Smith & Wesson M&P 40 Poor Warranty

[Zjnovak]

I had even had thoughts on a Glock 23.

My two most recent purchases are a S&W 686+ and a FDE Glock 23. I am extremely happy with both brands. No problems whatsoever with either, and never had to actually use a warranty for a "real" reason. Last December I had called S&W in need of an internal lock key (for my model 60 at the time) and an extractor for my M&P (I polished the original).

They ended up sending me two keys, a cable lock, an extractor (M&P), a takedown lever, a mag extension, and a manual for a j-frame all free of cost. IMO S&W has the best customer service in the industry. If you call and act like an a**, don't expect anything in return.

My M&P 9mm FS was one of my favorite guns, and I still regret selling it. I put 350 reloads through it in about an hour and that thing was hot! I could hardly grab the slide, but it just kept on truckin'.

 

[Lost Lake]

Call them right now.... I just called and got a customer service rep immediately!! Must be a slow time of the day!

.

 

[Zjnovak]

By the way, if you think Taurus has better CS, something is wrong. The only Taurus I owned was a Judge, and a very small hairline crack began to form near the grip. I called (took 45 minutes to talk to a rep) and they refused to take it in under "free warranty", as it was "my fault". I cut my losses and sold it cheap to someone who would pay for the repair.

Good luck and let us know what S&W decides to do.

 

[Lee in Quartzsite]

Here is what I think of this Thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_kwXNVCaxY

 

[forrestinmathews]

Still not buying what you are selling..... even more so after this.. It has nothing to do with me being a S&W fanboy... what you are selling doesn't add up. I am sure that is why others have called baloney here, it's the tale you spin.. You have dodged or tip toed answering the important questions..

Yes I am seeing this trend too.

400 rounds fired. Who knows how quickly? Assuming that there are three 10rd magazines in the equation and an UPLula...I'm figuring 2 seconds a mag to shoot, 1.5 seconds to reload, combined with a thirty second magazine reload time gives 39 secs per 30 rounds. If I've done the math right that works out to 8:45 to fire 400 rounds. I think that would put the gun hot enough to maybe get into trouble. There were more magazines involved or something else entirely different occurred.

What really sends alarm bells ringing is, "I shot over 400 rds through it that day, my firearm seem to start warming up earlier as most do on the metal i paid no attention. When the firearm would jam in between a few round being shot i started getting weiry, so i empty the magazine,holstered the gun and returned it to my truck..."

This screams neglect and inexperienced/ignorant operator.

When my gun gets hot, I pay attention and let it cool. I'm not being overrun by zombies. No need to sustain a rate of fire.

When my gun begins to malfunction, I investigate the cause. I will not accept any condition that pops up out of the blue. These are warning signs of something potentially bigger. Investigate, clean weapon, then and only then resume firing.

When I finish with my gun I leave the magazine out. I do not want to confuse it for a clean and loaded gun. I also want to be sure that all my magazines are accounted for.

 

[N4KVE]

I work in a gun store, & see everything imaginable. I don't put all my eggs in one basket, & own guns from many different companies. I do own a M&P40c which I got from my brother. It fits my hand perfectly, so no need for a Shield. My previous carry gun was a HK USP 45. The cops in Florida don't care if a gun prints. I have never seen a problem with any S&W, Glock, & most others. What I have seen are problems with the Taurus Judge, & some Kimbers. No offense to the OP, & while I don't think he's lying, I feel there's more to the story than is being told. Obviously, S&W feels the gun suffered abuse, & that's why they won't fix it. I wish the OP luck. GARY

 

[growr]

To me this entire thing doesn't pass the smell test ....

Randy

 

[rsrocket1]

Using simple math, if they sell you a new M&P for $280 and you turn around and sell it new in the box for a little less than what a gun store would sell it for, you could recoup a significant amount of your purchase price. If the supervisor doesn't get it fixed or replaced under warranty then take them up on the cheap price for a replacement and sell it without ever firing it. Not sure what a new one goes for.

You need to listen to Fkimble. If you really believe you are not at fault, put up the money, recoup some of your loss and figure that you got a few good years of enjoyable shooting out of your M&P for a few dollars per outing. Not great, but certainly cheaper than a range rental.

Personally, if I did something that I could admit to myself as "possibly my fault", after exhausting all other options, I would be glad to dish out $280 for a new gun.

Good luck in your dealings with S&W. I've only had one warranty job by them and they fixed it quickly and for free.

