Eastern Sporting in Chelmsford charge £50 for a RFD transfer?

[njc110381]

OH MY GOD!!! They're having a laugh right? The woman said it took her half an hour to sort it so she charges £30 on top of the £20 TNT fee? I bought the gun privately so it's not the sellers fault but I just had to ring them to check they weren't taking the p***! I can't believe that, nobodys ever charged me that much before! Most dealers just want £25!

 

I'm shocked. If that was my local dealer they wouldn't be seeing me again. I feel well and truly bent over!

[Wsm]

£25-30 is the regular transfer fee without taking into account the TNT transit fee's.The seller usually includes the carriage fee in the price unless otherwise agreed

 

Being as TNT is on a very short list of transporters willing to carry firearms they will charge £15-20 to RFD's that haven't got a contract with them or who don't use them very often.

 

Some dealers waive the admin fee for regular customers but do you expect the dealer to pay the transport costs out of their agreed transfer price for someone who he'll only see once in a blue moon ?

[njc110381]

I don't expect them to do it for nothing, it just seems really steep. I've moved 4 guns in the last couple of months and the others only cost me £25. I've had a grilling for this moan on another forum, it seems I'm being unreasonable when I was shocked at having to pay double what everyone else charges!

 

The guy who posted the gun to me was a regular which makes matters worse in my eyes.

[Wsm]

NJC

 

Not giving you a grilling but ....

 

The £25-30 was obviously for the RFD's time and effort and is a universally accepted fee in the UK gun trade.The payment to TNT is what they charge period and the RFD has paid this out of his own pocket so in actual effect he'd be doing the transfer for a tenner if he did it your way

To be honest I'd be looking to the seller of the gun to make a contribution rather than moan at the dealer who after all has only made the £30 transfer fee (and possibly a few quid off the £20 if he's got a good TNT contract)

[njc110381]

The gun was very reasonably priced. Even with the transfer fees involved I'm still fairly happy with the total price and couldn't expect the seller to chip in.

 

I think more than anything I was just a bit shocked at how much more it cost me to get it here than it usually does. As I said, the last gun I sent cost me £25. In the words of my local RFD "if I can make a tenner on what is simply filling out a form, shoving it in a box and making a phone call then I'm happy". If there is more to it than that then I apologise, my post was uncalled for. I can only go on what I've been told.

[eldon]

Njc I don't think your being unreasonable as such I just think you are not looking at it correctly.

The title if you think about it should read something like £30 which I suppose is top wack but not silly. As wsm said the shipping cost is the shipping cost.

 

Maybe if you had had this explained or thought it through it may have been more acceptable.

If you factor it in to the good price you paid then I suppose it becomes easier to swallow.

[brown dog]

It took her half an hour? Jeeez if she made you a cup of tea it'd be cold by the time you got it

 

Is it really half an hour's work? If it is, is the going rate for form filling really £60-70/hour? Solicitors charge less!

 

2 thoughts:

 

1. I would feel ripped off too.

 

2. I think I'm in the wrong job!

[Wsm]

It took her half an hour? Jeeez if she made you a cup of tea it'd be cold by the time you got it

 

Is it really half an hour's work? If it is, is the going rate for form filling really £60-70/hour? Solicitors charge less!

 

2 thoughts:

 

1. I would feel ripped off too.

 

2. I think I'm in the wrong job!

 

 

Matt

 

You don't know how complicated those TNT forms can be.One slip and you've sent a wmd to islamabad :lol:

[baldie]

Ban rfd transfers....then the public can see how far £30 goes in dealers time, and petrol to fetch a gun from the other end of the country.Tell you what....The good lady in our shop [sheila] is meticulous over gun packaging, it can take her a good hour packing, notifing, phone calls to the other end etc...for £30 ?

Come off it. Go to a garage/solicitor/dentist, and see how much they charge an hour.

I,ll tell you what....our hourly rate would not buy you half a ###### blow-job down soho.

[Wsm]

I,ll tell you what....our hourly rate would not buy you half a ###### blow-job down soho.

 

Is that speaking from experience Dave ;)

[baldie]

Never been down soho....the tarts in Barnsley are glad of the warm drink...........

[njc110381]

I did wonder whether my rant would offend you Dave! It seems it did! Sorry about that.

 

If I was paying for skilled work I wouldn't grumble in the slightest. Half an hour of a gunsmiths time to fix or make something in my eyes would be well worth it. I obviously don't understand this line of work.

 

In my job things get charged depending on what's being done. If I have to climb a 100 foot tree to remove a dodgy limb and it takes half an hour I'll want more than £30 for it. On the other hand if I'm sweeping leaves off of someones path for half an hour I'd be sent on my way if I charged half that. I think Brown Dog can see where I'm coming from.

 

You may be p***** off with what you get paid, but at the end of the day if you have a customer in to get a job done and you charge double what they'd usually pay for that job would you expect them not to feel a little bit miffed?

 

I'm not one to make rude comments unless I feel quite strongly about what I'm saying. Some people can see my point, others don't. That's just the way of the forums I guess? Whatever way you look at it I'll get my gun. It's not a bad price to pay for it in total so I'll get over it.

[baldie]

NJC,

You didn,t offend me in the slightest my friend. I was laughing like an idiot all the time i was typing that. I went to bed laughing...

The trouble with the internet is people cant see when someone is having a laugh, or not really being serious.

I suppose there was an element of truth in there. I can see your point about different rates etc, and we do tend to look after our regulars when its transfer time, others pay £25 per transaction. Its a difficult one, but given a typical example like this one, rfd transfers are good value.

