Over the years I've purchased from Numrich Arms, usually piggy-backing on a friends order as I never had a catalog of my own. The other week a board member turned me onto the fact that they were selling stripped lowers at a pretty good price. Not as low as some of the sellers on the board, but I could save shipping and inspect them myself as their location is about an hour and a half from me. Because they have wierd hours for their retail operation, M-F 9:00ish to about 4:30, and closed weekends... I had to take an afternoon off from work to drive down. I call and tell the customer service rep I needed directions and was coming down to buy some lowers, she was great and gave me the directions and said see you soon.
I jump in the car drive down, wait in line for 20 minutes... its a retail counter, not a shop. Kind of like the parts counter at a car dealership. Get to the counter, tell the man what I want and he asks me, "you an FFL." Well ummmm no, why do I need to be an FFL to but a lower, YOU'RE a dealer. "Well we only sell to dealers," he says. I inform him I've driven quite a ways and when I called to get directions, spoke to customer service, told them why I was coming... and their website mentioned NOTHING about sales ONLY to FFL's... they had ample opportunity to inform me of this policy. "Oh well, we only sell to dealers."
I leave (incidently, bought nothing else on my list), start heading home, and pull over to call customer service thinking maybe this guy was just wrong. Customer service tries to tell me its the law that they can only sell to dealers. I kindly explained to her that it is not the law. They are not manufacturers, they are a dealer with state retail licenses. That there is no such law as I happen to have a C&R FFL and get copies of the same regulations and laws, as well as the fact that I work for a dealer part-time and am pretty versed on what they can and can not do. Oh, you have an FFL, just buy it with that she tells me. NO... I have a collector's FFL, it does not apply to firearms that are not C&R. Pretty clear that the employees do not know the laws which apply to their business, at least this particular employee who tried to tell me store policy is actually law.
Now I have no problem if they want to sell only to dealers. I have a huge problem that they did not mark their webpage with something like, "Retail sales only available to FFL holders for firearms and receivers." I have a bigger problem with the customer service rep not telling me before I came down when I told them I was coming down to buy receivers.
They may be the source for impossible to find parts, but in the future I'll keep looking. They will not get my business again.