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BO Manufacture AKM13?


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Real steel construction or pot metal ? Can't translate at the moment am on my phone .

 

Just give up already man.

 

This thread reminds me of the TSI Tavor thread.  Why are trolls (Inq Eisenhorn being a latecomer to the game) so eager to defend this product?

 

It's a touch up of an LCT kit.  It's not an airsoft gun manufactured in the EU,  

 

"- Handmade in France - Full Steel Construction - Glued Laminated Wood Stock and Foregrip"

 

The above statement is particularly deceptive.

 

I would like a PTW class Russian spec AK as much as anyone else, but this product is not it.  I own VFC's and I will continue to own VFC's until a superior product is released.

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First off, I do not own this gun, I'm not planning on owning this gun (RealSword supplies my hypothetical AEG Kalashnikov needs) and I'm not convinced this is the best gun ever made. But that doesn't mean most of the criticism here is valid.
 

It's not made in the EU....

 

 
This is facile. If a product is assembled and finished in a country, that is for better or worse where it is made, both in a legal and logical sense. The gun's body might have been made in an LCT factory, and its gearbox made in a Lonex factory, but if the two are assembled by BO the completed gun was made in France. Is a Boeing English because its engines were made in England? Is it Italian because its fuselage is made in Italy? Is it Japanese because its wings are made in Japan? Or is it American, because that's where it's assembled, finished, and shipped to the consumer from? Is it deceptive to describe a McLaren F1 as English when it has a German engine and gearbox, French tyres, Italian brakes and a Japanese stereo?
 
Could BO make it clearer who provides their components? Undoubtedly yes. Do many airsoft manufacturers pass this transparency test? G&G, with their LCT bodies and WinGun pistols? Inokatsu, with their M4s made entirely by Viper, then Taiwan Deer, and their pistols with KJW internals? Probably not. But here is the kicker - if BO were to manufacture all of these parts themselves on a 100-gun-batch basis, can you even begin to imagine how expensive this gun would be, and how loud your complaints?
 

As for where its manufactured, its a moot point. It's either good or not.

 
Being manufactured in the EU is not a moot point, as the "Why Aren't There Any British Airsoft Companies" thread made explicitly clear. If the gun is perfect and never fails, then fine, it doesn't matter where it was made. But as soon as it goes wrong, it's going to matter where it was made, because if it was in the Far East, you're not going to have a warranty, customer service, or parts support. The ramifications of trying to make an airsoft product within the EU (i.e., within the reach of consumer and employee protection legislation) are huge. Even if this gun was entirely made by LCT and shipped in parts to France, the ramifications of assembling it in France would add hundreds of pounds to its cost - the cost of a French worker to assemble and finish it as his job, not as his hobby after a paying job, so he must be paid adequately. The cost of his healthcare and tax contributions. The cost of insuring the product against future claims by a customer who now has consumer protection laws he can rely on. The added cost of the BO is probably 10% marketing bulls*** and a certain percentage profit, but as any of the producers in the aforementioned thread will tell you, it ain't cheap having stuff made in the EU. In that thread a good number of people said they would be happy to buy the same guns as they currently bought from Asia at a higher price if they were made in the UK. With the EU functionally making France a part of the UK, this is your chance to buy a gun functionally the same as a gun you could buy from Asia, and it has as predicted arrived at a higher price. So why are you so virulently protesting it?
 

Morons with more money than sense are clearly its target market anyway

 
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, particularly when those people have spent vast sums on playing a game most boys grew out of when they discovered girls.
 

Made by Izhmash, still cheaper than BO...


As far as I'm aware, those have CYMA internals, not Lonex, are machine-manufactured (so you get the same potential for poor QC as any non hand-inspected gun) and any European buyer has the same problem with customer support as he does ordering from the Far East - he won't get any. Secondly, IZMHASH are in the business of making tens of thousands of guns a week, so they can leverage economies of scale BO can't even begin to dream of.
 

