I purchased a gun from them online (only place that had it) and was wondering if the pickup process is as long and painful as people say it is?

Thanks

I've never rifle'd there.  Did get some ammo one morning during the beginning of the last dry run. I stopped by one morning and they were rolling out the ammo cart to stock up.  We swarmed the guy.

I bought a pistol there about a year ago because it was a great deal.  Every time I do a gun transaction there, I swear it will be my last because the process is just as you describe above.  And usually the person who has to do the double checking is somewhere on the other side of the store, on a smoke break, or helping another customer.  Unfortunately, I am a cheapass at heart and when I find a good deal on a gun at Cabelas, I cave and go through the bureaucratic pain in the ass that is buying a gun at Cabelas.  It’s like they’re modeling themselves after the DMV.  

If all you’re doing is transferring a gun, there are many many better kitchen table FFLs who will do it for cheaper and a lot easier.

I may have experience in the last couple of weeks with this. It was pretty straight forward. The forms are done on lap top. The biggest issue is every step has be checked and rechecked by a second employee. Once the guy that was helping me had checked everything, he had another gun counter person check over everything. Then we went over to the cashier register area. They checked everything again. Did the record check and then had to have the manager come review everything.

Mine was pretty straight forward and my checks come back in seconds. The biggest issue I had was the manger check part. There was somebody ahead of me buying a gun and seemed to be having some kind of issue with ID or something. The manager was dealing with the issue so I had to wait. Once the manager was done, they left to go somewhere else in the store knowing I was waiting. I guess they thought my check would take longer. It didn’t so I then had to wait for the manager to come back. That was the biggest pain.

I understand all the checks. It’s a big box store basically trying to keep employee errors down.

Can confirm, it takes almost two hours to go from waiting for help until walking out the door. This was on a Tuesday just after noon and the store was mostly a ghost town.  Background check took seconds to be approved but the waiting for the manager thing was onerous.  I was buying an old wheel gun from the gun library, not the gun from "Rambo" or something.

Yep, it’s just like y’all described.  I was 4th in the queue and the process took almost three hours.  My checks always come back instantly.  Their checking and re-checking takes forever.  You can’t really leave the gun counter cause if you’re not there when your name gets called, you get removed from the queue immediately.

I doubt I’ll be doing that again.

That is insane. Any time I have purchased from a shop I filled out the paperwork, the counter guy looks it over and pass's it off to another employee to look over and then the background check is run, i pay and leave. None of this check, double check, triple check with a cashier check thrown in for good measure.

So I was a sporting goods manager for WalMart for a short stint in college - just a couple highlights of screw-ups by people who had been trained, and re-trained -

1. I got a call from the Virginia State Police asking the disposition of form #zzzz - I dig it up in the box, and let them know that the gun was transferred, and the date. The caller then asks me for the approval number on the form - and there isn't one. We had an associate AND a manager sign the form and escort the guy out of the store with his gun. But it turns out not only was the transaction not approved, it was not ambiguous. They told the associate who called it in to keep the guy at the counter while they dispatched someone to the store because the guy buying the gun was a felon, so he was about to go back to jail.

2. A guy who worked for us was REALLY illiterate. I mean, couldn't read the instructions on a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese illiterate. I sent him to the back one day to get a gun out of the gun room. It took him four tries to find the right gun. I was giving him the manufacturer, model, and inventory number. The inventory numbers were about 5 characters long, and on distinct stickers, it should have taken ONE try. I could have grabbed one of the kids who worked in the toy department and had the right firearm faster.

3. The store almost lost the right to sell hunting/fishing licenses because the cash office couldn't read the form one month, and as a result just didn't do anything about it, OR process the following 3 months. Nobody ever said, "Hey shooter, we can't read that form - can you clean it up?" - they literally ignored a government requirement for 3 months.

So - I get why Cabelas double and triple checks everything. They store has some decent people in it, but also still has a problem with employees pointing weapons at customers from time to time. I don't think we are talking about the most capable folks in the zip code.

-shooter

To be honest, mine did not take more than a hour. There was only one other person looking at guns when I walked up. I walked up saw what I may have wanted. Clerk walked by and I asked if he could tell me the price and caliber of that there rifle. He stopped, answered my two questions, and started to grab it to hand it over before I even asked to see it. Told him I would buy it as he handed it over.

Really the only wait was the manager part. Every step moved along. The guy with the issue I mentioned in my previous post was already at the gun register before I walked into the display area so I had no idea he was there until I got to that area.

But I feel I got lucky this date, because I’ve been told before there was a hour wait to look at a scope. I laughed at the clerk that day and walked away

Yes it really is that bad.  Takes hours, the staff does not know what they are doing and should not be working at the gun counter.  I tried to buy a rifle there and after three hours of standing around waiting for my turn to finalize things, I called Cabela's corporate number, and a person there chewed out the gun counter guy something fierce, and they still didn't get it pulled together.  Turned out that after waiting for three hours, they hadn't yet called in the instant check.  I left, bought it elsewhere.  I will _never_ go back there to buy a gun, plenty of other good places to go that know what they are doing.

I've bought several guns there and I don't think it ever took an hour to complete the transaction.

Yeah you have to wait for a manager to come over, but that was maybe 5 minutes.

My only complaint with them was when I bought a gun at a Cabela's in Washington State and had the gun shipped to Gainsville.   They never called me to tell me the gun was in.  About three days after it was supposed to arrive I called them, they gave me the "The truck just arrived, give me a few minutes to check and I'll call you back" then they called back about half an hour later "yeah your gun just came in, come pick it up?   Got there, picked up the gun, after I walked out of the store I looked closer at the box.   My name and the date three days prior were written on a sticker on the end of the box. So they had my gun sitting there for three days without giving me a call.

Moral of the story, don't be in a hurry if you want to purchase a gun from Cabela's.