Mail order guns. A tale of woe.

[The Famous Grouse]

Agree with the weaponized fish, you ain't shooting that thing until after the new year.

Weaponized fish... Classic

OP, I say you will have it in two weeks - ARs are everywhere these days. Which make/model is slowly coming to u?

Dang, thanks to Vash and the Weaponized Fish for that uplifiting prediction.

The AR in quetion was a Mossberg MMR Hunter in Mossy Oak Brush Camo. Good thing I've got other predator rifles.

Dang. If it wasn't for some @ssclowns at a certain well-known parcel non-delivery company, I'd have spent a BEAUTIFUL day at the range today with my new AR.

Grouse

[Snakeman721]

Bad time of the year to order guns. At UPS and FedEx, they hire TEMPORARY workers. Some of those temps are hired as delivery drivers. Even though they may have passed a background check to get hired, they still may be shady. It's highly unlikely that a regular full time, senoirority driver would steal ANYTHING, let alone a gun. Their job....er, paycheck...is too important to them. On the other hand, UPS and FedEx use Temporary contractors to move full trailers between cities. I've seen these guys....fresh off the boat from Somalia or Russia...can barely speak English let alone find their way across the country. These guys are NOT vetted. UPS and FedEx DO NOT thouroughly screen these guys, if at all. The trailers are sealed at the gate before they leave the property, but after that.......well, 99.9% of them get to where they're going, but there is that 0.1% that occasionally don't. I'm thinking Russian mob involvement.....but who knows. Then, there's the rail system. A lot of sealed trailers get across the country by rail. Sometimes they sit at the railyard for a day or so over the weekend. Again, every once in a tiny while, one may be broken into. It has happened in the past, but it's rare.

[Uffdaphil]

Thieves will find a way, especially aided by incompetence. Even workers charged with securing high-value mail can get lax. At the bottom of a hamper of standard mail I once found a locked Registered Mail sack with two heavy bars weighing over 50 pounds. Standard large bar of gold weighs 27 pounds. There was no possible way to trace it to me. Devil on my shoulder never screamed so loud.

And yes, a thief's nature can override his common sense. Long term fellow postal worker was arrested and fired for stealing a case of toilet paper!

[xd ED]

Mail Order in general has become a new crime of opportunity. In the past year I've had several hundred dollars of stuff never make it to my hands, apparently disappearing from my front steps. Fortunately, I had requested my signature, and ID, and I eventually got a new item. Depending on the carrier, I usually have stuff shipped to the UPS, or Fed Ex store.

RE firearms, even though many shippers don't use a return address that could be recognized as a gun shop, the size and shape of a long gun package is somewhat obvious.
(typed as I await a phone call from Roger @ BPR that a new rifle has arrived for pick up)

[The Famous Grouse]

In a bizarre twist of fate, I got a call yesterday afternoon. From the FFL where my AR was supposed to be delivered 4 days ago. There’s a package here for you.

What the… I had heard nothing from the shipper or from the retailer, so if the “lost” AR had somehow been found, nobody told me about it.

So I went to the FFL dealer and unwrapped the dinged/damaged box. Yep, it contained one Mossberg MMR Hunter in good condition.

A few phone calls later and I’m none the wiser as to what happened here. I can only imagine that somehow the shipper got the word out at their depot where the gun had been stolen that very bad things involving Federal law enforcement were about to happen unless the missing firearm was "found" and found dang quickly. But that’s just speculation. The only thing that the shipper has told anyone was that the package was found.

So I’ve got an AR sitting in my safe. Better late than never.

I’ll post a report, but it’s going to be a while as I don’t have a lot of free weekends between now and Christmas.

Grouse

[BigBlue]

Is 'good condition' meaning mostly unscathed or meaning in new condition?

[Keith]

I can neither confirm nor deny that a fully assembled lower being returned to me by the manufacturer was accidently delivered to one the local churches instead.

[The Famous Grouse]

Is 'good condition' meaning mostly unscathed or meaning in new condition?

Yes, I would say so, but as for new condition, that is somewhat unknown. One end of the box was damaged and had been repaired with layers of tape. The bag the gun was in was not sealed, but I don't know if it actually would have been sealed at the factory or not. I could not determine if the box had been opened completely or not and I couldn't tell if the rifle had been handled. Various manuals and parts bags (magazine, lock, etc) were sealed and unopened.