"Bo Manufacture is a company situated in France manufacturing products of very high quality such at this AKM13. You could almost say that their products have the same high quality produts such as Inokatsu, and we all know how well they're made."
 
These are words of Redwolf
 
"Bo Manufacture is a company situated in France manufacturing products of very high quality such at this AKM13. You could almost say that their products have the same high quality produts such as Inokatsu, and we all know how well they're made. "
 
These are words of Ehobbyasia... even the typo is repeated.

 
My review of the Inokatsu P226 ended up being quoted on eHobbyAsia's sales pitch for the Inokatsu P226 slides - they're evidently written by trawling the internet for related text and then copy and pasting it. Never believe ANYTHING you read on an airsoft retailer's website.

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Just give up already man.

 

This thread reminds me of the TSI Tavor thread.  Why are trolls (Inq Eisenhorn being a latecomer to the game) so eager to defend this product?

 

It's a touch up of an LCT kit.  It's not an airsoft gun manufactured in the EU,  

 

"- Handmade in France - Full Steel Construction - Glued Laminated Wood Stock and Foregrip"

 

The above statement is particularly deceptive.

 

I would like a PTW class Russian spec AK as much as anyone else, but this product is not it.  I own VFC's and I will continue to own VFC's until a superior product is released.

Watch who you're calling a troll, that idiotic name calling might be acceptable at your junior school playground, not so acceptable in an adult forum. If those small squeaking noises emanating from your mouth can't form a coherent sentence, keep quiet and let the grown ups talk.

 

Just in case my post was to subtle for you, a Troll by definition is someone wilfully inciting conflict on a forum topic, not someone who holds a differing opinion and feels a need to (maturely) defend it. If your pre school intellect struggles with all the big words in this threa, and you'd bothered to read my posts, I'm not defending BO AK's, but I disagree with the statements that these products are not worth the price tag or that they're rubbish.....I won't go further than that as I don't like repeating myself, especially if it's to simply cast my pearls amongst the swine.

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Being manufactured in the EU is not a moot point, as the "Why Aren't There Any British Airsoft Companies" thread made explicitly clear. If the gun is perfect and never fails, then fine, it doesn't matter where it was made. But as soon as it goes wrong, it's going to matter where it was made, because if it was in the Far East, you're not going to have a warranty, customer service, or parts support. The ramifications of trying to make an airsoft product within the EU (i.e., within the reach of consumer and employee protection legislation) are huge. Even if this gun was entirely made by LCT and shipped in parts to France, the ramifications of assembling it in France would add hundreds of pounds to its cost - the cost of a French worker to assemble and finish it as his job, not as his hobby after a paying job, so he must be paid adequately. The cost of his healthcare and tax contributions. The cost of insuring the product against future claims by a customer who now has consumer protection laws he can rely on. The added cost of the BO is probably 10% marketing bulls*** and a certain percentage profit, but as any of the producers in the aforementioned thread will tell you, it ain't cheap having stuff made in the EU. In that thread a good number of people said they would be happy to buy the same guns as they currently bought from Asia at a higher price if they were made in the UK. With the EU functionally making France a part of the EU, this is your chance to buy a gun functionally the same as a gun you could buy from Asia, and it has as predicted arrived at a higher price. So why are you so virulently protesting it?

 

 

 

ok that wasnt really the point. The point was that it doesnt matter about the language used I.E manufactured, made in ect. Its either worth buying or not and not where the PARTS are manufactured.

 

You thought i meant it doesnt matter where its made because of my posts in the other thread?

 

Even if thats what i meant Infact your point is moot too :P.

 

If i bought it in the UK/EU i would be automatically protected by what you said. You could buy a product made in the UK from Asia and it wouldnt be protected, buy a chinese product in the EU and it would protected. Point of manufacture is irrelivant.

 

edited for narative mode, i was confusing even myself with what i wrote

 

edited again; OK i read it again and your point isnt Moot, but really just an extension of what i mean, ill try to be more clear in the future. Now im gonna take a nap before i confuse my self further.

