Hi Guys,
As many of you know, not only have I written a book on the Browning and Winchester BPCRs, I purchase and resell the rifles (to date I’ve sold a total of 113 rifles). Until recently my firearms were listed on both GunBroker and GunsAmerica. There was no conflict since a buyer is required to bid on GunBroker's auction site to win a firearm and I only used the listing service on GunsAmerica, not their auction service. If a firearm sold on one of the two sites, I pulled the listing off the other site to indicate the firearm was no longer available. Since GunsAmerica uses an “honor system”, to collect sales fees, when a sale was made due to the customer seeing the listing on GunsAmerica, I made it a point to insure GunsAmerica was paid their listing fee.
As of a few days ago I’m no longer using GunsAmerica and pulled all my listings off their site. The reason is GunsAmerica shows favoritism and has refused to police their stated policies. Several months ago another seller listed a firearm (still active) which is similar to several I’ve sold. The seller used most of the description text (word for word) that I worked up and use to sell my rifles. Not only did he use my descriptions word for word, the description is not accurate for the rifle listed. In any case, I certainly don’t want wording, which is very unique to my sales, used to describe someone else’s firearms, especially one that has several blatant inconsistencies. At the very minimum I certainly consider it a copyright issue.
On 3/18 I alerted GunsAmerica to the facts and filled a complaint against the seller.
3/18 - GunsAmerica response:
“Thank you for your report. We will remind the seller about copyright laws and his responsibility as a GunsAmerica seller to make sure his descriptions are accurate. Customer Service”
4/14 - So a month passes and the accused seller has made no change to his listing. I contact GunsAmerica and request that they follow up on their notice to the seller.
5/12 - Another month passes and no changes have been made to the sellers listing. So now I’m starting to get really ticked off and contact GunsAmerica once more. I demand that they follow through and either delete the offending listing or force the seller to significantly change the description text or I would stop using their services. I further provide a reminder of one of their Terms & Conditions as follows:
“You agree to not use the Service to upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights ("Rights") of any party”
5/12 - GunsAmerica finally responds as follows:
“We do not enforce any laws, copyright laws or any other laws. …therefore no further action will be taken by GunsAmerica on this issue.”
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Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. Even with the above clearly stated T&C, not only did they refuse to take any action against the offending seller, GunsAmerica all of a sudden decided that my listings were now in violation. I was given the ultimatum that all my listing would be deleted within the same day if I did not quickly remove a short reference directing visitors to another website to read the details of my book, which has been a part of my listings for years. I reacted by initially removing the reference to the website and then, after further considerations, decided to pull my listings and no longer use GunsAmerica.
By the way, the offending seller is Richard Patty and the GunsAmerica listing is # 958087858. If you are familiar with my listings you’ll find that the majority of the text is mine, and, by the way, does not apply to the rifle listed. You’ll also note that his volume of sales, at least the number of listings, is much greater than mine has ever been.
It’s clear to me that, when backed in a corner, GunsAmerica was willing to lose my sales rather than aggravate a much larger dealer. I guess I should not have been surprised these days, since integrity has been thrown out the window by many companies. No doubt you’ve heard the often used saying in Cinematic portrayals of Native Americans, “white man speak with forked tongue”. That certainly applies to GunsAmerica, white man or not. I strongly suggest you do not use GunsAmerica to purchase or sell firearms.
Finally, if you access my listings on GunBroker, you’ll find that I have a perfect record with no dissatisfied customer because I’m a highly ethical seller, a category which no longer includes GunsAmerica.
Regards,
Wayne
