S&W M&P 15-22 customer service

[ace_m82]

This is just an FYI. I don't want to "attack" the company, and am just posting this so people know my experience. If this belongs in another forum, I apologize, please move it there.

My M&P 15-22 lower receiver broke due to an unfortunate encounter with a tree (totally my fault). I did some research, and they look to have purposely designed the receivers to not work with standard ARs probably due to lawyers. I was emailing with S&W to see if they would let me simply purchase a new lower, and this is the email they sent me (after an email requesting serial numbers, etc from me):

Andrew,

Thank you for providing your information, before we have you send your firearm in there are some important considerations to make.

Firstly, this will be a charge order, our turnaround time to receive a quote for those is between 3-4 months currently.

Additionally, the cost of the repair will consist of the labor which is $90 per hour, $45 for the quote, plus the cost of the replacement frame.

Finally, the frame replacement will mean that in the eyes of the ATF the firearm is a new firearm, thereby requiring new paperwork to be filed, and a new serial number.

At this point, the cost of repairing the rifle will likely be more than the cost of buying a replacement rifle. We do not sell the lower individually. With these considerations in mind, please let us know what you would like to do.

If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us

Thank you and Have a Great Day!

I replied:

Dear Smith & Wesson customer service,

So, what you're telling me, is you designed an AR type rifle to purposely not fit all other uppers, made the lowers out of polymer, and then categorically refuse to sell lowers to people who have broken theirs (except at a cost above that of a replacement rifle)?

Now, I'm an Economist, so I'm going to try to list for you all of the ways that you're screwing up this whole "customer service" thing:
1. $45 for a quote? What are you thinking?
2. $90 per hour for labor? How much labor is there in grabbing another lower and putting it in a box with an address on it?
3. 3-4 months to put it in a box. Cute.
4. You sell a rifle with proprietary parts and charge more than the rifle's cost to replace them? What are you thinking?
5. You sell a polymer lower specifically designed to look like an AR and refuse to reinforce the weak point. Why?
6. You sell a polymer lower that looks like all other ARs, but isn't interchangeable with them. OK, so lawyers, but if you're going to do that, then why would...
7. You refuse to sell (not give) a lower to someone who bought the rifle and then broke it (where it's weak, due to it being designed to "look cool" but not be functional). Why?

Now, had you responded, "Oh, that's too bad, we'll ship you another one for $60" I would have thought that was a fair deal. But no...

(I went on talking about how bad what they were doing was, but this is the gist of it.)

After a few more emails where I offered to send them a picture of the lower w/ the serial number and my driver's license, they eventually told me no, and wanted me to ship the entire rifle to them to see if it was a warranty issue.

Now, does what they did seem right to you? You are entitled to your opinion, I'm not gonna argue with you. Was I being unreasonable? Really, I just want to know.

Honestly, I'm kinda wondering at this point what they'd do if I shipped them just the broken lower. Not sure how they'd charge for the "labor" of seeing that it was broken in half and sending me another...

 

[Pre-64]

I’ve seen some crazy stuff covered under warranty, in my experience if you write a letter explaining you messed up and any help will be greatly appreciated you will 90% of the time see it covered under warranty, the ones I’ve seen with letters blasting them or the “ I don’t know what happened, it just broke” you’ll get hosed. Box it up and ship it to them. As far as turn around time, 3-4 months is probably accurate and truthful. There has been a bit of a run on guns lately so I’d imagine they are behind in production.

 

[Racer88]

I love my M&P 15-22 and S&W, in general. Some of you may remember that they recently had a recall on the 15-22s, because some of them would "go full auto" due to an out of spec part (I forget the name of it). They offered to send a special gauge to all owners of the recalled series. I went through their official website and requested the gauge THREE times. Never got it.

Oh well... with 3700 rounds through mine, it's never happened. If it does, I'll just "ride the lightning!" I'm not sending a fourth request.

That said... some products are made in a way that repairing them is more costly than buying a new one. I'd just buy a new one and keep the old upper as a spare.