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Hey, I never said it was rubbish, I just said it was a rip off. That's my differing opinion and I felt a need to defend it. I haven't called anyone a troll but apparently because I don't feel a tweaked LCT AK is worth a £650+ price tag I'm an idiot/uninformed/biased/swine that lives in a glass house...

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If i bought it in the UK/EU i would be automatically protected by what you said. You could buy a product made in the UK from Asia and it wouldnt be protected, buy a chinese product in the EU and it would protected.

 

If you buy an airsoft gun in the EU you are automatically protected by some EU consumer protection rights. However, those rights are very basic to the average airsoft buyer. The rights are against the person that sold you the gun, but not against the manufacturer of that gun, at least not at a level that someone with a broken airsoft gun would pursue (no-one starts a lawsuit that will cost £50,000 in fees over a £500 gun). If the product breaks inside warranty within a specific set of conditions, you have recourse against the people that sold it to you - but that doesn't get you a working gun, it just gets you some or all of your money back. If the product breaks outside the mandated minimum (one year) warranty period, you are essentially f***ed. So your protection is really very limited even if you do buy your product in the EU - and many people choose to buy their guns (manufactured in Asia) from an Asian retailer, and thus enjoy precisely zero effective consumer protection.

 

Point of manufacture is irrelivant.

 

That's just not true, not from the point of view of the consumer or of the manufacturer. As I've already pointed out, from a manufacturer's point of view it is if nothing else much more expensive to make products in the EU. From the point of view of the consumer, he now has a much higher chance of getting his gun working rather than some money back to keep his broken gun company. That's because if your manufacturer is within your legal jurisdiction you can exercise rights against them in a much more meaningful manner than if they're in the Far East. So an EU company had better plan ahead when it comes to spares and parts support whereas a Far Eastern company can rest secure in the knowledge that the only way you'll get spares from them is to buy a second gun. Having your gun made in the EU is critical when it comes to compliance with local legislation, too - a company that wants to manufacture guns for sale to the German market must meet completely different standards for the Irish or English markets, issues that no foreign manufacturer bothers with. The fact is that point of manufacture is very important, which is why it centers in the Far East - where the consumer and employee have no rights.

 

Hey, I never said it was rubbish, I just said it was a rip off. That's my differing opinion and I felt a need to defend it. I haven't called anyone a troll but apparently because I don't feel a tweaked LCT AK is worth a £650+ price tag I'm an idiot/uninformed/biased/swine that lives in a glass house...

 

I never said it was brilliant, nobody said you weren't entitled to your opinion, and I don't think you're an idiot, uninformed, biased or a swine. I just think that calling people that buy expensive airsoft toys that represent poor value for money morons is hypocritical because we all spend too much money on airsoft toys, expensive or not.

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You're speaking the to the converted on that one (Inokatsu fan here). But if i'm going to buy an LCT, the smart thing to do is to buy the LCT as an LCT and then modify it yourself, not pay way over the odds for someone else to do very little about it and charge you through the nose for it. It's not a waste of money because it's expensive, it's a waste of money because it is pretty much just a tweaked LCT AK for sale for more than it's worth.

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Hey, I never said it was rubbish, I just said it was a rip off. That's my differing opinion and I felt a need to defend it. I haven't called anyone a troll but apparently because I don't feel a tweaked LCT AK is worth a £650+ price tag I'm an idiot/uninformed/biased/swine that lives in a glass house...

No, my comments were 100% directed at Neoptolemus......I shall say no more on this topic.

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If i'm going to buy an LCT, the smart thing to do is to buy the LCT as an LCT and then modify it yourself, not pay way over the odds for someone else to do very little about it and charge you through the nose for it. It's not a waste of money because it's expensive, it's a waste of money because it is [...] for sale for more than it's worth.

