Walmart sold me the wrong barrel length on shotgun...advice?

Ding ding ding we have a winner!

The entire issue is that the associate did not follow procedure and open the box and verify the serial number of the weapon.

This is punishable by no less than termination at Walmart. My wife lost a very good associate and the store lost an assistant manager that way. A department manager can do the sale but only under close direct supervision of a salaried member of management.

Now they probably used the bar code scanner and scanned the label on the box, so the receipt and the box will match. The $64,000 dollar question is do those match the actual weapon. If so, where then is the 18" barrel.

If the OP talks to the store manager there may be two less Walmart employees in the world.

Violation of firearm sales policy is immediate termination as I understand it.

They take this very serious!

The last thing is if the S/N is different on the weapon, the 4473 will be wrong and the question is where is the weapon that is listed on the federal paperwork? This is very serious. Loss of ffl is possible if not fixed and steps taken to ensure it never happens again. Thus the immediate termination of the employees that screwed up.

Either way this is a big deal that any Walmart store manager will want to fix!

The key to this entire thing is the store manager not the shift manager or assistant manager and certainly not an hourly employee like the department manager oh, and the S/N!

I mean no offense to our department manager spouse from our forum family!

Mel
 
I have to ask.
How did they get a barrel that long in a box that short?
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easy, the box isn't short.

All of the pump guns that I have seen boxed in recent years have removable barrels (I don't know the exact gun the op got, but I will assume it has one also).

The barrel is in the box, alongside the rest of the gun, and the difference between a long barrel and a short one is a cardboard spacer inside the box.

In other words the box is only a few inches longer than the gun with the barrel removed, and the barrel in the box, even the long one is not longer than the rest of the gun. One size box fits them all.

There are two possible situations here, the OP got the gun Walmart sold him (by serial #) and it had the wrong barrel in the box according to the marking on the box.

OR the OP got the wrong gun by recorded serial # (the one in the box is not the ser# they wrote on the paperwork.

Walmart policy may not allow them to take the gun back (direct exchange) but there are ways for them to fix the problem. Talk to the manager(s) and give them a chance. Either they made a mistake that is a policy violation, or they made a mistake that is both a policy and a law violation.

I'm pretty sure that if you can reach someone who actually understands this (and is not dealing by rote response) they will have a serious interest in fixing things.

Good Luck!
 
Maybe this was a policy for my specific store, but back when I worked in the sporting goods department at my local Walmart it was required that the assistant manager that finalized the sale open the box and verify the serial number on the gun rather than looking at the box. If all stores are that way the fault isn't with the sales clerk but the assistant manager.
 
Regardless of mistakes made by the seller/clerk, why on earth would the buyer pay for and walk out of the store with a firearm which he had never touched. I would have laughed at them if the clerk even suggested it. Nope, lets put it together and make sure it functions before I go any further. No touchy, no money.
 
I'm with Panfisher on this. No touchy, no money + I will find every little smudge, ding and gnat hair on any gun I'm buying new or used. In my opinion there are lots of fingers to be pointed in finding an extra 10 inches of barrel upon arriving home. :eek:
 
The Wal-Marts near me no longer sell firearms, thanks to the soccer mom lobby, but I would be very surprised if any Wal-Mart would allow the buyer to touch the firearm in the store. Remember, this is the store that walks the buyer out the door before handing him/her the box. If the register at the sporting goods counter isn't open, a sales drone has to walk with you to the front registers and carry the ammo for you ... and it ain't because they think it's too heavy for you.

And if the guns come broken down, it would be entirely possible to leave the barrel in the box and just pull out the receiver to check the number.

But we're engaging in rampant speculation at this point. Where did the original poster go? There's an important piece of information that only he can provide:

IS THE SERIAL NUMBER ON THE GUN THE SAME AS THE SERIAL NUMBER ON THE BOX?
 
Yeah, the "walk the customer out the door" policy is pretty silly when you're buying a .22 and a couple boxes of .357 for your carry gun...and used the CHL as ID on the 4473.
 
Peggysue,
I'm wondering if we will get an answer also. The OP has asked a few other questions and never reported back about those.
 
Don't want to be the devil's advocate but I have to ask. Why would you buy a box with a gun in it without opening it and inspecting first?
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I'm amazed at the number of people who post here and other forums, who apparently do just that. :confused:
 
I would love to hear the final result from checking the serial #'s on the box/receipt/action to see if they all match. I have never seen anyone selling a firearm at a store to only take the number off the box, normally they take it directly off the action, then check it against the box to make sure because sometimes things get put back into the wrong box.
 
The OP still hasn't been back since October 12 at 6:59 p.m. Either he got it resolved, or didn't want to hear that he might have a serious problem on his hands.
 
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