on the clerk, but he has a whole inventory to brush up on, whereas I have a select range of thoroughly researched interest) and just want to see what they have on-hand.

A normal/good gun store interaction:

Clerk: Can I help you with anything?

Me: Not right now, I'm just looking around to see if you guys have anything of interest in stock today.

Clerk: OK, just let me know if you see anything you want to look at closer.

Me: Will do, thanks!

This has been my interaction hundreds of times, in countless shops. It works for everybody...frees me up to look at my own pace, and lets the counter guy concentrate on helping customers who need help.

If somebody accused me of intending to steal immediately after entering his shop just because I wanted to look around, we might have some words, I'd be gone, would never come back, and would make sure every gun guy I know knew how that place did business.

I kind of think shops that try to chase away business are actually fronts for something shady and they don't need your business.

One of Mrs. Lee's and my favorite restaurants closes at 8pm, is usually empty and, if we get there after 7:15, they tell us we can only order takeout because they're closing soon. Their food is so awesome, but I'm convinced they don't want any customers and just want to do enough business to keep the license and enough revenue to not look like a front for whatever it is they'r really up to. This is a big shopping and dining area, full of people on weekends and they close before anyone else in the area.

Last time there I finally gave the woman a Larry David-like piece of my mind, asked if they could really afford to be chasing away longtime customers when there was no one else there. I told her we didn't want to get take out and drive back home. So we spent 3x as much money at a sushi place across the way.

I work in a shop, we greet and ask customers if we can help them. Many times they are just looking, that’s fine with us.

And when a customer leaves whether or not they have made a purchase I thank them for coming in.

And to accuse someone of intent to steal because they are “just looking”, hell I’d walk out too.

Flash, did that shop happen to be in Queen Creek, just south of the airport?

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
A normal/good gun store interaction:

Clerk: Can I help you with anything?

Me: Not right now, I'm just looking around to see if you guys have anything of interest in stock today.

Clerk: OK, just let me know if you see anything you want to look at closer.

Me: Will do, thanks!

This has been my interaction hundreds of times, in countless shops. It works for everybody...frees me up to look at my own pace, and lets the counter guy concentrate on helping customers who need help.

See, and this is my experience as the guy on the other side of the counter probably several thousand times. If the owner of my music store (we were bigger than this shop and had about ten times the floor space and inventory) caught me treating a customer like that, he would have crawled up one side of me and down the other, in front of the customer no less. Hell, he did that a few times over far less severe things. I was taught to understand that the people walking in just to look around need to not be pressured, because almost all of them are potentially your most valuable customer, and being told “I’m just looking” really means “don’t pressure me, I don’t even have my bearings in this place yet, back off until I'm ready for you” He told me to tell them hello the instant they walked in and don’t say one more word for at least a minute. Don’t ask them if they’re looking for anything because that’s worded to pressure, even if only slightly. After a minute at the soonest, but preferably two, ask if you can help them find anything or tell them to let you know if there’s anything they’d like to see. It’s the same thing, but the wording is more positive, there's nowhere near the pressure psychologically and those little things help keep from scaring someone out. If they leave without looking at anything, thank them for stopping in and bid them a good day. Those are little things, they're simple, but if you execute them honestly, they're the basic building blocks for customer service. It boggles the mind why some retail locations can't nail this, or going to the other extreme, treat the customer with hostility.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
I will always leave negative reviews, when I experience negative services.

This is the right answer. I'm going to collect my thoughts, and then say what I need to say. Judging by the few negative reviews relating similar experiences, and the owner's replies and Rogue's conclusion on them, it's clear this is a pattern and they treat lots of people this way. Maybe I can spare a few others.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:
I went into a gun store years ago that I'd never been in and Mrs. Flash was with me as she loves guns.

Walked in, started to look around and a guy working there asked if he could help us in a kind of beliggerent way.

I told him no thanks, we're just looking for now.

He said, very loud, "If they don't want help, they want to steal."

I couldn't believe he said it and we immediately left.

My reply would have been "I'll see you at the bankruptcy sale".

I've found that I can turn and walk out the same door I entered.

Good gun stores are few and far between. Too many get that arrogant, cool guy attitude. Especially when the store is trying to be the tacti-cool/gucci supplier.