The really strange thing about this was that the delivery company's agent told both me and the retailer in no uncertain terms that the empty and damaged packaging had been found, but the "item" was missing. They confirmed that "the item" that was missing was, in fact, the AR15 rifle and not some small component. There was no ambiguity in their statements to me or to the retailer.

But no one is saying how the item went from "lost" to suddenly delivered and I suspect I'll never know. So ends the curious case of the missing AR Item.

Grouse

[gun_fan111]

It is good to be right - HAHA. Congrats!

[OldmanFCSA]

What happens when the replacement shows up at your dealer?

SSHHH.

[armedwalleye]

It is good to be right - HAHA. Congrats!

Actually, it's pretty good to be wrong.....

[Snakeman721]

Is 'good condition' meaning mostly unscathed or meaning in new condition?

Yes, I would say so, but as for new condition, that is somewhat unknown. One end of the box was damaged and had been repaired with layers of tape. The bag the gun was in was not sealed, but I don't know if it actually would have been sealed at the factory or not. I could not determine if the box had been opened completely or not and I couldn't tell if the rifle had been handled. Various manuals and parts bags (magazine, lock, etc) were sealed and unopened.

The really strange thing about this was that the delivery company's agent told both me and the retailer in no uncertain terms that the empty and damaged packaging had been found, but the "item" was missing. They confirmed that "the item" that was missing was, in fact, the AR15 rifle and not some small component. There was no ambiguity in their statements to me or to the retailer.

But no one is saying how the item went from "lost" to suddenly delivered and I suspect I'll never know. So ends the curious case of the missing AR Item.

Grouse

My best guess ia that the original shipment consisted of 2 boxes....a box within a box, very common way to ship guns. Maybe somehow the end got damaged and popped open, out comes the inner box with NO ADDRESS OR OTHER MARKINGS and the the shipping company (stupidly) decides to deliver the outside empty box. Your gun probably sat in their damaged goods area until your complaint/claim came through and they matched up the description/serial number and rewraped the inner box, slapped a new address label on it and delivered it. Sounds more feasable than someone "stealing" the gun, then deciding the Feds were on to him so puts it back in the delivery system.

[The Famous Grouse]

My best guess is that the original shipment consisted of 2 boxes....a box within a box, very common way to ship guns. Maybe somehow the end got damaged and popped open, out comes the inner box with NO ADDRESS OR OTHER MARKINGS and the the shipping company (stupidly) decides to deliver the outside empty box. Your gun probably sat in their damaged goods area until your complaint/claim came through and they matched up the description/serial number and rewraped the inner box, slapped a new address label on it and delivered it. Sounds more feasable than someone "stealing" the gun, then deciding the Feds were on to him so puts it back in the delivery system.

Didn't happen that way at all.

I asked and Bud's gun shop for a description of the package and they confirmed that the rifle was shipped only in its original box. Which BTW is a plain gun box, not an obvious box from a firearms maker. Which, as the shipper pointed out, WAS in fact damaged. It was all chewed up on one end. The original box had all the shipping labels from Bud's on the outside, which it would seem unlikely to have if it were packed in two boxes by Bud's and even if it were, the shipper could have delivered it anyway then.

There was no deliver of an empty box. Not sure where you're getting this idea. The shipper attempted delivery on Wednesday last, but my FFL was closed for a few hours. On Thursday, strangely, at 01:40 AM the online shipping system status changed from delivery in progress to "package damaged" with the note that the item was missing.

After the miraculous reappearance of the "missing" gun, it was obviously placed inside a second box by the shipper. How can I tell this was done by the shipper? The box is stuffed with Star Tribune newspaper on one end, which wouldn't have been done by Bud's Gun Shop in Kentucky.

The shipper could have easily looked up the number of shipments in thier depot that were signature required and put 2+2 together to figure out which item they didn't have if your "ooops, it fell out of the box" theory was correct. I can't see how it would have taken 5 days to figure out that the gun sitting in the MIA rack was the gun that was currently missing.

Lots of things could have happened, as I said, I'll never know. Just glad that the shipper's bungling only cost me 5 days instead of 2-3 more weeks.

Grouse

[Snakeman721]

Sorry, I was just making an educated guess. Glad to hear that you got the original gun in more or less good shape.