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[quote="Blackstuff"]I use two RFDs which are <700metres apart (as the crow flies), one charges £10 to receive a gun, the other £35 (last time I checked which was over 3 years ago).

Now the more expensive one is a proper gun shop with multiple staff members and the other is a one-man-band in an industrial unit so they obviously have differing costs to cover, but come on. The paperwork is barely more taxing that than what the certificate holder has to send to the police.

£15-20 is the max i'll pay, even if i had to drive further (which fortunately I don't) and incurr similar overall cost, i'd do it out of principle.[/quote

I know who you mean,

stottycake wrote:

Blackstuff wrote:I use two RFDs which are <700metres apart (as the crow flies), one charges £10 to receive a gun, the other £35 (last time I checked which was over 3 years ago).

Now the more expensive one is a proper gun shop with multiple staff members and the other is a one-man-band in an industrial unit so they obviously have differing costs to cover, but come on. The paperwork is barely more taxing that than what the certificate holder has to send to the police.

£15-20 is the max i'll pay, even if i had to drive further (which fortunately I don't) and incurr similar overall cost, i'd do it out of principle.[/quote

I know who you mean,

Ha ha, me too!!!

The most I have paid is £40 for a transfer, my RFD has never charged me to receive a rifle.

The last two rifles I bought, the dealers did not add on any extra for postage and just charged the advertised price. The receiving RFD is a part time dealer and a member of a club I am in and he didn't charge to receive them.
Regards
Peter.

The few examples illustrate perfectly my point. I do believe that it has killed a section of the trade. Cheap guns are no longer cheap when fees at both ends are added. This to my mind is also very short sighted by dealers. Certain classes of firearms deemed obsolete, such as vintage gallery rifles, will end up scrapped.

Postal services all over the world reciprocate deliveries from overseas, that’s the agreement of that union. Is it not time, given the disparity of charges and the desperate shot in the arm the gun trade could do with, that such as the GTA not negotiate a standard amongst their members that reflects the need to use dealers, coupled with fair fees and a decent deal for the customer?

I do have a bit of a favourite within the trade who charges us GBP8.00 to ship and has been known to throw another gun in for the Viking free of charge. :)

This is how the trade used to be and I sometimes think the old school deals like this are what makes it enjoyable for me.

Sim G wrote:The few examples illustrate perfectly my point. I do believe that it has killed a section of the trade. Cheap guns are no longer cheap when fees at both ends are added. This to my mind is also very short sighted by dealers. Certain classes of firearms deemed obsolete, such as vintage gallery rifles, will end up scrapped.

Postal services all over the world reciprocate deliveries from overseas, that’s the agreement of that union. Is it not time, given the disparity of charges and the desperate shot in the arm the gun trade could do with, that such as the GTA not negotiate a standard amongst their members that reflects the need to use dealers, coupled with fair fees and a decent deal for the customer?

Could a potential problem of a 'standard' fee, especially if applied nationally and getting London disproportionately high fees skewing a national average, that it would inevitably lead to the increase in fees charged by smaller/one-man-band outfits and potentially risk them from getting the business? Enforcing a maximum 'cap' could be a way to go though to stop some RFDs taking the Michael.

Sim G wrote:Is it not time, ..., that such as the GTA not negotiate a standard amongst their members ..?

So you want to force a business to charge what you want, a 'standard fee'?
Just so you can have the convenience of using the shop you want, to receive the items you want at a price you want to pay.

You can do that by asking the charges first, then if you don't like them move on. The dealer will either keep charging the fees and lose your custom or lower his fees and enjoy your company as you occasionally you buy a cheap gun, possibly partly subsidised by the dealer.

A RFD owner will charge what they want for what they provide, if the customer doesn't like it then the customer can go somewhere else. There is not a monopoly in this business, far from it, and a standard fee doesn't take in to account the different overheads every business has.

Sim G wrote:But all along these fees have to be considered when buying a gun. A little bargain is sometimes not that good a bargain.

You're not wrong there. I bought a £100 bargain at Holts Auction last year. By the time I got it home with the auction fees, Holts shipping fees and my receiving RFD fees it more or less doubled the sales price. Luckily it was still cheap for what it was.

Fee charging is a tricky thing. I run a service based business, nothing to do with firearms, and we have a constant debate internally about how we should charge. Essentially we're selling our time and expertise.

Sometimes the things clients ask of us require little skill, it's a churn job. This we apply a cost based on the time it takes. I'm certain you could find our service cheaper from a freelancer and likewise more expensive if you went to a bigger company. Our charges take into account the cost of the person delivering the work, the office, electricity and so forth, all to ensure we have enough left in it to make some money at the end of the day.

The question we often ask ourselves is what is it worth to the client...which in many cases the hourly rate doesn't cover so the client is getting good value. The hard thing is when a client queries a cost of X hours to do something that on the face of it is quite simple but actually takes the time invoiced, if not longer. I suspect RFDs absorb a lot of time costs that we never see, everyone values their time and service differently, being a free market we can shop around.

Interestingly we're seeing a lot of clients working with us as they want to work with a smaller supplier and they're open about this. I suspect it's partly because we'll be far cheaper but also because they can form a relationship with us rather than a bigger corporate supplier.

Sorry if this wavered off topic, it drew some interesting parallels with my day to day work.