Golden Trigger charged me $16 to adjust rear sights on G19!

[GunMan21]

The guy owns a business and you decided to take him up on his services. Why wouldn't you be charged?

Not saying it has to be free, but FYI the greatest doctors and surgeons in the world dont get paid almost a dollar a second. And i mean it was literally 20 seconds......$5 would have been reasonable since he has the skill and equipment i dont have.

To everyone else, no i did not buy the glock from him. I did however buy a Taurus 917pt from him over the summer. It was the worst gun ever. Looked beautiful but shot like crap. A couple days later, after i got to shoot it, i went back to him to see if he could help me. he offered to buy it back for like less than half what he sold it to me for. I had shot 30 rounds through it, thats all.

Now keep in mind, this guy owns his own business, he doesnt have some giant corp ruling down on him, telling him what to do. he could've helped me out, i offered to buy a more expensive gun, return the taurus and pay the diff, so he wouldve mad even a couple extra hundred dollars off me, instead he was a jerk.

A couple months later, i went to cabellas....they offered me 3/4 what a paid for it! I love cabellas now and hate golden trigger haha! since then i have bought hundreds of dollars worth of stuff from cabella's that couldve went to a local business...o well!

[jerkin]

Dealers should do everything for nothing and smile while they are doing it too.

So you're saying that if I buy a $500 glock from you that you're going to charge me to move the sight if it's off?

[mojollnir]

This business provided a service to you, that you were not capable of doing for yourself. Be greatful that he was both available and capable.

Would you expect your alignment on your car adjusted for free? I guess if it was a new gun it could have been shipped back as a possible warranty issue. Mabey mabey not.

If your going to get involved in something you should try to educate yourself, and develop some basic skill sets to enjoy the things that interest you. It doesnt matter what it is, guns, cars, bikes, planes, trains, computers etc.....or expect to pay a professional.

[jahwarrior72]

that sounds like a fair price to me. people don't run a business to do stuff for free. but, i suggest building a rapport with the shop guy. the next time, he might just waive the fee for somethingminor like that.

you weren't hosed, if that's what you're worried about. the same service wuld have cost you $30 at Gander Mountain.

[ungawa]

Knowing where to put it

There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.

Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multimillion dollar machines.

They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.

The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is." The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again.

The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service.

They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly:

"One chalk mark $1. Knowing where to put it $49,999"

http://www.basicjokes.com/djoke.php?id=3194

[Seneca Arms Co. Inc.]

So you're saying that if I buy a $500 glock from you that you're going to charge me to move the sight if it's off?

First you must remember that if I sell you a $500 new Glock, I am making $40 on it. I know $500 is a lot of money but the profit is almost nothing, less than 10%. To keep the doors open and simply cover the expenses and overhead at the shop it costs me about $400 per day, so I have to sell about 10 new guns a day to just break even(that is alot). Let's say you are not happy with the sights and want me to send it back to Glock. I do so without hesitation (GLock nor any of the MFGs cover shipping) so I pay $20+ to ship it to Glock and now I make $20 Gross profit on the gun. Or I can adjust it myself and save me the $20+ loss so I would do it so I would not charge a penny as it would be cheaper to do it for free then ship it.

If I had the tools to do the job and you bought the gun from me I would do it for nothing but that is just how I do things. When guys buy deer rifles off me I will bore sight their scopes for nothing, but when a guy walks in with a gun he bought somewhere else, and I have a zillion other things to get done at the shop, he is going to get charged. I would not have charged so much at my shop, but he has every right to charge what he wants at his. The OP said he bought it at another shop but brought it to GT to get the work done. Why did he not simply bring it back to the shop he bought the gun from?

These problems will go away when all the little "mom and pop" retailers are gone, and that is not too far in the distant future. There is so little profit in the gun biz that anyone who trys to make a living off of just guns is going to be making a very marginal living (if they are good). I am thankful that I have done well in this biz, but if I did not have another skill and source to generate additional income, I would be stuck in the shop until the day i die.

