doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What would you do?

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Complement on a nice gun if you wish

Otherwise nothing


John
Quality Arms

In this situation, it's understandable to feel a responsibility towards the younger buyer. Ideally, you could have politely mentioned the pitting you noticed and suggested the buyer consult a gunsmith before purchase. This would have given them a chance to make a more informed decision. However, approaching a stranger after their purchase might be unwelcome. It's best to trust the store's expertise and hope the salesman didn't mislead the buyer. If you know the store owners well, you could mention the situation later as a friendly heads-up, but avoid criticizing the salesperson directly.

NOYB

WTFRU?

I would have educated him on salt wood Brownings after he first picked it up to help him make a better informed decision.

Talking to him - educating him, if you will - after the sale is probably worse than useless. He bought the gun, which means that in his mind he is sold on the gun. Your education would be fighting his confirmation bias, i.e., the conviction he's bought the right gun, which came after deciding this was the right gun for him. Not only would you be spitting into the wind, but you'd likely be insulting him (at least in his eyes).

Talking to him before the sale might have a more welcoming reception, but only if he wanted the help. Giving unsolicited help is very, very rarely a good thing to undertake. How one would approach the kid would be very important to the ultimate result.

The salesman feeding him a line of crap about the pitting is either at fault for defrauding his customer, if it was a deliberate deception, or too ignorant to be giving expert advice if not. In either instance, I suppose you would be within your rights to tell the store management about what you saw, assuming your relationship with the owner was sufficiently developed that he would listen to you. It is entirely possible that the store owner/manager was ignorant of salt-wood Brownings, or overlooked it inadvertently, too. It should be unlikely, but it could happen. Or they could have overlooked checking the serial number. Or they could have decided it wasn't worth quibbling over and any disclosure they intended was either forgotten or not communicated well.

Or the kid could have known exactly what he wanted and found it there, known about the salt wood on his own inspection, and took it on anyway.

It is likely a fifty plus year old gun, the buyer needs to assess what they clearly saw. There's been a couple of comments about the salesman. In a "large" store, this person may embellish, but cannot be held to the standard of a Belgian Browning expert, nor signed off on inventory.

I highly doubt the "buyer" would be insulted, but there's a chance they use comments by the misguided expert, as ammunition in a loud buyer's remorse scene in the store. If I owned the store....might have to flag mr helper, for being detrimental to conducting normal and reasonable business.

I'd have stopped him in the parking lot and educated him about salt wood guns. If as young as your story implies I doubt like hell he knows about salt wood, nor the deceptive practices of certain retailers. While I am a big believer in buyer beware, I also believe in educating young people.

To Dave's point......I wouldn't have said anything about that particular gun. But I would tell him how to discern a salt wood gun and what the end result of not dealing with the salt is. And how much it costs to deal with it properly.

I think we have an idea why the gun was priced as "nicely" as you suggest. Which means someone in the store knows it is a salt wood gun.

I dare say every one of us who enjoy this site have purchased the firearms education we have with our personal hard-earned money one firearm at a time.

I was lucky enough to have people like CJO and Chris Dawe teach me a lot. For which I am ever grateful.

As well as members here like PA24.