OK I talked to my daughter the lawyer this morning. FWIW she was one of the top people in her class at one of the best law schools in the country and was also editor and chief of the Law Review all three years she was there. If you know anyone in law school you know what a big deal that is. She also worked full time for a federal judge in Tampa for a year and now they're trying to hire her back as a permanent full time legal assistant. She's now a corporate lawyer at Holland and Knight, one of the biggest law firms in the country. She also used to work in the JAG office at Ft. Bragg. I started off by asking her about how they treated theft on Ft. Bragg and she said they take it very seriously and they she did sit in on a couple of courts-martials for theft while she was there. She said that a
lot of people get kicked out of the service for what we civilians consider "minor" theft. Besides the issues of moral turpitude and the security of classified and sensitive material she also brought up the fact that since so many people live so closely together and must be able to depend on each other even in situations involving life or death that the services
must have people that can be trusted.
In a nutshell, she agreed with my advice that you should report any theft to the military police and/or base commander and if that doesn't get results then you should complain to your congress critters since they oversee the military and how it disposes of property. She also said that the buyers may have agreed to certain conditions or restrictions concerning the property in their purchase agreements. But since I've never bought anything from GL I don't know if there are any such restrictions so READ your contracts closely BEFORE you sign them!
Just out of curiosity I asked her about GL's claim that you can only sue them in AZ. Particularly since they have employees and offices and sell items (conduct business) in many other states. But she said that the courts usually do uphold those requirements. So if you're considering suing them it looks like you'll have to go to Az to do it.
She also agreed with the statement that someone made here that a Bailment does exist when you turn over your money to GL and that they do have the requirement to safeguard YOUR property until you take possession of it. EVEN if you have a third party transport it to you. However be prepared to PROVE that the third party isn't the one that is actually responsible for any theft. However there are different standards of care that are to be expected under the various conditions of bailment and I didn't have time to go into the details. BUT
IMHO GL should be expected to be held to the highest level of care. Wikipedia says: "For
consideration vs. gratuitous. If a person agrees to accept a fee or other good consideration for holding possession of goods, they are generally held to a higher
standard of care than a person who is doing so without being paid (or receives no benefit)."
In fact, there is also a bailment between the owning service and GL
before the sale so GL is responsible for the security of the property then and
should not allow anyone to be taking parts unless that are specifically and officially allowed to do so by the "owner". But you as the buyer probably have little recourse if the previous owner (the service) fails to enforce it. But that's where the base commanders and/or congress comes in. If they get enough complaints then they'll have to enforce the Bailment on GL.
Wikipedia has a pretty good description of Bailment and it's varying levels of care and a plaintiff's recourse if you're interested in learning more.
Bailment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So there it is. Go file some theft reports and let's see what happens!
As for the ones of you that keep crying "oh but they'll ban me for life" or "they'll just stop selling to individuals" all I can say is I wonder why you're so dead set against seeing something done about the theft problem. If YOU'RE happy with things being stolen out of your trucks then don't file a report but don't try to convince others not to. Or is there some reason that you want to see the theft continue??