Well, after about 6 weeks or so, I got a new scope back from Burris. For reference, I have the 3.3-18. I had the same problems with mine as WJM mentioned in one of his posts. The glass was pretty clear up to around 12x, then really started to degrade as I moved the scope up in power. I hung on to it for about a week and took it to the range a few times, and even got out a few times hunting with it. The best way to describe it was it was almost like the scope was in "portrait mode", especially as you went up in power. There would be certain parts of the image that were relatively clear, and other parts that were really fuzzy and out of focus. No amount of parralax adjustment, diopter focus, etc, would bring the image into a clear state. I compared it side by side with my Leupold 3-18 Mark 5, and the image quality was so much better in the Leupold past 12x I figured there had to be something wrong with this one. So I sent it in November 11th.
There were a few folks on the forum here that offered to help if I ran into any Customer service issues, but out of curiousity I wanted to see how Burris handled the return. First and foremost, to their credit, Burris sent me a brand new scope. Initial impressions back out of the box are good, the turrets definitely aren't as stiff as my other scope. I am not sure on the image quality, I will check it out when I remount the scope. As far as the return went, Burris could definitely use some work on that process. I tried calling a few times, waited on hold forever, and then gave up on the process. I then created an online profile and handled the return that way. I received an RMA # and a case number. There is some verbiage in the return process that says you would be informed during the whole process. I hadn't heard anything from Burris after about 3-4 weeks, so I logged into my profile and saw that they actually updated the case around the 22nd (7 days after they got it, not bad) and it said "replace". The frustrating thing was I had to check on that myself, no one from Burris emailed, called, etc, to let me know. A couple weeks had transpired from the time I checked on the case from when they updated it. It was then another couple of weeks until I got a new scope, I can only assume they didn't have any when they updated my case and decided to replace it on the 22nd.
Holy shit this post is getting long...I am not really posting this to bash Burris or anything, I really want to like this scope and support a company that is trying to manufacture this in the USA. Maybe someone from Burris will see this and refine their return process. To compare a little, oddly enough I had my Kilo 2400 ABS shit the bed while hunting. It would shut off when I hit the range button. I called up Sig, talked to a really helpful human being, and had a brand new unit on my doorstep a week later. This is including my ship time to them, they next day aired the thing to me. I've had similar experiences with Vortex . Hopefully this new model will fit the bill and the issues I had with my original will be a non issue.
I hear you, I have my non-illuminated for sale for the same reason, would prefer illumination, but to birddog's point, does it really "need" illumination, I wonder if it's more a mental thing.
