I know I may get some heat for this but WTH S&W??? Don't get me wrong I have always considered S&W some of the best guns in the "affordable by normal humans" price range. In fact in my household my wife and I have 8 handguns between us, 6 of them are S&W. However my experience with the brand in the past year has been frankly unsatisfactory. By that I mean out of 3 new S&W's acquired since last August 2 of them have literally had parts fall out/off on the first range trip. Seriously?
The first, a rather pricey model 60-15 Pro Series my wife bought last August had the pin holding in the locking bolt fall out in less than 2 boxes of ammo. Looking back at my pictures I took a pic of it after the first 15 or so rounds because, well it's a pretty gun and I wanted a wallpaper kind of pic of it. Regardless in that pic if I zoom in I can see the pin had already started walking out, I just didn't know it. 4 or 5 loadings later when I popped open the cylinder it felt funny and I felt something fall into my hand... It was the locking bolt. Very disappointing as I have 2 other J-frames currently and have owned others before and I have never seen this. Which is why I recommended my wife buy the SW over the Ruger in the first place.
So I called SW and they said they'd send me out two each of the pin and the spring because they are small parts and easily lost while re-assembling. OK fine. When will they be in? No idea, we're in the middle of moving and frankly it might be a bit. Not the answer I wanted to hear but everybody has a mess up once in a while. Weeks go by, no part. I call to follow up and they say yes they see the order was in but still can't see any estimated ship or even if it shipped. So eventually about a month later I get a little yellow envelope in the mail containing nothing but a tiny plastic bag with 2 pins in it. Yay, one part came in but what about the other and yes I scoured that bag for another tiny bag with the springs... notta. On the phone to S&W again, they still can't help and basically tell me I just have to wait. Personally if I was them I would have just sent 2 more springs just to be sure the customer got them. But no, they did not. It's nearly a year later and they still have not arrived. For an $800+ revolver this is completely unacceptable. After the last call though I had a gut feeling I wouldn't see them from Smith so I went on Brownell's and ordered them myself. I put them in (with a little tip I think I found here on this forum about peening the center of the pin) and several hundred rounds later she's still good. However having to wait months for parts to never show and then eventually buy my own parts to make a gun work that should have worked out of the box is not a pleasant experience. I've essentially given up on their support tbh. Waste of my time.
Still just the one bad one, crap happens right? Fast forward to a few months ago and I pick up a 9mm M&P 2.0 Metal. I was in Academy and I held it and I fell in love with it so it came home with me. That pistol has been nothing but flawless. A great big brother to my Shield I carry most (also flawless after thousands of round in the past several years). I cannot say enough good about my M&P Metal, I love that handgun. It may be my favorite handgun I have ever owned. So that's good at least. Also in theory I have a free green-dot sight coming in the mail from the rebate so bonus there.
So move on to this past week. I pick up an M&P 22 Compact. I took it to the range yesterday. First few shots were great. Std velocity CCI Clean Quiet and Remington Golden Bullets. Maybe 3 mags. Then I decided to try some CCI Stingers. As I am shooting I see the shot string is wandering to the side and I am thinking wow I must've had too much coffee or something but on the 6th shot suddenly the sight picture looked different all of a sudden. The rear sight blade had departed the gun. Last 4 shots from the mag went back in the box. Luckily I found the sight blade on the bench and the screw itself had not come all the way out. Another range trip wasted. I was able to re-assemble it later at home but the rear sight screw has literally no rotational tension. So it will just fall out again if I don't do something. Which from what I have read leaves me with two options... get the gun sighted in (and hope the screw hasn't turned on that last shot you tested that sighting with and superglue the screw since you cannot use thread locker in plastic, or two spend another $80 on aftermarket fixed sights from Dawson Precision. Oh I suppose I could go with option 3, send my gun back to Smith and be without it a month, or given my screw experience above never see it again, and have them superglue it where they think it should be.
So 2 out of three recent manufacture Smith and Wesson's fall apart on the first range trip. On the latter issue I find posts on this forum dating back years (now that I searched explicitly for that) where this has been a problem and it doesn't seem to have been adequately addressed. I have been trying to convince my wife to get herself a 380-EZ for a while now but exactly how am I supposed to recommend that now when the obvious retort is "Which parts are going to fall off that one when I need it the most?"
