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Member Info
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Posts: 8
Thanks: 0
Thanked 41 Times in 6 Posts
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Hello. I’ve been away for some time and am in my office today but will be gone tomorrow for a matter of days to do a decoy auction in the Midwest. Upon arriving at my office a friend alerted me to the continued discussions on the forum in regards to my company.
When I responded to Mr. Eis’s complaint, it was suggested to “discuss this off forum either by PM or phone”. I assumed that it meant just that, but I see that after we discussed this, Mr. Eis then shared online his personal interpretation of what transpired. So that everyone can know exactly what transpired, I have included the complete thread here online. I would have gladly done so originally in an attempt to be transparent, but I misunderstood the meaning of dealing with it offline.
After learning Mr. Eis’s name, I wrote him a letter which is attached here, requesting the details about his complaint. Since I had no personal recollection I indicated that if he would give me the details I would research it and that “I do wish to get to the bottom of this”. I did not promise I would make any adjustment, however, if in fact after my investigation had I discovered my company had done something totally wrong, there would have been some type of an adjustment, but as a result of my investigation, that is not the case.
In regards to guarantees, if I’m not mistaken in the gun world frequently when one buys a gun through the mail, the seller often gives an inspection period to the buyer to determine if the gun is as it was touted to be. I sometimes see an inspection period of 24 hours; I sometimes see inspection periods of 7 days, but I see no one that provides an inspection period of 45 days. My company, however, does. I don’t know of any auction firm that in writing offers a warrantee regarding guns (I may be wrong), but we do. We specifically offer a warrantee and it is good for 45 days, but the warrantee is very clear. While I have a responsibility to cancel a sale or make an adjustment to the client (if I can), it is my responsibility provided that they notify me within the time period. However, the client also has a responsibility and that responsibility is to review the gun when they get it and do their due diligence to make sure that there are no problems.
Because this purported error took place is not a matter of my being honest or dishonest. We all make mistakes and one of the things that is implied in the conditions of my sale and also announced verbally at the beginning of an auction is that I am fully aware that regardless of how many experts I use to review things, there are bound to be some mistakes. If it is a mistake; it is a mistake; it is not an intention on our behalf; that’s not the way we do business. I also share through the conditions of my sale and also through verbal announcements that we do a number of things to protect our customers, and all of those things we do, we hold ourselves to be responsible for, but the buyer in turn, also have a responsibility. We know that with every catalog we print there are going to be a handful of mistakes in their for sure, and to protect our customers we supply a limited guarantee, good for 45 days, it is a customer’s responsibility to review the things during that time period or, request an extension of time to finish their examination is necessary. If you don’t do your due diligence and you wait for some long period afterwards to finally examine the item and then discover a problem with it, it is too late. It would make no difference whether this was a truck, a computer or a television set. Most things tend to have warrantee periods but if the complaint comes long after the warrantee period has expired, there’s not much anyone can do, and that’s essentially the bottom line here.
The gun in question was described in my catalog as having a left barrel with .019 thousandths of an inch; the right barrel being .017 thousandths of an inch (not .015??). The gun in question was Lot 1348 in our Spring 2009 auction. So that there can be no misunderstanding, the catalog description is of course in print in any of your catalogs and you can refer to it to make sure that I am accurate. If you don’t have a catalog, you can simply go online to our website, go to that specific auction, and go to that specific lot number and you will see the catalog description that was printed with the catalog when it was produced. As I said in my letter, I can’t contradict Mr. Eis regarding what thickness Bill Taylor could have told him or anything else that they may have had for conversations. Bill no longer works for me, and I have no records of anything along these lines. All I know is that if I were buying this gun and the catalog stated the barrels were .017 and .019 and later someone told me the barrels were .030 instead, the first thing I would do when I got the gun was check it. I only wish that Mr. Eis did what he was responsible for because if he had done his due diligence in time, and had I been notified in time I would have simply canceled the sale of the gun and given him his money back (or made an adjustment if possible at that time). The issue here is that he didn’t.
I personally consider it unfair when someone holds me responsible for something that was a lack of their own due diligence. Mr. Eis essentially expected me to change the conditions of my sale because he had neglected to do what he was responsible to do in the appropriate time period. If I or any other business regularly changes the conditions of their sale to suit all buyers’ demands, even when they are in the wrong, eventually the business will go broke. I try to be consistently fair with everyone. I feel that if I do something for one client, I must do it for all others, and if I were to change the conditions of my sale simply to suit Mr. Eis’s desires, it would only be fair that I do that for everyone and I can’t. Regardless of the circumstances I am sorry that Mr. Eis has a problem with us, but the specific conditions of my sale had offered him more than adequate protection to save him from mistakes. Forty-five days is a long time. Again, I repeat, under no circumstances did I or anyone else on my staff tell Mr. Eis to “go pound sand” nor have I “trashed” him, as he has purported.
Sincerely,
Jim Julia
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04-20-2012, 05:25 PM
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