dreadi wrote:
Anyone griping about the cost of transfers needs to get a clue. Here’s one for free.
It costs money to do business and to pay people enough of a wage that keeps them employed and happy about what they make.
It takes time to have an employee receive and log your purchase. Go over paper work with you. Submit your paper work. Give your item and log it back out. If it takes 30 minutes to do it all, that’s $100/hr. If your business takes an hour, now it’s $50/hr. If you get delayed, we’ll guess what. Now they make less per hour.
Bellevue is already a higher cost market and their prices reflect that.
Do your research before you commission a service.
I respect your opinion, but my experience differs.
I don't think it takes 30 minutes to receive and log a gun and do a transfer. Even if it does, that hourly rate is not reasonable. In my fairly significant transfer experience, it's never taken more than 10 or maybe 15 minutes of employee time (not factoring my time in completing the paperwork). The employee looks it over (1 minute), gets IDs, photocopies, logs in books, and processes it online (maybe 5 minutes of time). At 10 minutes of "work" that's a $600 hourly rate at $50 for 10 minutes. Or $200 at $50 for 15 minutes.
BTW a transfer requires no inventory purchase/holding costs and it is 100% profit margin. FFL often handles the gun for 1 minute and at most holds it for a day or two. No money invested in the product.
I get it that an FFL is an inconvenient and sorta expensive license. Most professions have similar. As an attorney with a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS invested in my law license, I don't even charge close to $600 hourly. My hourly rate is generally between $200 (standard legal stuff) up to $300 when I have to go perform at court/hearings with massive stress and preparation involved.
As for a gun store overhead, all businesses have overhead. It just varies. But gun store employees aren't making $50 or $100 or more an hour. If they are I'm in the wrong business. You're telling me that a paper processing job with a inexpensive license should warrant a $100-$600 hourly rate, just because they have customers by the balls so they can gouge them...? No way.
If an FFL had constant foot traffic and did a transfer every 15 minutes for 10 hours every day, at $15 hourly fee, that FFL would have zero inventory overhead. 1 person could do it. And the salary would look like this:
$15 every 15 minutes
$60 hourly
$600 daily
$3000 over a 5 day work week
$156,000 annually.
For a job that someone doesn't need any special significant education, and a tiny license fee, that's a DAMN good salary. Even if you cut that figure in half. So $15, for 15 minutes of employee time, that is 100% profit margin, is a damn good salary.
Now, having said that, I can see where a FFL might be justified in charging a fee for storage over a few days, or a fee for a delay, etc. That adds a lot of work. But a penalty because the customer didn't alert them, or a penalty because they can get it cheaper!? That would be the first and last time I'd do business there. I'd probably tell them to kick rocks and send the pistol back.