I got the Shield Plus back again yesterday evening. It's been through service three times now and after they did the wrong repair the last time, and put visible damage on it the first time, I was told the head of the service department got involved this time and personally examined it himself.

Customer service confirmed that the trigger bar they previously replaced was also bent or misshapen, so they replaced it again. They also confirmed that they inadvertently replaced the striker and firing pin despite nothing being wrong with those parts.

Upon receiving the Shield Plus, the first thing I noticed is that they didn't fix the external machine/tool mark on the back of my frame from the first service attempt.

The trigger bar and sear engagement issue is now fixed and looks great.

The trigger shoe was also replaced but this created a new problem because the spring in the inertial saftey seemed stiffer. This resulted in me being unable to pull the trigger unless my finger rode the bottom of the trigger guard and hit the bottom most point of the trigger. So I called customer service but Scott wasn't available. I spoke with Frank who insisted on knowing what was going on. Since he wanted to know, I explained everything, including the prior customer service problems, Frank grew impatient. Soon Frank was interrupting me and then acting like he was doing me an enormous favor by being willing to allow me to send it in for warranty service again. I tried to explain to Frank that because of my prior issues with the warranty department, and customer service, and the poor design of the trigger shoe, I didn't want to do that, and had a different idea. Frank wouldn't let me finish, he became combative, raised his voice, and became very condescending. He began asking me if I was a firearm engineer and began insinuating that I don't know how to operate a trigger and that I don't know what I'm talking about. Frank began yelling, I don't know what he was saying because I just began yelling over him. Every time Frank started yelling, I would just yell over him. We repeated that many times, over and over.

At any customer service department where a company cares about it's customers and also has oversight of it's employees, a supervisor would have yanked Frank out of his desk and stuffed him in an office while the supervisor took over the call, before terminating Frank's employment... but that never happened, so we kept yelling. I demanded a supervisor but Frank insisted that none were available today, he continued to yell and eventually Frank hung up on me.

I began calling customer service back over and over and over, every time I asked for a supervisor and every time I was either told that one wasn't available or I was just sent to a voice mail. I kept calling, over and over. Eventually, like magic, Paul the supervisor was available.

I made Paul listen to everything, from start to finish. I explained that what I wanted was an M&P Compact, at minimum at a significantly reduced price due to all of the issues, poor QC, and bad design of the trigger's inertial saftey in the Shield Plus. I explained the depth of my holster and magazine investment and the time missed from work because of shipping and then having to be home to sign for the FedEx package. Paul refused and offered no alternatives. Ultimately Paul did nothing except tell me to contact executive leadership through investor relations. I made Paul confirm the two replacement 15rd mags were shipped as a replacement to my two defective magazines and I had him order two 10rd mag plate pinky extensions which are something they give for free to anyone who asks.

After the disappointing call, which was the first time that I was actually able to get a supervisor on the phone, I fabricated a small tool of the appropriate size, glued a tiny strip of #400 sandpaper to it, and began modifying the tab of the inertial saftey that hits the frame behind the trigger. I successfully fixed it while maintaining the factory saftey values. The trigger now works and no longer has a magical sweet spot in order to make it work. It's a trigger, and a deliberate pull should make it fire without extra thought or instruction. Anything less is a design flaw. It's literally that simple.

Being happy with the success of my improvised trigger mod, I found myself becoming optimistic that I'd actually be able to take the Shield Plus to the range so then I re-installed my TLR6. My slide was still off the frame.

I grabbed the slide and that's when the saftey plunger caught my eye because under the right light, it looked half-way depressed. I pushed it in with my finger and it returned to the same position. I then pulled the striker forward with my finger and to my surprise, it moved and allowed the firing pin to move all the way forward. I then pushed the striker back with my finger and the plunger clicked up into place. I gently pushed the plunger back down with a punch and again it hung up and allowed the striker to freely move forward. I then reassembled the gun, racked the slide a bunch of times, dry fired a few times, then disassembled it, and again the striker was hanging up and not allowing the saftey plunger to lock back into place. I repeated this multiple times.

Over the natural course of troubleshooting the issue, including swapping slides back and forth with my Shield 2.0, I discovered that after disassembly and reassembly, sometimes the striker would return and allow the plunger to lock, and other times it wouldn't. My Shield 2.0 didn't have the issue at all.

With the Shield Plus, I was able to manually recreate the issue 100% of the time with the slide removed by depressing the plunger, moving the striker forward, releasing the plunger, and then releasing the striker. Every time the saftey plunger fails to lock the striker into place. When doing the same on my Shield 2.0, every time, the plunger locks the striker without hesitation.

Again to clarify, the Shield Plus is failing to lock the striker on it's own through the course of normal operation. This is potentially a fatal flaw which could possibly lead to an uncommanded discharge. There's a very good reason why striker fired guns have a plunger saftey that blocks the striker.

The only reason there's now an issue with the striker and plunger interface is because the service department screwed up and replaced those parts when they shouldn't have. The result is that they literally sent my gun back to me with a fatal flaw, and that's after the head of the repair department inspected it himself. I carry in the appendix position too.

Now S&W's incompetence has created a situation where I literally could have been killed.

I took video of the plunger/striker problem and sent it to S&W's customer service email. I then called them and asked for Scott or Paul, I was sent to voice mail over and over... so naturally after leaving a voice mail for Paul once, I kept calling, and kept calling over and over and over. Finally I got Scott on the phone, got a new RMA number, and got a new FedEx label.

Now the Shield Plus has to go back to the warranty department a fourth time and this saga continues.

It's pretty rare to find a company that's this far gone.