Originally Posted by 500SNW

Everything you said above was absolutely correct...but that was NOT my point. My point was that we shouldn't so hastily draw conclusions from just one person's tale. Let's remember that S&W cranks out a lot of firearms of all types, year after year. You say "I am not one to jump to conclusions lightly." Yet you are doing so based solely upon a single online post from someone you don't know? I myself am not ready to label all new Smith's coming off the line as unreliable junk just because one person reported a problem on an online forum. There's too many variables, too many unverifiable questions. Was it truly new and unfired when he bought it all those years ago? Maybe someone bought it from the dealer, took it to the range over the weekend - firing God knows what through it - and returned it on Monday morning because they couldn't take the recoil from a small frame snub revolver. Dealer cleans it up and sells it as "new." Then there's the OP who had it for four years and fired (at least) 2000 rounds through it. Was the revolver broken or defective when the OP recently contacted S&W for service? Probably so. Was it defective when it left the factory all those years ago? That is difficult to answer...and hardly grounds for the rest of us making conclusions.