Originally Posted By: c502cid
The group at G-A-G are a little rough around the edges but have always taken care of me, even when we had an issue that could have turned ugly. Whats surprising about them is with the nice website, their "retail" location is in the back of a tiny industrial park. I was expecting a Palmetto type store, boy was I fooled. Still, I continue to do business with them.
Funny, not only am I not the least bit surprised by that, I'd be shocked if it were any other way.
Back before "The Internet" was only a dream in some Computer Nerd's notebook margin doodles, there was this thing called "Camera Magazines". They had 50 pages of editorial information, and 100 pages of mail order advertisements, usually two pages, sometimes twenty pages, of fine type, listing all these camera products. There were the actual high volume sellers (whom are still around, by the way) and there were the "Gray Market" dealers who imported stuff from anyone except the US distributor, and who charged your card when your ordered, and then went looking for the product to sell you, shipping it ... usually ... when they found it. Somewhere
Fast Forward to today. The Camera resellers came and went online, peaking during the camcorder craze. Then there was the Electronics resellers, took their place of prominence, doing the same thing. Auto Parts Resellers came along in the meantime. And now everybody does it, including the Gun merchants.
What you do is set up an office somewhere, no storefront, probably in the warehouse district and in some cases a person's garage. You advertise a bunch of stuff that, in theory, you have wholesale access to. You wait for the orders to come in, and then you pay the wholesaler for the item, who either ships it to you, which you then ship to the customer (who, let's remember, has already paid. We know this because we used his money to pay the wholesaler when we ordered. This is important ... it means your money is no longer available for a refund, so stalling is not just recommended, it's mandatory). Or, you get the wholesaler to drop ship to the customer, which is better because you don't have to touch anything.
You can make money operating with a 10 or 15% margin, which is at least 10% less than a real reseller with a real retail presence, or a real warehouse with actual inventory, can operate at. There is a steady stream of bargain hunters willing to Google their way to the absolute lowest price for anything. As they become disillusioned, a steady stream of new customers get old enough to own a Credit Card to replace them.
They use online inventory management, and the wholesaler's stock said he had 20 boxes when you ordered. But when the reseller actually makes the transaction, we find that the inventory is not in real time and half those boxes were sold to someone else this very morning.
Since there is no money to return to you (they spent it on something, probably another order for another customer, but that detail is irrelevant. It's gone, is all you need to know) you won't be getting a refund.
Since it's critical to their business model, they are skilled at stalling and/or becoming unavailable, and so that's what you get when you lose patience and ask someone what the heck is going on.
You will never win with this type of vendor. Many people actually get what they ordered on time (see above) and will become repeat customers because of the low prices. Until one day they too get screwed.
If it gets too hot, they simply close up shop ... you know where that is, don't you? It's right there on the webpage ... right ... hmmm ... nope.
No street address. Whaddya know ...
... and restart tomorrow morning, under a new name with a new, very slick webpage. Because that webpage IS the store front.
These are always the guys with the lowest prices and are always found on the online "deal finder" websites. Now you know why you never buy from the guy with the lowest listed price (it's often just a couple of bucks less than the actual "I am in business" reseller you could have bought from).