[mauser]

I have to agree with the guys here who say it was fair. If you don't have the tools or know how to do it yourself, it's only fair that you compensate someone else who bought the tools, learned how to use them and took a little bit of their time to do it for you. The adjustment only took 20 seconds but how much time did he spend greeting you, listening to what you had to say, get the tool out, use it for those 20 seconds, finish the transaction, say "goodbye, have a nice day" and finally get back to whatever else it was that he was doing to make a living. It may have been 2 minutes, 15 minutes or somewhere in between. He has to set a minimum charge for that sort of thing or he'll be giving his services away to anyone who happens to hear that he works for free. That's not a very good way to make a living. If you do a lot of business with someone they will most likely start to give you an occasional break on things like that. Some will offer a free adjustment one time if you bought it from him or if you've spent money in his shop before. You didn't mention in your original post if you bought the gun from him or not and I didn't read every reply but you know the answer to that one.
Build a decent business relationship with someone and the perks should get better. If not, look for someone else to build a relationship with.

I took a Thompson Contender barrel to someone several years ago to have one of the scope mount holes drilled and tapped a little bit deeper, it was just too shallow, I couldn't understand how it got past quality control that way.
I bought it used from an ad online and took it to a gunsmith that I'd done very little business with. He looked at it, used something that looked like a dentist tool to dig out the crap that was accumulated in the bottom of the hole and ran a bottom tap into it to clean out the threads. It took about a minute and cost me $15.00 plus about an hour drive time. Now I know what to look for first and I know that I can buy a tap for about the price I paid to have him use his. It's something I could have easily done myself if I knew what to do and had the right tool to do it. I got a bit of an education and if it happens again I still don't have the tap, and if I did I'd probably have a hard time finding it. If I'd break it while using it I'd have to pay even more to have someone fix my fuckup. If it happens again I'll be going back to someone who has the tool and the knowledge and pay a few $$.¢¢ to have them do something simple for me again.

Do you think you're going to have to move that sight often? Do you anticipate doing it many times for others? If you answered yes to either question then you should buy the tool and learn how to use it, if not, accept the low cost alternative. I did and I have no regrets about it.

[Exbiker]

I didn`t read through the whole thread but IMHO if you didn`t buy your weapon there why would you expect a freebie? Would you take your dry cleaning to one cleaner and expect another to press it for free?
Curious as to the line of work you are in?

[cdi]

First you must remember that if I sell you a $500 new Glock, I am making $40 on it. I know $500 is a lot of money but the profit is almost nothing, less than 10%. To keep the doors open and simply cover the expenses and overhead at the shop it costs me about $400 per day, so I have to sell about 10 new guns a day to just break even(that is alot). Let's say you are not happy with the sights and want me to send it back to Glock. I do so without hesitation (GLock nor any of the MFGs cover shipping) so I pay $20+ to ship it to Glock and now I make $20 Gross profit on the gun. Or I can adjust it myself and save me the $20+ loss so I would do it so I would not charge a penny as it would be cheaper to do it for free then ship it.

If I had the tools to do the job and you bought the gun from me I would do it for nothing but that is just how I do things. When guys buy deer rifles off me I will bore sight their scopes for nothing, but when a guy walks in with a gun he bought somewhere else, and I have a zillion other things to get done at the shop, he is going to get charged. I would not have charged so much at my shop, but he has every right to charge what he wants at his. The OP said he bought it at another shop but brought it to GT to get the work done. Why did he not simply bring it back to the shop he bought the gun from?

These problems will go away when all the little "mom and pop" retailers are gone, and that is not too far in the distant future. There is so little profit in the gun biz that anyone who trys to make a living off of just guns is going to be making a very marginal living (if they are good). I am thankful that I have done well in this biz, but if I did not have another skill and source to generate additional income, I would be stuck in the shop until the day i die.

This. I adjust sights for free- but only if you're a previous customer or bought it at my shop.

[nlcrsn]

As nice as free is, you get what you pay for. How long did the discussion about this 20 second adjustment take, from I just bought it, to out of his hair so he can make a sale. It's a cruel world, if you could do it, it wouldn't cost anything. He charges to put things together, or adjust them.