Wow! Four trips back for warranty service. Yes, it's pretty rare to find a company that will go that far to fix one particular item. I think most would have fixed it on the first trip back to the factory, definitely by the second trip back and if they could not fix it, would have replaced it.
It's incomprehensible that it's gotten this far. At this point, the word incompetence is the only word that seems appropriate, and at Smith & Wesson there's multiple layers of incompetence stacked on top of each other.
With the first repair, which should have been simple and easy, I sent full page zoomed-in photos of the mis-formed trigger bar and bad sear engagement, also pictures of what it's supposed to look like. They replaced the trigger bar and sear, however the repair technician somehow managed to not realize (or care) that the second trigger bar had the same problem and he also managed to put a small machine/tool mark on my frame. Upon receiving the gun back and looking inside, it was immediately obvious that the trigger bar was still mis-shapen.
Upon calling them back, I encountered a customer service representative who didn't care, got mad that I called them back without firing the gun first, and he hung up after pointing out that I'm not a gun smith.
At this stage, most people would have sold the gun and abandoned S&W products permanently.
With the second repair attempt, again I sent full page photos with clear repair instructions as well as a photo of the tool mark on my frame. Instead of them paying attention to what they are doing, and what the problem was, they replaced the striker and firing pin, and didn't touch the trigger bar.
As soon as the FedEx shipping notification for label creation landed in my inbox, I called to see what they did. The woman on the phone told me that they replaced the striker and firing pin and I began to explain that they did the wrong repair and requested they put it back through service before shipping it back. That caused her to lose her temper and I forget which of us hung up on the other one.
Of course I called them back immediately. Finally they did pull it out of shipping and escalated it to the head of the repair department. So now this is repair attempt number three where they finally did replace the trigger bar with one that's not bent or deformed.
As stated in my previous post, they didn't fix the tool mark on my frame and I had to fix the inertial saftey in the trigger shoe myself. This would be resolved now if they didn't replace the striker and firing pin, which was completely unnecessary.
You'd think the gunsmith who replaced the striker would have checked for functionality and made sure the saftey plunger was still operating correctly, but that clearly didn't happen. Since the head of the repair department examined it himself, you'd think he would have noticed the issue with the striker, but he also didn't, and as a result they shipped a gun to a customer that literally has a fatal flaw.
For S&W's customer service and their repair department to be this bad, and this far gone, it really requires a work place environment where employees hate their job, are not empowered, and where executive leadership is aloof and disconnected from what's happening in their company.
Frankly it's sad. I've seen this before because I've worked for companies who were in this condition. Some of those companies no longer exist, and one of them was a publicity traded company who was larger than Smith & Wesson.
If left unaddressed, these plethora of issues are self-correcting in the marketplace simply because customers are fickle creatures and our brand loyalty quickly fades.
The market conditions appear to be ripe for M&P clones to be developed and sold by start-up companies who know they can do it better.
