Economy AEG and Expectations

Baz JJ

Baz JJ

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There seems to be a lot of posts recently from people, predominantly younger people I suspect, who are buying bottom end guns for under £100 and then coming on to the forum clearly expecting to skirmish with them.

Is somebody promoting this concept or it just a case of human behaviour i.e. person want to Airsoft, looks at websites and then buys what looks nice and they can afford in their price range ?

I see that the forum wisdom is to suggest they start with a G&G Combat machine which is obviously more money up front.

What are the likely implications of the cheap gun - low fps and breaks quickly ?

Is it worth having some sort of response to avoid members having to type same advice again and again ?

It seems a shame that these newbies might be getting bad advice from somewhere which could sour their experience of Airsoft.

 
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very little we can do I'm afraid. any research before they buy and they would realise what they are buying. but they dont. they buy cool looking toys.

saying that. my friends all had springers and was quite content with them. KWC thou, and not bad for what they are.

 
See, you can get a decent skirmishable gun for under £100 but most newbies are drawn in by the lure of the orange gun sites and their SRC M4s. You can get decent guns on a budget if you look in the right places, jesus Taiwangun has plenty for under a hundred quid but it's not exactly the first site a newbie is likely to find. Both my main primary (DE tri shot) and secondry (2nd hand Hi Capa) totalled just over a hundred quid and they're very usable guns at the sites I play.

The problem is always going to be that by the time most beginners end up on here they've already bought the brightly coloured toy in question which is why the same questions about what can be done with them pop up. All more experienced players can do is point out that they probably should have researched more, save up for a better gun and use the crap one for backyard plinking.

 
I think it's a case of lazy consumers in all walks of life, not just airsoft. You see it on all kinds of product reviews on places like Amazon, with ridiculous comments like: "I thought it would be bigger;" check the bloody measurements before buying it! If you don't put research into a purchase and you buy something that's not really fit for purpose that's your fault. If you conduct research then just don't like the results - "I know what all twenty of you mean about avoiding justPP.com and getting the £140 G&G, but I think I'll just get the orange coloured super special deal anyway, cheers" - then that's your fault.

As ronny has said above, there are a lot of people who buy the thing first and then go onto forums and say: "did I do right?" In those cases its just too late. The others are generally the lot I've mentioned above who are just lazy or don't want to listen. It's the combination of laziness and refusal to listen to advice that bothers me the most. It's like in a recently closed thread where someone was asking whether he could sell his RIF on ebay and the mods insinuated that the people who responded where bullying him over his lack of VCRA knowledge. I think what people were actually annoyed about was the fact that it would have taken him two seconds to find the information himself by Googling 'what can I not sell on ebay?' and then when he was told this he started asking for proof of the fact, then said he already knew it, then started asking for ways around the policy and got annoyed when people told him not to do that. Not about what to buy, but same attitude problem.

Any time you are think of doing something you should:

( a ) Put some research into it

( b ) Listen to what people tell you

 
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Not everyone who buys a cheaper - lower end weapon is a child, Im saving for a wedding and I have very little to play with a mounth after my out goings so bigger better guns are not an option for the next couple of years.

I dont have money to throw away like the rest of you thus I have to buy the cheaper but still pretty good weapons.

Weather Iv been lucky or not with the quality of these is a differant thing but I believe that no were does it say you are not allowed to skirmish with lower end weapons, if Im wrong please feel free to advise me otherwise.

Also when people ask for advise on a lower end weapon they already have, dont go and rip them apart by saying its an aweful thing or a "backyard plinker" and they should obvioustly buy a more expensive weapon, try and leave answering the question to someone who actually knows of an answer towards that question.

 
^ I don't think anyone is saying that we should slate people who use cheap guns (the team I play with pride themselves on getting kills on geardos with the cheap springer pistols they've got and have painted in ridiculously bright tiger stripe patterns) but we're saying that people need to manage their expectations.

If you say: "I have a cheap gun but I'm fine with the fact that it's already starting to break and doesn't shoot very straight" or "I have a cheap gun because it's all I can afford, I'll live with that" then well done you. If, however, you say: "I have a cheap gun and it seems to be crap compared to everyone else's at my site, why is this?" Then I'm afraid that the answer is: "because it's cheap and crap and you should have looked into that before you bought it."

