I recently purchased a new M&P Shield 9mm and put around 20 rounds through it. After field stripping the pistol I found that the recoil spring was damaged or warped in some way similar to what is found in this thread:

Shield Recoil Spring Warped?

The spring is either damaged or bent to the point that I cannot get the slide back onto the frame.

I contacted customer service on January 11 and requested that a new spring be sent to me so that the pistol would not have to return to the factory (and to save either myself or S&W the shipping costs). I was told it would take around 8 days to receive.

I contacted customer service again on January 22 and was told they "got backed up" and the new spring shipped out on January 21 and would take an additional "10 business days" to arrive.

The Shield has now been unusable for a week and a half. Since the new spring was delayed and is now "10 business days" away from arriving, at this point should I continue to wait around for the new spring or should I go ahead and request the pistol be sent to Smith and Wesson for repair?

May as well wait for the spring to arrive and if your sure that you can do the repair yourself. If you send in your gun to S&W for them to repair, you don't know how long it could take before you get it back. Also S&W could give you an estimated repair date if you were to send in your gun, but they again could end up getting backed up and who knows how long it could take to get it back, IMO. I had a friend who sent his gun in for repair on his trigger bar being bent and S&W gave him an estimate of a week to ten days. Long story short, he finally got it back in almost a month. S&W does have excellent C/S but if you can do the repair yourself, then just wait for the spring to come in. Again, just my opinion.

Wait for the part, it already shipped. There's NO way you'd get your Shield back from S&W before you got the part.

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M&P40c/15-22/SD9VE/Mossy500

I agree to wait on the part. The current turn around time seems to be two full weeks for warranty work. That includes the FedEx shipping time, so a little over a week in the factory. You might get the spring quicker than the CSR stated, as long as it was shipped.

Bob

Thanks guys. I figured I should probably just wait for the spring but I didn't know the average turnaround time for shipping the gun off for repair since I've never done that with Smith and Wesson before.

It's just frustrating to have waited months and months to get my hands on the Shield and to have problems with it right off the bat and now more delays to get a new spring.

Hopefully the replacement spring and assembly will correct the problem.

10 business days is a ballpark estimate. Unless they sent it UPS/FedEx, it most likely won't take that long (unless you live way out in the Yukon Territory).

With my luck, the replacement recoil spring would arrive the day after I shipped the pistol to the factory.