I hope it is just some teething errors, and the S&W is fixing it.
When people go to the "hope" card, it's a lost cause.
This is a good opportunity to remind people how bad american manufacturers are. I've been following this for decades, originally to TRACK the disappearance of american manufacturing.
To put it simply, americans on the whole just don't care. They don't care about designing a quality product, assembling a quality product, preventing the need for massive amounts of customer service, and needless to say, americans
(ESPECIALLY overpaid, fabulous health care benefits management) don't care about PROVIDING acceptable customer service.
Americans on the whole, as part of our culture care about $$$ and convenience, and
not about getting things RIGHT (let alone right the first time). Since americans generally have an f-u attitude towards a "complainer"
instead of THE ACTUAL PROBLEM (just watch how bush supporters treat those who didn't vote for bush or those who have had it with bush), most american companies establish awful customer service and a high maintenance product (gee the AR15 comes to mind).
In my early 20s I worked at a factory that made a whole line of electronic products for guitarists. I began to be able to explain why american made products had CERTAIN problems that Japanese/Chinese products just didn't. There were several products we made that the company had made for many years, and the quality was fairly reliable on THOSE.
HOWEVER, when a new product was being designed, tested, in the 1st production run, or even in the first YEAR,
LOOK OUT!!!!!!!!!! I'm not talking about human error here. Most americans flat out DON'T CARE and even worse, refuse to work together (I'm not advocating groupthink either because that's not a solution). Everybody's trying to move up the ladder and protect their turf, and/or constantly looking forward to lunch/the end of the day/vacation/holidays etc. One time our
PLANT MANAGER released a new circuit board for a new new product into production before adequate testing. We got TONS of overtime upgrading the MISdesigned circuit board, which we were forced to do in shoddy ways. One time a run of mis labeled chassis were KNOWINGLY allowed into production. A month later customers had sent piles of them back to us, and we had to fix this error the HARD way instead of when we noticed it BEFORE final assembly.
Buying a first run product from ANY manufacturer is begging for problems, but buying a first run product from an american manufacturer (that makes it in america) is throwing your $$$ away.
Since almost nothing I buy is made in america, and I haven't worked at that factory in about a decade, I forgot about the things that S&W and this thread just reminded me of. My conscious mind tells me to be surprised at S&W's failure to properly TEST the new product, but my experience says typical typical typical.