 
My 1st gun was this: http://www.onlybbguns.co.uk/airsoft/electric-airsoft-gun/mprxda1-h-k-mp6-sd5-aeg-us-navy-seals.html#.UuzZAT1_u0Q

I had done my research and knew it would be no use long term, but I play mainly indoors so it was actually useable. The way I look at it is I spent £85 on a gun instead of the £140 I would have spent on hire fees in the time I used it and I have learned to take apart an MP5 from it without endangering my Classic army gun. I didn't want to risk messing up taking the 2 tone paint off a decent gun when I got it. I had a lot of trouble with the ironsights on the hire guns being difficult to use with eye protection, buying a cheap gun and adding a red dot sight solved this issue for me.

This approach only works if you go to a CQB only site and know you will be going frequently. I had already decided that I was going to try and go every week and in fact managed twice a week occasionally. The site I go to, I would estimate that 95% of the time you are shooting at someone who is less than 10 meters away.

In hindsight, I could have just bought my HFC MK23 Socom, it has better accuracy, more power and is even better for CQB as it's a pistol, plus it's cheaper.


Maverick231 said:
Also when people ask for advise on a lower end weapon they already have, dont go and rip them apart by saying its an aweful thing or a "backyard plinker" and they should obvioustly buy a more expensive weapon, try and leave answering the question to someone who actually knows of an answer towards that question.
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Totally agree. I always try to suggest that they might want to try and find a CQB site where the deficiencies of their gun won't put them at such a disadvantage. Then they can save money on hiring whilst sorting out UKARA and put that money towards a decent gun.

 
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In all fairness, looking at one of the sites that members often advise posters to avoid, they have a very good website.

If I look at the more favoured retailers, their product range is quite hard to follow unless you know what you're looking for.

I find the Fire Support website very difficult to navigate.

I can understand why newbies are drawn to it and the product categories are clearly divided into just for fun, garden battle guns, skirmish entry level and skirmish pro, so people cant say they weren't warned.

If I went on that site and bought an M4 for under £50, its very clearly shown under the garden category. The entry level skirmish guns are £150.

So I think you might be right. Its lazy consumerism on the part of the newbie buyer. One lad was asking for help on here with an SRC Micro M4 and these cost £230. If I were him, I would be quite hurt to be told that he should have bought a Combat Machine for less.

I also think that if I were under 18 and looking for a two tone, I might be put off by all the realistic guns on show on some websites, knowing I couldn't have one. I wonder how many newbies know that those guns can be painted two tone and sold to them for a very small additional charge ?

So, my point is, perhaps companies like JBBG do a very good job of marketing their range where a lot of retailers don't do much to guide the newbie.

I was talking to a lad who I know quite well and who is under 18. I know he has an M4 at home that he bought because he is interested in guns. We were talking about Airsoft and he knew all the gun types but very little about skirmishing.

Do games like COD and BF4 influence newbies more than the Airsoft industry - if I were a retailer, I might consider re-designing my website and make it more Airsoft newbie friendly.

 
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Baz JJ said:
In all fairness, looking at one of the sites that members often advise posters to avoid, they have a very good website.

If I look at the more favoured retailers, their product range is quite hard to follow unless you know what you're looking for.

I find the Fire Support website very difficult to navigate.

I can understand why newbies are drawn to it and the product categories are clearly divided into just for fun, garden battle guns, skirmish entry level and skirmish pro, so people cant say they weren't warned.

If I went on that site and bought an M4 for under £50, its very clearly shown under the garden category. The entry level skirmish guns are £150.

So I think you might be right. Its lazy consumerism on the part of the newbie buyer. One lad was asking for help on here with an SRC Micro M4 and these cost £230. If I were him, I would be quite hurt to be told that he should have bought a Combat Machine for less.

I also think that if I were under 18 and looking for a two tone, I might be put off by all the realistic guns on show on some websites, knowing I couldn't have one. I wonder how many newbies know that those guns can be painted two tone and sold to them for a very small additional charge ?

So, my point is, perhaps companies like JBBG do a very good job of marketing their range where a lot of retailers don't do much to guide the newbie.

I was talking to a lad who I know quite well and who is under 18. I know he has an M4 at home that he bought because he is interested in guns. We were talking about Airsoft and he knew all the gun types but very little about skirmishing.