Eg. I buy a gun from the sportsman in Exeter. I live in Barnsley. If i fetch it, it will take 10 hours there and back, at £40 an hour [ my rate]. It will also cost in the region of £80 in diesel. I make that £480 and a lost day.

The airgun trade panicked like mad, when all sales became face to face only, in the vcr bill. They rapidly, and i mean rapidly, came up with their own rfd transfer system, which is just the same as the firearms one. Its the only reasonably priced way.

I fully understand your feelings, no one likes to feel ripped off however.

Best wishes, Dave.

[njc110381]

I'm glad about that. I didn't want you to feel like I was having a dig at the gun trade in general. I was just a bit shocked that I've transferred five guns from five different RFDs before this one both from me and to me and it's never cost me more than £25 from the sending end. I've had to pay £25 to pick it up too at the other end so paying a total of £50 to move the gun. I thought £25 was the going rate for each RFD. They get a good deal on the pick up and not so good on the send because of the fees they have to pay the courier. It all evens out in the end.

 

I wouldn't have an issue with their £30 fee if that was the way it was always done. It's just the first time it's ever happened!

[moses]

I did two transfers from Eastern sporting and they cost me £35 each including delivery, go figure.

 

This was around 6 weeks ago.

 

ATB

Moses

[Elwood]

As already said, see how far you can drive with £30 of petrol/diesel and then cost in your time.

[Offroad Gary]

tnt charge my RFD £12 ish, which is what he charges me!

 

i always give him a "drink" for his trouble.

 

and i dont even buy bullets from him, he just does my screwcutting/repairs/transfers.

 

happy days!

 

ps. thats not a warm drink!

[TonyH]

The charges mentioned here seem perfectly reasonable: everything costs an arm and a leg now, and anyone running a small-ish business has to work damn hard. But the RFD thing makes it very difficult to e.g. buy some of the deadly WMD-style "expanding bullets" legitimately from a private individual some distance away. Not all of us have a sufficiently close relationship with our local RFD to expect piddling little transfers like bullets to be done for free; I hardly ever buy anything by walking into a local RFD and getting stuff across the counter, too difficult to get the specialised items I want at a reasonable price, even if they're interested in helping me in the first place. Even big dealers tend to stock only the absolute commonest most standard items they've sold reliably for years and the spotty youths behind the counter struggle to understand if you start talking about sophisticated things like micrometer seating dies, or roll their eyes and wonder why you don't just want a nice set of Lee dies "just like everyone else", and you can sense the proprietor in the background looking daggers at you while muttering, Not that awkward sod again, with his peculiar requirements.... If they charged the market rate for accepting a few bullets from another RFD or individual, it wouldn't be cost effective.

It's a vicious circle: they don't/won't stock what you want, so you go to an excellent mail order firm like Reloading Solutions or Trent Firearms or Norman Clarke, so it becomes even more difficult to get the sort of personal service such as receiving FAC items on your behalf...

TonyH

[baldie]

All true Tony.

We tend to find these days however, that groups of people all jump in a motor and come and visit for all the reloading bits etc we carry, and others dont. They have usually been round all the club members too, and come armed with lists. We get a lot of buisness from large clubs such as Derby this way.

You are right about bullets. I cannot recall ever accepting bullets from another rfd....usually because they dont have the selection we do. However, i dont ever recall sending bullets to an rfd either, so i would guess very few people do it.

There is a very easy way to get section 5 ammo cheaply to your rfd....Midway UK. We send an order every other week i would guess, and never send one less that the £200 postage limit. After that its free, and the customer doesn,t pay a penny more than the advertised price. Between them and Tim Hannam,s , we usually can have an out of stock item [for us] on the shelf within a week to ten days.

All in all, i think the gun trade operates reasonably well in the UK , considering the laws we are burdened by.

[TonyH]

All true Tony.

We tend to find these days however, that groups of people all jump in a motor and come and visit for all the reloading bits etc we carry................

All in all, i think the gun trade operates reasonably well in the UK , considering the laws we are burdened by.

I'm sure you're right, Baldie; full marks to anyone bold enough to work in the gun trade. I think running a gunshop is one of the last business ventures I'd consider starting, that and a camera shop... Believe me, if Barnsley were closer instead of being slightly beyond the edge of the known world (!) I too would be shopping for your reloading bits. As it is, I'm in Devon, and while there are RFDs (incl one of UK's biggest) here, for various reasons I rarely visit them. In fact I get up to Oxford quite frequently and nip into Reloading Solutions more often than I do that big place in Exeter...

TonyH

[menial 1]

I don't know how RFD's do it for what they charge. From £100 gun to £100,000 gun the price remains the same, you walk in and say I'd like this firearm to arrive at this destination, all safely packaged, insured, paperwork all correct, hand a few quid over and walk out again, job done.

I just hope the firearms trade doesn't cop on to the real value of the professional service provided to us for what I would consider a pittance given the hoops RFD's have to jump through just to be there when we need them.

Long may it continue in it's present vein, if it doesn't we'll all get to know just how far your motor will do to a tankful.

Pete.

[sauer]

i think the important thing here ( for next time) is to find out costs exactly before you commit..

 

ie

what your rfd will charge to accept gun on oyuor behalf and sign over¨

 

what the costs of sending rfd are to post etc.....

 

if buying private and using rfd to rfd then need to agree whose liable for what, postage other end rfd etc etc.

 

but taking into consideration your buying elsewhere and using your local rfd , they need to survive too.

 

mine aint the best in the world but if he closed id bloody miss it!!!!!!!!

 

use it or lose it i say ( unless hes taking the piss and is unknowledgable and bent )

 

sauer