Gotta jump in and say that I've had nothing but good service from Teds. For instance, last year someone at a PSA meeting was showing off one of those folding wallets for flasher storage. I went to Teds and asked about them. The counter guy said that they didn't stock them, but asked me to wait a minute. He got on the phone with his distributor, and 5 minutes later let me know that they'd have them in a few days. I do shop there reasonably often, but mostly for odds and ends, I'm not a big spender or anything. I also like John's Sporting Goods in Everett and Ed's Surplus. I agree that Jerry's is kind of anoying to shop at.

My WORST license experience was at a Wal-Mart. I had some folks in from out of town, and we decided to go fishing the next day. It was pretty late in the evening, and wally world was pretty much the only option to get a license for my visitors on short notice. It took shuffling through 5 employees in the sporting goods department to find someone who said they knew how to work the licencing gizmo. Took her 15 minutes or so to figure out what information they needed and put it in the computer. Then she went to print the stickers, and the machine was out of paper. She goes to put a new roll of stickers in, but didn't know that there was a button to open the cover on the machine, so she forced it open and broke the latch. Put the new roll in, then discovered that it wouldnt print with the cover open, and couldn't close it due to the jammed latch. I stepped in and managed to remove the broken bits of latch, so it would print as long as someone held the cover closed. She finally printed the licence, and it was for freshwater, when we asked for salt. Went though 10 minutes of trying to figure out how to do a return on a licence. Called the manager, who didn't know either, so they gave us a refund from the store till in cash, and FINALLY got us the two saltwater licenses we needed. All told, it took over an hour to get two licences, just as the store as about to close.

Dan