Hornady Customer Service- Two Thumbs Up!

[steamloco76]

In this age of throw-away products and the who cares customer service to go with said products it is a relief to find a company like Hornady.

I purchased a set of Hornady .38 Special/.357 Magnum Custom Series dies specifically to load .38 Special while leaving my 22 year old RCBS dies set for .357 Mag. Twenty cases into my first batch of sizing, I hit a stuck primer. Instead of the decap pin snapping it bent, cracked the pin collet and bent the end of the decap stem! In my previous 22 years reloading, I'd only broken one decap pin on pistol ammo.

Went to Hornady's web site and filled out the online customer service form with all the pertinent info on Thursday. Had a response the same day that they were shipping the replacement parts on Friday morning. Received the parts Monday. Now that is excellent customer service and I didn't have to jump through hoops to get it.

 

[Maximumbob54]

I went close to a year not breaking a single pin on any of my dies. Suddenly I have snapped Lee, RCBS, Redding, and I just snapped my Lee Universal Decapper. I have now replaced them all, and just snapped by brand new Lee Xpander that I just bought. I used to like the Lee dies since they are supposed to just pop up instead of breaking, but I seem to be setting them too tight lately. Stupid berdan brass...

 

[brucev]

Very good to hear Hornady treated you right. That is becoming less the norm with many businesses.

 

[WC145]

Yes, Hornady's CS is top notch. I recently bought a box of their .44spl Critical Defense and had several failures to fire out of 2/3 of the box. I emailed them and they sent me a return shipping label and after throughly checking the fired cases and unfired ammo determined that some of the fired cases had rims that were thinner than should be so the primer sat too far forward for the firing pin to get a solid strike. The guy that did the testing even called me to explain everything they checked and what they found. They're sending me two fresh boxes (with the rims checked to specs) and a Zombie Max hat. Should be arriving today. No complaints about that kind of service.

 

[papajohn428]

The Lee dies I have will punch out a primer even if the durn thing is crimped in with no damage. Done it hundreds of times. Just saying.

 

[310Pilot]

The Lee dies I have will punch out a primer even if the durn thing is crimped in with no damage. Done it hundreds of times. Just saying.

True, but they won't go through a Berdan-primed case - no need to ask me how I found that out, hehe. I now look inside every military headstamped case (except Lake City) before I deprime. Slows down the first time prep work, but it saves more time by keeping the depriming punch from breaking.

I agree with the original poster, Hornady's customer service has always been top-notch. I have an old Pro-Jector, the forerunner of the Lock-n-Load AP, and they still support it, and have sent me a number of small parts that have gone missing over the years. The only thing they don't support for that press are the primer tubes, they just don't make them anymore. Pretty much everything else is available, though.

 

[Cyrano]

310 pilot: You'd better check 30 Carbine cases with LC headstamps dated 52. These have Berdan primers and are corrosive. Don't know what they are for sure, but the story is they're Chinese, and the L C stands for something like "Lower China". I bent a decapping pin on them.