Well, if BO are telling the truth, it's more than an LCT - it's an LCT body and Lonex internals. Those by themselves aren't very expensive. But it's apparently hand-assembled in France, and that is (as before) very expensive. I'm not saying it's as expensive as the price of the gun makes out - and even if it is as expensive as the price of the gun makes out, I'm not saying that's good value for money. But it is 'made in France', and that gives you, the consumer, rights that you wouldn't have with an LCT you bought from Asia. If you're competent around gearboxes, then you're probably not very interested in those rights because if your gun breaks, you'll fix it yourself. But if you're not competent around gearboxes (and I'm not, for sure) and you're very wealthy and you absolutely must have a Russian (rather than Chinese) Kalashnikov, then you might conceivably be willing to pay a huge amount of extra cash for the support that BO are legally obliged to make available to you.

 

Whether that support is worth the price premium is up to the buyers, and according to Baddbaz, BO haven't had any difficulty finding them, which isn't something you could say of a lot of objectively better purchases. So according to the market (which is probably quite small and discerning, at this price point) this gun isn't overpriced. According to anyone handy with a set of spanners, it's terribly overpriced - but which one of those two groups is buying guns?

 

Like I said, would I buy one? No. But does the fact that it's made in the EU go some way to explaining the price? Definitely. This is the truth, people - if you want to buy guns made in the EU, they are going to be very expensive even if they're nothing more than regular CYMAs assembled from parts.

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Good. I need to keep explaining how expensive it is to make guns here before I start asking people for four figures for copies of the design I've got kicking around inside my head. :P

 

Maybe I should go to five figures. I mean, this thing's just an LCT body and a Lonex 'box...

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Yeah Puresilver, and you thought the blank firing spring gun could go for £1200 each if you made 10... :P 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong though, I own real sword and a few LCTs, but isn't VFC a more accurate replica of the AKs compared to LCT? I haven't handled one, but I have the VFC galil, and they're pretty good at machining steel, also judging from pictures, the spec seems to be more correct (i.e. machined fire selector dimples, and the position of them are correct in relation to the adjacent rivet, also they're much closer together, like the real steel, and with a removable trunion pin...) 

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Well this thread escalated quickly.

 

Time to throw a little more fuel on the fire. Is this over priced? IMO Yes. The parts for this gun would cost around £350-400 retail from HK based retailers and there is no way BO paid retail if they have any business sense they would have gone to Lonex and placed an order for gearboxes built to their spec along with the barrels, hop and motors and LCT for the body kits, most likely with unfinished wood to save themselves time in the assembly and finishing. They would have been shipped to save on transport costs and iirc France has a lower import tax than the UK.

Yes the labour cost in France is significantly higher than the far east but the amount of actual work on the internals of these would have been at a minimum. My guess would be check the shimming and sort out and play in the trigger etc. I know I can service a gearbox and re shim it in around 30-45 mins and I only do that every 4-5 months. If my job was to do that to 30-40 gearboxes by the end I'd have it down to an art. It's the same with the external finish they would have had one or two guys working on the wood while others worked on weathering the metal work before finally being assembled and tested by the engineer who certificated it. Hell it might have only been a couple of guys doing all the work on all the guns. I don't think we know how long these were in the production phase before they were released so a couple of guys in a rented workshop could have conceivably assembled all 100 or so guns.

 

As for the whole is it BO is it LCT it's most definitely BO. They contracted LCT and Lonex to OEM them parts. It happens in every industry, Honda, VW, Ford etc don't have their own factory to made brake discs or suspension springs they contract a factory to make them and put their brand on it.

The controversy with this airsoft gun is coming from the fact that the OEM product is available at around half the retail cost of the "branded" product and the only difference is a couple of hours of labour. Most of us who take umbrage at the price are doing so because we see that.

 

It being assembled in the EU is also a moot point as far as after sales goes. It doesn't matter where something is made if it is bought from a UK retailer. UK retail law applies.