 

[turbo38gn]

Here is what I think of this Thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_kwXNVCaxY

That was great!!

 

[Ofc.JL]

Methinks something is rotten in Denmark! With apologies to "the Baird!"
I call BS on heat damage from cartridge discharge. Something else happened to melt plastic, or jam the lock work. Like chemical cleaner, perhaps? The amount of heat it takes to even soften the polymer used in M&P's is way beyond any temperature people will encounter normally. Even hours in a hot car will not do it. However, like I said, there are some chemicals available that will melt plastic on contact. Berryman's B12 will dissolve almost all plastics on contact. As an Armorer, I have seen it done. A person destroyed the grips on a SIG 226 to the point of structual failure. Soaked his pistol in a tank full of it, thinking "if it cleans carburetors....."!
I think Donnieg3212 has decided that he doesn't like "plastic" guns and wants something else. Just had a customer(I repair for a friends gun shop, too) that swears his new SIG 226 will not reset hammer cock on occassion when shooting. Pistol was sent to SIG, they went thru it, found no problems, returned all cleaned and tuned, pistol given back to customer. He comes back a few days later saying it still does it. I looked at it again and fired it. I can't get pistol to malf at all. And it's broken in and runs like a sewing machine! Then I found out this customer is extremely small in stature and can't even get his fingers around grip. It's his grip and inability to properly handle the pistol causing his short stroking. There is always a reason. It's called "Cause and Effect".
BTW, Donnieg, good luck w/a SIG 225/P6. While a nice pistol, that weapon was never designed for anything other that 125 gr ball ammo. High speed loads and hollow points can shut that gun down real quick. Not always, but the possibilty remains high. Too high of a slide speed problem, and there is no reliable fix. It is a testament to SIG that all these surplus P6's run as well as they do, but the problem remains. Enough so that I will not approve of any of my Officers carrying one off duty. The SIG 225 is no longer viable as a LE weapon using LE ammunition. Too bad, too. Very comfortable pistol, IMHO. Of course, YMMV.
Oops, I digress; Donnieg3212, get some other brand of pistol and good luck.
It isn't S&W fault, now is it?

 

[Don 73]

"... i empty the magazine,holstered the gun ..."


"I had to remove the magazine bottom,spring n follower to assure smith & wesson it wasnt loaded ..."


First you said that you removed the magazine and holstered the gun, THEN you say you had to field strip the magazine IN the gun to ensure S&W that it was unloaded ...

Which was it?

 

[Rastoff]

400 rounds fired. Who knows how quickly? Assuming that there are three 10rd magazines in the equation and an UPLula...I'm figuring 2 seconds a mag to shoot, 1.5 seconds to reload, combined with a thirty second magazine reload time gives 39 secs per 30 rounds. If I've done the math right that works out to 8:45 to fire 400 rounds. I think that would put the gun hot enough to maybe get into trouble. There were more magazines involved or something else entirely different occurred.

If you refer to my previous post, you'll see that I did exactly that. I only fired 300 rounds, but I had 8 10 round mags and used an UpLULA to reload the mags. I wasn't trying to shoot as fast as possible, but I was firing controlled pairs and doing emergency reloads when swapping mags.

I'm sure I was emptying each mag in 8-10 seconds with about a 1 second mag change. That makes for about 90 seconds to run through 8 mags.

Reloading a 10 round mag with the UpLULA takes about 10 seconds so, we can figure about 90 seconds for reloading all 8. But, I wasn't trying to set any records so, let's say it took 2 minutes to reload all the mags. That would be 4 reloading sessions with the 4th being shorter than the others. Even so, it couldn't have been more than a total of 10 minutes of reloading.

Combine it all together and my estimate of less than 30 minutes is probably pretty close.

When I was done, I put my gun in a pistol rug which encloses the gun more than a holster, and went home; about a 15 minute drive. There is nothing wrong with my gun and it still works flawlessly to this day. I've put at least 1,200 rounds through it since that day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I believe that Donnieg3212 believes his gun was damaged through shooting. So, I harbor no ill will toward him and there's no need to bash the guy. I don't think he's a troll or other foul being. However, I do believe he's wrong about the cause of his malfunction. Based on my own experience I just don't see how the gun will melt just by firing.

Further, I'm sure that S&W has done failure testing of this sort. It's a common practice for a new design to be tested to failure. That failure point is a lot higher than 400 rounds.

Donnieg3212,
The advice to buy the new gun for $280 is sound. You can't get a Sig or any other gun for that price. Then just sell it and be money ahead. Doing anything else is simply using poor judgement.

