Cheaper Than Dirt Century International Arms Type 53

[blanco64]

This is my recent experience with a purchase through Cheaper Than Dirt.

I ordered a Century International Arms Chinese Type 53, described as "graded in good condition by Century Arms".

When my FFL opened the box in front of me, we found the rifle with the stock broken in half at the grip. It was packaged in a box approximately 8 inches longer than the rifle, with no additional packaging to hold it from sliding back and forth. The box itself was in good condition (not damaged).

I called Cheaper Than Dirt to notify them. They told me I had to work with Century. I called Century, who notified me they would replace it, and they sent me a prepaid UPS shipping label.

As to the condition of the rest of the rifle: The stock, other than being broken, was acceptable. The breech had some areas of rust. The bolt handle was rusty, the top of the barrel near the receiver had an area of rust about the size of a nickel, the bayonet had rust on about half of it, and the rest of the gun had small amounts of rust. The bore appeared to have good rifling. The gun did not appear to have been treated with cosmoline before storage. It looked like it had been wiped down with oil, but that had pretty much evaporated, hence the rust. The stock was covered with a thin layer of oily dirt.

I've shipped the rifle back to Century and will update this post as events unfold.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[xXxplosive]

Cancelled my business relationship with.... Lower Than Dirt..................

[blanco64]

Update 1/5/13

UPS showed the return delivered to Century on 12/26. As of today I have not received notification of the replacement being shipped. It's now been almost 1 month since I initially placed the order with Cheaper Than Dirt. I know the holidays have delayed things, but this is discouraging.

This was supposed to be a Christmas present from my wife. My plan was to get it cleaned up during the week before Christmas, let her wrap it and put it under the tree, then take it to the range the week after Christmas (I had vacation time to burn during that time). The best she was able to do was make up a card with a doctored up picture of Ralphie getting his Red Rider BB gun.

[Smitty901]

Cheaper is no longer in my bookmarks nor will they ever get a dime of my money again. They were s disappointment before now they went to far over the line.

[ErnieNWillis]

Cheaper than who? They are dead to me!

[chuckusaret]

Cancelled my business relationship with.... Lower Than Dirt..................

Yep, me too.

[BillK01]

Never did business with them before and definitely won't now or in the future.

[blanco64]

Update

Finally called Century yesterday, 15 days after they had received the returned rifle. The person I spoke with said it would probably be "two more weeks" before they ship the replacement (?!). I told her that was very disappointing. She then said "Let me check the status. What's the RMA number?" She looked it up and said "Oh, looks like it's shipped." and gave me the tracking number. According to UPS it should be here on 1/15, more than 5 weeks after placing the order (keep in mind I ordered this 6 days prior to the Newtown incident and the original order shipped 2 days prior to the incident).

[ANGLICO]

Wow. I will now join the 'Dog Pile'.

I had good experiences with them, however, I only bought simple 2 party offered products..................... Moving On.

Walmart/Walmart-Dot-Com Rocks, if you live in a state where they can provide what you want (beyond Baby Wet Wipes). Just Sayin.....

Walmart is the largest firearms seller in the USA, if you did not know that.

God I love being a total Redneck with a higher edudemucation.................................

[blanco64]

Final chapter

The replacement finally arrived 1/14. The wood was a mess as everyone else had indicated, but the metal looked good and it was in one piece, and all of the numbers matched except for the bolt. I took it apart and cleaned it up, reassembled it and took it to a gunsmith to have it checked out, including the headspace since the bolt was mismatched. The gunsmith told me the hardware was in really good condition and looked like it hadn't been fired very much, and even fired it to verify the operation.

I originally ordered this on 12/8 and the first delivery was on 12/17. After that, the return and replacement resulted in the purchase taking over 1 month to complete. In light of the current environment this doesn't seem so bad, but the original purchase was placed prior to Sandy Hook. If the first attempt had been good, the entire transaction would have been complete in 9 days.