Last month, a friend showed me a Beretta 686 Silver Pigeon I that he was selling. The thing was true mint condition. I looked this thing over and could not find a rub, scratch or wear mark anywhere. Word of mouth and personal experience has shown that Beretta makes a fine Over/Under shotgun that holds their value and he was asking $100 under normal price based on the major sources (gunbroker.com, gunwatcher.com, bluebookofgunvalues.com). I had been searching for a birthday present for my wife and thought this would be ideal. Serial number of the gun revealed it was a 2004 manufacture date and my friend told me it had no more than 600 rounds through it. So, cash in hand, the gun was bought and waiting for the birthday presentation.
It took a week or so to get her to the trap range, but off we went to try out her new “pretty gun” as she called it. After the first round of trap, we walked to the gun rack and as she closed the action to place it in the rack, I see a piece of wood fall off the gun. When I pick up the piece of wood, I look to her gun to see the exposed receiver with hammer and springs that you normally don’t see in an Over/Under unless you are comfortable with disassembling an over/under. You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when something bad just happened? Yeah, that’s what I felt. Everyone standing around was amazed and said they never saw something like that before. Knowing that Beretta is an established gun maker, we were fairly confident they would repair something that was obviously a poorly fitted stock.
Anyway, I let my friend know and asked him to give me the complete history of the gun. It was purchased in 2004 and due to the fact, the forearm had a knot in the wood it was sent back to Beretta who replaced it with the Silver Pigeon II stock in 2005. He shot 600 rounds through the gun and decided he didn’t like the auto safety feature or the feel of the gun, so it went in the safe and wasn’t shot for many years, until he decided to sell it.
I called Beretta customer service and relayed my problem to them. The representative told me that they only warranty their guns for one year to the original purchaser. Even though the person admitted that the problem was due to a poorly fitted stock and they did have a record of replacing the stock, they would not pay for the repairs.
Most of my recent gun purchases have been Sig Sauer and Browning. These are two companies who basically say that if there is something wrong with their gun, send it in and they will fix it if the problem was their fault. I have since learned this is not true with Beretta. Beretta’s warranty is probably the worst one out there and basically puts the burden on the initial owner to properly test their product within a year or else they would be without recourse for poor/faulty materials or workmanship.
I am a frequent participant in several gun forums and a quick google search will confirm that Beretta has a very bad customer service record. Some speculation is this is due to the company being privately owned and foreign. They do not respond to communications and their turnaround time can be measured by seasons and not days or weeks.
So, when buying an expensive used gun, consider the manufacture’s warranty and reputation. Just because it looks like it just came off the assembly line, doesn’t mean it will hold its value when the company that manufactured the gun does not stand behind its product. No warranty coverage should incur a substantial resale value reduction.
I figure this is one of those “sucks to be me” situations. Paying more than “new” price for a gun just because you had to have it fixed, really takes away the “investment” justification for spending big money on “pretty guns.”
