I bought a Tikka T3 Lite in 6.5 Creedmoor from BassPro on the 23rd as my Christmas present to myself. About a week later, I finally mounted the scope and took it to the local range to perform barrel break in and sight in. After 19 rounds, I was passing the cleaning rod through and felt something give. I looked down and saw a crack in the top of the stock from the end of the bolt shroud to the butt pad. I immediately took it back to BassPro, who sent it off under warranty. I just received the call from BassPro that the rifle was back and ready for pickup. I asked the sales rep to tell me what they did, expecting a new stock. To summarize, they stated they found no defects with the rifle and test fired it satisfactory. The crack is only cosmetic in nature and not a defect. I'm rather PO'd and have no real recourse against them except to start flame spraying the customer service department. Do you guys have any suggestions or POC's? Am I out of line and expecting too much? I could accept a scratch or ding if I dropped or banged the rifle into something. But this is a failure of the paint scheme which is easily detected and felt by your fingers and your cheek weld, so it has to be fixed. It's a brand new rifle, duct tape shouldn't be the answer. Open to suggestions.
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Tikka T3 Stock Crack
- Thread starter bourndl
- Start date
Wow! I'm surprised. I wonder if Bass Pro even sent it back. I would call Beretta directly and see if I could get any help.
Does the crack spread open when you put pressure on it? It almost looks like a seam where the camo was applied.
Call their CS yourself. I had a minor self-induced issue and talking to them myself made a big difference. The tech may not have even known what to look for if some random BPS guy called them and said, "not sure what it is, but customer said something's wrong." They might have cycled the action a few times, fired a couple shots, and gave it a look-over, and that was it.
I'm picking the rifle up from Bass Pro tomorrow and will post the letter that was included with the return (supposedly from Beretta) and try and get some better pics of the crack. At this point I have to assume BP sent it back to Beretta. When this happened I thought it was a crack in the mold seam on the top of the stock. However, it may just be the paint seam. It happened while pushing the cleaning rod through, no unusual amount of pressure was being applied. It wasn't from contact between the rod and the stock and wasn't from contact between the jag and the stock. I was holding the stock with my left hand and pushing the rod through with my right hand when I felt the crack. I may have had some side loading on the stock while holding it, but still not anything significant enough to cause the issue.
Tikka customer service is absolute shit. Pretty typical of Beretta in general. Will never own another firearm from Tikka or Beretta.
I'll stand by my statement. Having worked for a company owned by Beretta, and meeting some of the Beretta's in person I'm honestly not surprised how they as a company handled this.
Having used Beretta's customer service multiple times (once for my Beretta shotgun, and once for my Tikka CTR), I can say that your impression from meeting some of the people who work there is inconsistent with the fantastic experiences I had.
Sorry it has taken a few days to get back to this. The letter from Beretta is below. They stated it was a crease from the camo treatment.
BassPro was actually helpful and was willing to full refund the rifle. To make a long story short, I compared the "cracked" stock to 3 other new Tikka T3X's with the same camo treatment rifles at the store. 2 had the same "crack" and the third did not. I flexed the stock on the third a little and sure enough, the "crack" opened up. I came to the conclusion, right or wrong, that the "crack" was the seam from the hydro dip process, which opening up when the stock was flexed a little. I ended up taking the original rifle home with me and used a littl 1500 grit emery cloth to smooth it out. Shots 1-6 were for sight in after scope mounting. The next 5 groups are below. The first group was >1 MOA, but the rest were respectable for a hunting rifle, with off the shelf ammo. And yes, I was still tweeking windage between groups 2/3, 3/4, 4/5.
BassPro was actually helpful and was willing to full refund the rifle. To make a long story short, I compared the "cracked" stock to 3 other new Tikka T3X's with the same camo treatment rifles at the store. 2 had the same "crack" and the third did not. I flexed the stock on the third a little and sure enough, the "crack" opened up. I came to the conclusion, right or wrong, that the "crack" was the seam from the hydro dip process, which opening up when the stock was flexed a little. I ended up taking the original rifle home with me and used a littl 1500 grit emery cloth to smooth it out. Shots 1-6 were for sight in after scope mounting. The next 5 groups are below. The first group was >1 MOA, but the rest were respectable for a hunting rifle, with off the shelf ammo. And yes, I was still tweeking windage between groups 2/3, 3/4, 4/5.
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Well the good news (to me at least) is that beretta was seemingly very prompt in their handling of it, I have heard horror stories about people having their rifles stuck in limbo for months. Maybe this is a positive sign that they are improving from here on out.