Do games like COD and BF4 influence newbies more than the Airsoft industry - if I were a retailer, I might consider re-designing my website and make it more Airsoft newbie friendly.
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Great points Baz. I find quite frequently that the websites aren't always very user friendly in general. The first springers I got were from JBBG, and whilst they are arguably a terrible business, you have to give it to them for their website design.

The importance of design / layout of a site really becomes apparent and especially noticeable, for example, when you go onto the websites of the smaller retailers. It's hard to know where to look for something and sometimes you might want an AK but your options are to select a manufacturer.

Imagine being a newb and being confronted with a wall of this strange unknown companies - you've only ever known SRC and HFC. So you click one and they're all £300+. That would put you off.

Actually, I remember when I first discovered airsoft (as opposed to spring so-called 'bb guns' even though they aren't BB guns) and I was actually looking for some springers or something but came across these realistic guns (wtf no two-tone!!?!) so of course I was really intrigued. Then I saw they were £200+ and being about 10 I actually thought 'ermagherd wot a rip off I can get one of them for 30 quid which I bet is well better'

Haha :)

I think what most younger guys do is buy it because they think it looks cool and they don't know about the internals of the gun / how it works etc.

On the other hand some will get cheaper guns for garden battles and target shooting, which is absolutely fine and fair enough, but then they might later discover skirmishes and expect to compete with a £40 gun.

The worst part is that you see comments about them not really knowing anything about guns. My mates think I'm a bit nerdy when I know a lot about guns, where they're from and calibre etc but I mean when they don't even know names of parts (externally) of basic safety and I'd like to know that whoever has these can actually use it properly and be responsible with it.

I wonder it having a short and easy to read guide but actually about internals of a gun and disadvantages of cheaper guns etc would help? It would have to be displayed quite clearly in the menu though. (I have forgotten what to call it ffs)

 
Yeah, I am one of those people who often write "it's a waste of time, etc." I take your points about that being a disappointing thing to read, but then again...

...that is exactly what I mean it to be. Why? Because I want those people to take advantage of UK law and return the gun for a refund. It's a lot less depressing to be told that something which you have bought with the intention of having fun is not good enough for the job than to turn up and have a crap day because you can't hit anybody and spend the whole day walking around with your hand in the air, wondering whether it's because you are just pathetic at it, or maybe it's that the site's members are ninjas, until it starts to dawn on you that those reviews you read on those orange 'bbguns' sites were actually massively over stating how good the gun you bought is (shall we say). But the FPS was quoted as pretty high, why are my BB's coasting after 25m? Ow! That bloody hurt! I wouldn't mind if I thought I might get her/him back, but... but... ah, shit! Three month's of spending nothing on anything else it took me to save up for this piece of shit... if I'd saved up just one more month I could have had one of those Combat Machines they all go on about on AF-UK, but I'll never get a refund on this POS now it's got scratched... bollocks! That's four month's longer I'll have to save now. and my mum. Oh no, what is my mum gonna say when I tell her that I spent £85 on a gun that's no good and I want to save up £115 for a different gun...?

I trust my point needs no further explanation.

I think another noob guide could be a good idea, Baz, but one dedicated to what exactly is wrong with particular cheap guns, what we know to be the truth, what our educated guesses are, what claims and/or reviews cannot be true or may be but are nonetheless misleading, and what alternatives are available for just a little more money, or from taiwangun.com or gunfire.pl for the same money. I would rather not write it - I did my bit already and keeping that updated is enough on top of moderating, or I'll never have time to participate on here for the fun of it. I'll be happy to contribute my ha'penny's worth though and if a lot of us like it, we can sticky it.

But that is the main thing wrong with these 'bbguns' sites: many of their product descriptions are misleading and/or outright lies. On top of this, many people have experienced terrible customer service from them. Those of us who do warn noobs against those sites are not doing it out of some personal vendetta or because we are being paid by other retailers - we do it because we have either had personal experience or have read entirely credible bad reports from others; maybe we have been on those sites and read their reviews for the lols... until we read some kid say he's been mislead and ripped off and the lols dry up.

 
I take your point.

You dont want to write a guide to spotting bad guns - fair enough.

