First post here- felt compelled to share my recent experience, hopefully to help others. I just purchased a new 45 Shield, and brought it to the range for the first time yesterday. The issue I was having was that the magazine was coming loose while firing, then causing a round to not feed. I have 3 of the 7 round magazines and 1 of the 6 – and the problem was on all mags, with a variety of different ammo- and yes the mags were always properly seated. Seemed it happened ½ way through a mag. I figured it was my fault- I am used to Glocks and 1911’s so thought I was maybe hitting the mag release with my thumb. So I called S&W customer service yesterday and the gentleman I talked to immediately said I needed a new magazine release assembly, and that he would send me one. I then started researching posts on this forums and read that people had success fixing this problem by either changing out the mag release Or having the magazine followers changed out. I thought the follower being an issue was interesting so I did an experiment- I took the slide off and inserted a magazine in- looking down from the top I could see the orange follower hitting the metal nub that holds the magazine in place. If you closely look at the mag release button I can even see it move as the follower hits the nub.
So I called back today and this time the guy I got immediately said the issue was not the magazine release assembly - but it was in fact the followers. He was actually upset that the original person was sending me a mag assembly. He is sending me 4 new followers- he says the new followers have a relief cut (notch?) cut out so that the follower does not contact the metal nub that holds the mag in place.
I will let everyone know if this solves my issue once I get the followers and test them out. If the followers don’t fix it I will also have a new mag release assembly to install I guess.
So my question is- if S&W knows there is an issue with the Shield 45 magazine followers hitting the nub that holds the mag – why are they not recalling the original mags? Clearly they have a new design available to fix this known issue.