Academy vs. Gander Mountain for guns (rant)

[40Arpent]

Apologies, I gotta vent. I know there have been previous discussions about buying guns from some of the "box" stores, so I figured I'd relay a little pricing discrepancy I discovered last night that makes absolutely no sense to me...and pisses me off. I'm buying my son a 4" S&W 686+ for Christmas. Gander Mountain wanted $100 more than Academy for it. ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS MORE?!?! These two stores are basically directly across the freeway from each other. And Carter's Country has the same revolver for roughly the same price as Gander, i.e., $100 more than Academy.

Okay, I feel better now. Thanks.

 

[Texan2]

Academy and Walmart dont rally make anything on gun sales. They hope to make it up on the accessories, and they sell enough of that other stuff to make it possible. They also buy in such quanity from their suppliers that they get a great price. S&W probably sells a 686 cheaper if you buy 10,000 of them than if you buy 100. Honestly I dont know how some of the smaller places compete...
There are numerous tales of Walmart actually telling manufacturers what they will pay for a product! Their philosophy is if you wont sell it to us for what we want to pay, we wont stock it! Manufacturer always caves...

 

[nalioth]

Academy is also a federally licensed importer of firearms, which helps them make deals directly with foreign factories.

 

[juwaba98]

Here's a good Academy complaint for you.............

About 3 weeks ago I go to town to buy my wife a new rifle. We're pretty certain she wants the Rossi youth .243 so we go check them out at Academy where they have them combined with a scope and case for $199. Sounds good right? Well they only have the display left in black but plenty of OD green in boxes. Ok so we decide on the display. Academy policy dictates that display guns have trigger locks on them to be removed when sold (remember this it comes into play later). So we get it boxed up and paperwork completed then have to go find a manager to "log it out" before I can pay for it. We then have to wait in the longest line at the customer service register for some reason (maybe policy strikes again, who knows) to get it out the door. So we load it up and go visit the in-laws for a bit while we are in town and head for the house. This is nearly an 80 mile round trip for us. We get home and get to looking at it and see a trigger lock, no big deal, the guy said the keys were under the padding for the gun lock. Well indeed the keys were there for the INTERNAL lock but nothing in sight for the trigger lock. So back to Academy it goes the next day. Thankfully my Dad took it in for me so I didn't rip someones throat out in my blind rage. So after work we get it out and go to sight it in. Factory boresight my @$$. The scope was off by 5 1/2 feet and took 3 shots to find paper. Then we get to tweaking and realize for every 3" or so of adjustment we get roughly 1/2" of actual correction. HMM!? Well we run out of daylight and figure try again tomorrow and if we have to we'll chunk the scope and mount one of the ones laying around the house on it no biggie. Well we shoot some more the next day and decide yep, gotta lose the scope so we go to the house to swap them out, grab the allen wrenches and the Sight-N-Clean and get to work. Yep you guessed it, scope rings are loose, not noticeably but enough that the scope was juping around and not maintaining the settings. Nice huh? So tighten it down and try again. Yeah it's still sitting in the safe untouched. My wife is hunting with my 30-06 with managed recoil loads from Remington. I might sight that dadgum thing in for next season. I'm still pissed at them sumbeaches at Academy.

All that said I'm planning on going down there to see them about a revolver this evening. I guess we'll see if they can eff that one up too.

But yeah they have way better prices than the Ganders and such.

ok I feel a little better.

Sorry for the:sign0101:

 

[kingofwylietx]

It's the free market system at work. You saved $100 by shopping around, kudos to you.

 

[nalioth]

Well they only have the display left in black but plenty of OD green in boxes. Ok so we decide on the display.

There's your problem.

I looked at a couple of Academy display guns last week, and was horrified at the battered condition they were in.

 

[TXTacticalSource]

There's your problem.

I looked at a couple of Academy display guns last week, and was horrified at the battered condition they were in.

I have to agree with you there.

Never buy displays from big retail store IE: Academy.

 

[juwaba98]

Yeah, it was actually in great condition with that one exception of the moron and the trigger lock. But lesson learned.

 

[iratollah]

I don't understand how Gander Mountain stays in business. Their gun and accessory prices are the highest around. No real bargains on anything else in the store unless you find it on super duper double final clearance.

 

[JKTex]

I don't even think about big box stores for gun buys. But pricing is what it is.

We could ask our new leadership to work on fixing prices so that everyone sells everything for the same price?