I guess what Im saying is if I were a noob and a young noob, I can see myself reading those websites and sucking it up.

They seem on the surface anyway, glossy, thorough and the range of guns is impressive and well laid out.

So, its forgivable. if a kid buys a cheap gun, they might regret it later but its understandable.

It gets boring to have to keep telling them to look closer and think beyond the glitter.

How do we best do that on a wider all engaging level ?

Will having something nailed on the front of the forum that makes them think first help or is it too late by the time they get here.

Do they come looking for solutions to problems that have already happened.

As I say, if I were a retailer, I would sharpen my website to sell these newbies my combat machine range. If G&G could see through it, they should explain just why combat machines are so good.

After all, the 13 year old buying his first rifle is a future customer who if they get a good experience at the beginning might buy a lot of Airsoft guns in the future. I now have four G&G rifles and love em.

So maybe G&G and other similar bracket makers should up their marketing campaigns.

 
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I think that a pinned topic with an eye catching title may help some and some is better than none. It may also convince some to send their P'sOS back for a refund. OK, they'll be £10-15 down for the postage, but that's the price of a cheap lesson in asking for help.

 
if you had a topic pinned with links for pages used for the information source with bullet points to help make it easy to read with just facts?

 
The main problem with the younger guys who search and buy the cheap guns from those sites is the way they use a search engine and the underhand cleverness of the website owners, I think that most of the time people are putting BB gun into the search engine and of course what does it bring up first? A complete page with 'BBgun' in the website name or tag title, we all know it's the same company under many different guises, said companies are also paying google ads so BB guns and such searches link to their sites first so without having a proper delve into airsoft or skirmishing these poor kids just don't know any better

The website owners are also very clever in the way they spend a lot of time making their sites look very tidy and professional, quite a few of the big retailers have woeful websites, redwolf being a major one, they make it hard to navigate, don't keep stock levels up to date and shamelessly over price what we know can be found much cheaper just by looking hard enough, again, young people see the first thing and think they're all the same

All we can do as a community is pick these younger and new people up if they find us and point them in the right direction

 
I think any pinned topic needs to be a bit careful of what it says. If we specifically talk too much about a specific company it could look like we are targeting them, or spreading negativity. Whilst that's fine in normal posts because the post is that persons opinion, if we pin something I think it blurs the lines a bit more and looks like as a forum we are saying avoid x company because they are terrible for y reason.

 
I think we could be losing potential airsofters as a result of BBguns being marketed to noobs, because they spend that initial outlay to try it out and either don't enjoy themselves or refuse to throw good money after bad even though they realise that it would be much more fun with a half decent gun. So yeah, life is tough, get used to it... but wankers are profiting out of putting our sport/hobby in a bad light - I feel we need to take it seriously and push right up to the edge of libel to fight back.

 
I don't think it needs to be about companies or even specific products.

As I said in a earlier post, very often its just that noobs don't know what they are looking at and get dazzled by the glitter and low prices.

What about producing an informative text called "so you want to skirmish with your new Airsoft rifle" and then listing the attributes that differentiate a toy gun for the garden with a sensible starter skirmish rifle ?

 
Devastator said:
I think any pinned topic needs to be a bit careful of what it says. If we specifically talk too much about a specific company it could look like we are targeting them, or spreading negativity. Whilst that's fine in normal posts because the post is that persons opinion, if we pin something I think it blurs the lines a bit more and looks like as a forum we are saying avoid x company because they are terrible for y reason.
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It would be very easy to get around 'picking on' specific companies by just stating that its a bad idea to buy from any site with BB Guns in the name. That leaves it ambiguous enough to avoid slandering companies, but specific enough to show which companies which we are trying to convince them not to buy from.

 
Slander is spoken. What we could be accused of is libel, however it is not libel if it's true. I feel that we should, as a forum, tell people that, for eg, one of the most common offenders, the £85 SRC M4, is not suitable for airsoft; that justbbguns have a terrible customer service reputation; that the reviews on these sites are laughable... all true. There is no need to libel them to ruin their reputation, simply pointing out the truth will do that just fine.

Although you can also say things which are not true in the context of an exaggerated joke which can only be classed as libel if it isn't obviously a joke, for eg we all know that children have caught aids from dealing with BBguns sites...

 
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