doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com shipping

builder - I did see your first post. Base on our experience, I would guess that DHL procedures allow a DHL employee to be alone with highly insured packages who then plunder the boxes and send them on their way.

I will use anyone (even UPS) before I would ever use DHL again.

--shinbone

Let's face it. Anytime you ship something you take the high, let me rephrase that, very high risk of losing it. You are better off taking a weekend off and just driving it to it's destination. Otherwise you are probably going to lose it. There are too many good smiths, rebluers, engravers, or whatever somewhere in your neck of the woods. Or at least in your part of the country. So, drive it there or lose it forever is pretty much the standard.

And for those of you who think you are going to BUY a gun from a dealer, have it arrive as was described, PLUS have it get there safely, well, you must be a blond. Good luck.

well, i'm not blond. i'm mostly gray and largely bald (and i didn't get to this point by being stupid) but i've bought quite a few from dealers. they've all arrived safely and all but one or at the most 2 were exactly as described if not better. i've taken to using gunbroker instead of wasting my money on consignment sales or taking a thrashing economically trying to sell them at gun shows and so far the 6-8 i've sold have all gotten there in perfect condition and not a single one has been rejected. and i can't drive from FW to seattle (the furthest sale) and back in a weekend and don't want to be in a car with anyone who tries.

i don't know what experiences you're using as a frame of reference but considering the thousands of guns going across the country by common carrier i doubt they're the norm. the horror stories stand out in everyone's mind, while the thousands of times things go right don't even get brought up.

That's a good example, fnb25, but with all due respect, living in Texas, I can't believe with all of the gun shows there in Texas you would have to trade in Seattle. And not some place closer. What about the Fort Worth show? If I go to the Louisville show, from here it is about 100+ miles. Tony Galazan, Dave Riffle, and scores of others are there. Even Oscar Gaddy was there. If you just had to due business in Seattle, from my caculations you would be about 1500 miles, give or take, from Seattle. You get in the car on Friday afternoon and you are in Seattle late Saturday night. Do your business Monday morning and are back home Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. So you miss a few days work. (Or, you do get a vacation, don't you?) That's a lot better than losing a gun worth thousands of dollars by shipping it. We have heard from dozens of others on here who paid thousands of dollars for a gun only to end up with a Harrington and Richardson single shot that was run over with a towmotor. Then they are screaming for a lawyer and they're going to sue somebody. In the meantime, many people sit on here thinking, "Bucket and a mop to aisle five!! Bucket and a mop to aisle five!!" It is only going to take that one time. And all the money someone makes or saves goes down the drain.....p.s. Las Vegas is only 1200 miles from Dallas/ Fort Worth.

I wouldn't use DHL...EVER... over the Holidays I had 2 phone calls from people over 2 miles away from our house stating that their door-bell rang, they came to the door, a DHL person handed them a package, he turned and went back to his truck...when the homeowners saw that the package was not theirs,they ran toward the truck waving their arms telling them to stop.... in each case the driver sped up out of their driveway and out of sight..
Luckly these people (which I didn't know) looked me up in the phone book and called me...the ONLY thing common with all our addresses was the TOWN's name...... I called the 'local' DHL office to complain...it was like taking to a zombie....DON'T SHIP ANYTHING WITH DHL..........-Doug

I advise my clients to use registered mail only. Everytime that it changes hands throughout it's travel, it must be sighned for.

Even after my recent misadventure with them, I will probably continue to use USPS registered mail with insurance. Even though it was late, the gun arrived in perfect shape and the post office people were very helpful in finding the package.

well, jimmy, seattle is 2200 miles from FW, not 1500. the gas tab would have been $440 on a gun costing $650. and besides that, as far as i'm aware it wouldn't even be legal for me to drive to washington state and sell a gun to an individual. it'd still have to go thru a dealer. and there was no point in going to show after show trying to sell a custom mauser 35 whelen that was stocked and configured to look like a pre-wwi brit express rifle. that kind of stuff doesn't sell around here.

you do it your way and i'll do it mine.

For a $650.00 gun that would be fine to take the chance, but if you read my posts I said guns worth "thousands of dollars". Meaning three, four thousand or up to ten thousand dollars or more. Someone shipping a gun like that- they'll be lucky if it's never seen again. We read from people on here all the time who have a gun shipped from overseas that they paid several thousands of dollars and it isn't near what was described. Then they want to sue some guy in New Zealand or someplace. Or they have one shipped just across the states and never see it again. Or it arrives broken in half because of some gun hater who works for the mail service. If I had a rare gun that was worth a lot of money, I'd drive it to Seattle and be back in the time I said. Or, I would do business closer or just chalk it up as never finding the gun I wanted. I would even take less money selling it to someone near me than taking the chance of never getting a dime for it because it got lost or stolen. And you're right. To each his own. But it won't be long before someone will be on here again hollering, not to trust a dealer because he rips people off. Or that his gun got stolen. But, to each his own.