 

[UncaGrunny]

I guess the part that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is the combination of 'I'm Done with S&W, they suck and their warranty sucks! I'm going elsewhere' with 'I want my original S&W back fixed, even though it'll still suck and the warranty will still suck.'

That, and figuring the $500 purchase cost two years ago into the 'cost' of a heavily discounted replacement @$280, to get that $800 (no, $780) cost of 'a single gun.'

I'm not an accountant (I made my wife into one so I didn't have to be one) but even I understand the concept of amortization better than that. A two-year-old $500 gun is no longer a $500 gun... even if it wasn't broke. The OP got two years of use out of it, so it's value was less than a brand-new one. (Currently much less, seeing as how it's all broke and all.)

S&W's warranty offers repair or replacement, at their option, except in cases of abuse or neglect based on their judgement. Seems like they are honoring their promise so far as I can see.

I'm no S&W "fanboy," having only owned 2 S&W weapons for less than a year total, and I can understand being upset when a manufacturer tells you that in their opinion a product is not just damaged beyond recovery but that they believe the damage was due to abuse, but S&W clearly has a very solid reputation of 'stepping up' where their warranty is concerned. It's hard to see them pronouncing a weapon irreparable in a case where it's not, in order to squeeze less than $300 out of someone and risk damaging that reputation. The two concepts just don't jibe.

But then, I can't imagine sending an expensive weapon back to the mfg for repair without having taken some pix or video of it's condition before it left, for insurance purposes if lost/damaged in shipping if nothing else. YMMV, of course.

I don't know what exact polymer S&W uses on the M&P frame, but I do know that Glock uses a proprietary polymer similar to Nylon-6, which has a melting point of ~428 F, and it's reasonable to assume that S&W uses something similar, for similar reasons.

That's pretty hot. About 25 degrees below the ignition point of paper.

I get that the OP is upset and when we're upset we can say things that are a bit exaggerated. I know I do, on occasion.

But I can't make the assertions add up, try though I might.

 

[Badquaker]

Chemically softened plastic?

I wonder what cleaning solvents had been used?

400 rounds in a day is not that many.

 

[Lost Lake]

I believe some folks get on here and think if they raise a fuss, that S&W will notice it and roll over and give them what they want.

This is not a board hosted by S&W.

I believe S&W knows their guns, knows what they will take and knows what a failure looks like.

I believe the frames can withstand hundreds of degrees of heat and not be damaged. That kind of heat would burn your hand very quickly.

Those are some things I believe.

But not the OP's story....

.

 

[JJEH]

As long as I don't see any pictures I'm calling BS!

 

[Autococker07]

JJEH I agree wholeheartedly.... Every time something I own fails (which is usually when i break it LOL) I take pics for posterity at a minimum. If I have a complaint, send an expensive item in the mail, etc, even more reason.

I am also interested in the chemical cleaners theory... thats a great point that has never entered my mind!!!

 

[Ofc.JL]

At least that's what comes to my mind. I can almost guarantee no one can shoot a modern polymer pistol to melt point in 400 rds, like UncaGrunny said(Thanx, Grunny! And for your service to our Country, too! God help her!)
I can see this individual shooting along, load, shoot, reload, shoot, until the pistol starts to choke on debris from powder residue and starts to malf. Then, a quick fix! An aerosol can full of what have you to spray inside the pistol to try to remove, or lubricate the inside lock/ breech area. What ever someone used, or had in the truck/car, be it himself, and or friend/ range buddy/ range people, etc. Except what ever was used was plastics incompatable and literally dissolved the polymer to the point of failure to work. Bingo, "melted" pistol!
No one reads anything or pays attention to small things anymore.
The Devil is in the Details, hunh?
S&W was VERY gracious to offer you a pistol at half price, Donnieg.
Your pistol got screwed up, and Smith & Wesson DIDN'T do it. They know, my friend, they know. Period.
Best of luck, Donnieg, really. All firearm enthusiast are my Brothers.

 

[Fat B]

I call troll and there is no melted gun. Who wouldn't take a pic of their gun they melted but they do create a user ID and post complaining about customer service? I don't see it happening.

 

[forrestinmathews]

PB Blaster? Gasoline? Ether?

Put on your big boy britches, call up S&W, and pay the $280. When that's all said and done, make like Paul Harvey and tell us, "The Rest of the Story."

I call, "Who cares?"!!!