Smith Man ----thanks for the info. S&W IS a great American company but dealing with some of their CS knuckleheads can be a major headache. Your info should be immensely helpful to all of us who have to deal with CS for whatever reason. I posted in this thread a day or 2 ago about my personal CS experience. Will now give final followup to original post after taking newly finished (by S&W) CS9 to the range today---- it functioned flawlessly. So now it looks good too. Thanks again for your post, SmithMan.