Sporting good atrocity

[AFJailor]

Up here in the frozen north we have a sporting goods store called Scheels, its about the same as Academy. Well, I often go into Scheels while my wife wanders about our mall mostly because they have a pretty huge assortment of guns inside. The last few months I have notices that ALL of their handguns have been looking pretty beat up, so I finally asked what the deal was and this is how the conversation went:

ME: "So are all your handguns used or what?"
Them: "No, sir. They are all brand new"

"So why are they so scratched up?"

"Well our security system has been down for the pistol case so we have to toss them all in a box at the end of shift and unpack em at the beginning of shift."

"So your telling me that every single one of these guns (probably 150 or so) is tossed into a big box and they rub and bang into eachother 2x a day?"

"Yes sir, the security system should be back up shortly though."


I looked at the Wilson CQB with a Rail that they had and I would honestly say that about 80% of the armor tuff finish was scraped off. The front sight post had the upper left side of it literally sheared off, the magwell just had traces of the green armor tuff left and the rest of the gun looked like it had been tossed into a tumbler full of nails.
This was the worst gun but others were pretty close. The worst part was that they had SALE tags on the more severely damaged ones, but no more than MAYBE $100 off MSRP, ever other gun was MSRP.


Luckily there is a privately owned gun store owned by an ex-airforce guy in town who usually has some pretty good prices. Because the next closest town with a population over 50 is about 3 and a half hours away. I really cant wait to get back to Texas, luckily I will be spending several months of this year down in San Antonio training.

[seamusTX]

The horror!

- Jim

[LarryH]

That is sad.

I assume minimum-wage flunkies are doing the "tossing" because they don't want to waste time carefully packing the guns.

And I thought the way Guitar Center "took care of" some of their expensive guitars was bad.

[ScubaSigGuy]

If that is the store in the mall, I have been there before, years ago, while there for some training. I am really suprised that they are still selling handguns there.

[AFJailor]

Yea its in the mall, they just spent several million dollars re-doing to place...and it still looks bad. I have NO idea what they spent the money on.

[ScubaSigGuy]

Yea its in the mall, they just spent several million dollars re-doing to place...and it still looks bad. I have NO idea what they spent the money on.

My first thought was that I am glad they haven't caved and closed the gun department like a great deal of sporting goods stores in malls...BUT... How smart is it to tell customers that the security system is down?

I think I remember a story about that place being robbed of many of there guns way back. Somebody hid in the store until after closing and his friends met him at the back as I recall. You have probably heard the same storiem as small as that place is.

[CodeJockey]

Wow, that is insane. My sister-in-law lives in Iowa, and we went to the Scheels in Iowa City (or could be Cedar Rapids...can't remember now). It was a nice store at the time. I'd compare it more to a Cabela's than Academy, but I can't believe they'd do that. That is just absurd. I haven't been there in many, many years. Next time we're up in that neck of the woods I think I'll check to see if it is still open and nice inside.

[WarHawk-AVG]

Did you mention that "Scratch N Dent" sales are up to 80% off?