My FAL upper experience with Chris Chan, owner, of Arrowhead Outdoor Sports in Westminster, CA. Wasn't good.
Finding an FFL in CA to deal with AWs, or rather potential AWs, can be difficult. I asked on FALFiles for recommendations for one in the LA area. 2 people recommended I deal with Chris. I contacted him and he seemed fine with doing the transfer. He said the charge would be $30 or 10% of the purchase price which ever is more and then stated he usually just charged $30.
I then called DS Arms, ordered and paid for the upper. They were familiar with Chris and I told them to ship my upper there.
According to FedEx the upper is due to arrive today. I called Chris yesterday to let him know to expect it. He told me I could go down there and start the paperwork. I chose to do that and drove the hour there.
When I got there Chris told me I would have to pay sales tax on the cost of the upper. I said since I had paid for the upper already and he wasn't handling the money he wasn't supposed to collect sales tax. He said he'd just been through some 4 month audit and he wasn't going to pay for my sales tax at the end of the year. We discussed this for about 10 minutes and he said if I wasn't going to pay the tax the deal was off.
I then agreed and ask for him to note on the bill that he had collected sales tax. He then said he wouldn't do the transfer at all because if I didn't trust him he couldn't trust me. I said it wasn't a matter of trust but a difference of opinion and I had already agreed to his terms of paying the sales tax and wanted to complete the business. He wouldn't and told me he would refuse the FedEx delivery. He said he thought I might try to screw him around or cause him problems or something. I figured he and I both knew at this point I was a one time only customer but I couldn't figure out why he thought screwing me around would be less of an inducement for me to cause trouble than completing the transfer.
Like I said, 2 people recommended him and DSA knew him on a business level so maybe I got him on a bad day but if you use him for an FFL transfer only, he will charge sales tax and don't disagree with him on anything.