 

And now I've lost my train of thought so I'll leave it with a TL;DR

It's an overly expensive gun which if BO have any business sense has had very little "custom" work other than QCing the gearbox and a cosmetic makeover. A lot of us are taking offence to this because we see it for what it is.

 

...Or better still spent your money on one to find out unbiased for yourself....

Now there's something you'll not get from someone who bought this gun. If someone pays £650, which isn't an insignificant amount for an AEG they will want to believe they have got something that little bit better and that little bit more special. By charging a premium, making it in limited numbers and marketing it the way they have BO have already biased people towards thinking this will be something special.
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Yeah Puresilver, and you thought the blank firing spring gun could go for £1200 each if you made 10... :P

Maybe if I made 10,000, I could get it that low - although by the looks of it I could charge £2,400 and still sell every last one...  <_<

 

Speaking of which, I owe you a PM. (I'm not gonna make a big deal out of replying to evansy; everything I've said about why it's important where the gun is produced still stands, it's just that I've already disproven that point so there's no point in copying and pasting argument and clogging the thread.)

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If you buy an airsoft gun in the EU you are automatically protected by some EU consumer protection rights. However, those rights are very basic to the average airsoft buyer. The rights are against the person that sold you the gun, but not against the manufacturer of that gun, at least not at a level that someone with a broken airsoft gun would pursue (no-one starts a lawsuit that will cost £50,000 in fees over a £500 gun). If the product breaks inside warranty within a specific set of conditions, you have recourse against the people that sold it to you - but that doesn't get you a working gun, it just gets you some or all of your money back. If the product breaks outside the mandated minimum (one year) warranty period, you are essentially f***ed. So your protection is really very limited even if you do buy your product in the EU - and many people choose to buy their guns (manufactured in Asia) from an Asian retailer, and thus enjoy precisely zero effective consumer protection.

 

 

That's just not true, not from the point of view of the consumer or of the manufacturer. As I've already pointed out, from a manufacturer's point of view it is if nothing else much more expensive to make products in the EU. From the point of view igof the consumer, he now has a much hher chance of getting his gun working rather than some money back to keep his broken gun company. That's because if your manufacturer is within your legal jurisdiction you can exercise rights against them in a much more meaningful manner than if they're in the Far East. So an EU company had better plan ahead when it comes to spares and parts support whereas a Far Eastern company can rest secure in the knowledge that the only way you'll get spares from them is to buy a second gun. Having your gun made in the EU is critical when it comes to compliance with local legislation, too - a company that wants to manufacture guns for sale to the German market must meet completely different standards for the Irish or English markets, issues that no foreign manufacturer bothers with. The fact is that point of manufacture is very important, which is why it centers in the Far East - where the consumer and employee have no rights.

 

jesus, you could talk the virginity off a nun.

 

The first paragraph of your comment; ok, nothing you said goes against what i said, it just seems to expand on it again?

 

the secound half; my point is meant as one point/paragraph, you are expanding away from this product, the content and context of the thread and the comments i was responding to. Yours is a straw man argument, its "made" in france, with parts "manufactured" in Taiwan, sold by whoever. So where does that fall into what you said? the manufacturer of this products pieces is irrelivant as they are out reach. So would they be anyway even in the EU, UNLESS the product was unsafe or broke and injured you. Unless you have a manufacturers waranty which, just because a company is EU based doesnt mean they have to give you one. As for you other points again irrelivant in this case, spares and part support are completely up to the manufacturer there is no legal obligation.  Phone up a UK/EU company and demand spares, you will either get told to "where to go", where to get them or how much you will need to pay to get them. Loads of Chinese manufacturers produce spares, you can buy them through various retailers, same with UK goods, very rarely directly from the company. The reason you cant phone them directly and ask is because they speak a different language to you.

 

pretty much all EU laws cover who you made a "contract" with I.E the seller NOT the manufacturer.

 

some good reading regarding EU rights;

 

http://www.eccnl.eu/page/en/themes/kopen-in-de-eu#par3

 

anyway, i am done derailing this thread.

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