The first, a rather pricey model 60-15 Pro Series my wife bought last August had the pin holding in the locking bolt fall out in less than 2 boxes of ammo. Looking back at my pictures I took a pic of it after the first 15 or so rounds because, well it's a pretty gun and I wanted a wallpaper kind of pic of it. Regardless in that pic if I zoom in I can see the pin had already started walking out, I just didn't know it. 4 or 5 loadings later when I popped open the cylinder it felt funny and I felt something fall into my hand... It was the locking bolt. Very disappointing as I have 2 other J-frames currently and have owned others before and I have never seen this. Which is why I recommended my wife buy the SW over the Ruger in the first place.
So I called SW and they said they'd send me out two each of the pin and the spring because they are small parts and easily lost while re-assembling. OK fine. When will they be in? No idea, we're in the middle of moving and frankly it might be a bit. Not the answer I wanted to hear but everybody has a mess up once in a while. Weeks go by, no part. I call to follow up and they say yes they see the order was in but still can't see any estimated ship or even if it shipped. So eventually about a month later I get a little yellow envelope in the mail containing nothing but a tiny plastic bag with 2 pins in it. Yay, one part came in but what about the other and yes I scoured that bag for another tiny bag with the springs... notta. On the phone to S&W again, they still can't help and basically tell me I just have to wait. Personally if I was them I would have just sent 2 more springs just to be sure the customer got them. But no, they did not. It's nearly a year later and they still have not arrived. For an $800+ revolver this is completely unacceptable. After the last call though I had a gut feeling I wouldn't see them from Smith so I went on Brownell's and ordered them myself. I put them in (with a little tip I think I found here on this forum about peening the center of the pin) and several hundred rounds later she's still good. However having to wait months for parts to never show and then eventually buy my own parts to make a gun work that should have worked out of the box is not a pleasant experience. I've essentially given up on their support tbh. Waste of my time.
Still just the one bad one, crap happens right? Fast forward to a few months ago and I pick up a 9mm M&P 2.0 Metal. I was in Academy and I held it and I fell in love with it so it came home with me. That pistol has been nothing but flawless. A great big brother to my Shield I carry most (also flawless after thousands of round in the past several years). I cannot say enough good about my M&P Metal, I love that handgun. It may be my favorite handgun I have ever owned. So that's good at least. Also in theory I have a free green-dot sight coming in the mail from the rebate so bonus there.
So move on to this past week. I pick up an M&P 22 Compact. I took it to the range yesterday. First few shots were great. Std velocity CCI Clean Quiet and Remington Golden Bullets. Maybe 3 mags. Then I decided to try some CCI Stingers. As I am shooting I see the shot string is wandering to the side and I am thinking wow I must've had too much coffee or something but on the 6th shot suddenly the sight picture looked different all of a sudden. The rear sight blade had departed the gun. Last 4 shots from the mag went back in the box. Luckily I found the sight blade on the bench and the screw itself had not come all the way out. Another range trip wasted. I was able to re-assemble it later at home but the rear sight screw has literally no rotational tension. So it will just fall out again if I don't do something. Which from what I have read leaves me with two options... get the gun sighted in (and hope the screw hasn't turned on that last shot you tested that sighting with and superglue the screw since you cannot use thread locker in plastic, or two spend another $80 on aftermarket fixed sights from Dawson Precision. Oh I suppose I could go with option 3, send my gun back to Smith and be without it a month, or given my screw experience above never see it again, and have them superglue it where they think it should be.
So 2 out of three recent manufacture Smith and Wesson's fall apart on the first range trip. On the latter issue I find posts on this forum dating back years (now that I searched explicitly for that) where this has been a problem and it doesn't seem to have been adequately addressed. I have been trying to convince my wife to get herself a 380-EZ for a while now but exactly how am I supposed to recommend that now when the obvious retort is "Which parts are going to fall off that one when I need it the most?"
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Have you been on the Hi-Point Forum.
Raise your hand if you refuse to believe “Smith & Wesson was always this bad, it’s just the new fangled internet only just now letting victims of lousy QC share stories.”
