Will Glock/USA recover from their PR nightmare?

[Zander]

Do you own a Glock?

Are you aware that certain Glocks have a defect that may result in a failure of the pistol, perhaps in the most dire of circumstances?

As of May 2002 [at least], Glock has known that certain Glock pistols have been subject to failure of one or more of the rear frame rails, some of which have resulted in a non-functioning and/or non-repairable condition.

Indeed, some pistols shipped since the date of known failures are still in the inventory of distributors and dealers. Glock's initial reaction was to deal quietly with pistols being used in LE departments and to ignore completely the civilian market. When the magnitude of the problem was "leaked" via the 'net, the reaction of Glock's management was to grudgingly accept phone calls from concerned owners as to the inclusion of certain serial number ranges of affected pistols.

No notification to wholesalers, dealers or current owners/users!

As of this date, no comprehensive list of the affected pistols has been published in any format, much less on-line at their website. The bunker mentality of Glock remains...that owners of their pistols must call the factory to determine if their pistols are among the suspect serial series.

I find this completely unacceptable for a firearms company. What's your opinion?

 

[PATH]

Zander,

Do we have confirmation of this information and what is the source? I would like to know all the facts before I venture an opinion on this matter.

PATH

 

[Schuey2002]

Path, go to www.glocktalk.com and you will see what he is referring to..

 

[PATH]

Schuey,

Thanks for the heads up!

PATH

 

[Blackhawk]

Glock wasn't even dented by this screwup. It's target market is bulk buying agencies. They're being taken care of.

Glocks are sold to individual users, but Glock doesn't consider end users as a top priority market.

To bad for individuals with a problem gun who have to take a back seat to some agency with 25,000 of them, a contract, and a passel of lawyers.

However, it's not my job to get in gunfights, and I have other options than a Glock, so I don't NEED a Glock 24/7, a problem one will EVENTUALLY get fixed for free, and it's not going to dissuade me from owning Glocks now or in the future.

I guess I expect mechanical devices to fail, and it's not going to give me heartburn if they do. Maybe it'll get me killed someday, but so will a bunch of other things.

 

[WonderNine]

Impossible! Glocks shoot even at the bottom of the ocean! The reliability of GLocks is supernatural!

I don't own any Glocks so come to your own conclusions on the point of my post.

 

[11xray]

Friends don't let friends shoot Glocks.

http://communities.prodigy.net/sportsrec/glock/gz-g35-40kb.html

I like my fingers and face just the way they are, thank you very much.

 

[Robert inOregon]

Where's the PR nightmare? They still have over 50,000 units on backorder.

 

[Admiral Thrawn]

Umm.... KaBooms are more likely the result of some stupid action of the firer rather than the weapon itself...

e.g. botched reloading jobs, etc

 

[Double Maduro]

The reason I don't own a glock is they don't fit my hand.

I have heard of kb's in glock, rugers that throw the mag release lever across the room and problems with every other kind of gun ever made and most of the companies are still in business.

 

[dave]

Will This Hurt Glock?

No.

 

[jimmy]

I have one pistol affected by the frame rail breakage advisory, according to Glock. One of these days I'll ship it to Smyrna for a replacement frame. Meanwhile, I have other Glocks that I can and do carry.

IOW, the problem has not undermined my confidence in Glock pistols in general. I personally wouldn't object to buying another Glock. Before doing so, however, I'd have to be sure it was not one of the guns with a potentially bad frame.

My $0.02.

 

[Tamara]

See the following threads:

1

2

 

[ruger357]

Have a G26 and called Glock, they told me my gun was not affected. A friend of mine was not so lucky. He picked up a brand new G19 only to find out that it is affected.

 

[Col. Mustard]

Glock owners vs. Democrats

Do you own a Glock?

Are you a Democrat?

Are you aware that certain Glocks Democrats have a defect that may result in a failure of the pistolpolitics, perhaps in the most dire of circumstances?

As of May 2002 [at least], Glock owners Democrats have known that certain Glock pistols democratic policies have been subject to failure of one or more of the rear frame rails policies, some of which have resulted in a non-functioning and/or non-repairable condition.

Any similarity between real Glock owners and Democrats is purely coincidental.

 

[Tamara]

"Today on Jerry Springer: When Analogies Go Bad!"

 

[Lone_Gunman]

Blackhawk, I dont think I would necessarily agree with your assessment of Glock's market, and I am not sure Glock would either.

The law enforcement market is relatively small, compared to the gun buying public in general, and certainly the mark-up is a lot higher on civilian guns.

I suspect on any given day, more Glocks are sold to civilians than police organizations.

 

[Peetmoss]

The Official Word on the FRAME RAILS from GLOCK

Co[ied and pasted from http://www.gssfonline.com/ This is in the hot topics section

"GLOCK Frame Rails - The Real Scoop!

The GLOCK Corporation has identified a problem with a very small percentage of GLOCK pistols produced between September of 2001 and May of 2002. The specific problem that has been identified is the potential of breaking a rear frame rail in pistols manufactured during this time period. Within the specific range the breakage rate has been less than 0.0188%. So, while the actual percentage of rails reported broken is within any accepted manufacturing tolerance, it is not an acceptable situation to the GLOCK Corporation. It is also important to note that under most conditions GLOCK pistols will continue to function with three rails. A routine maintenance check after each time the pistol has been taken out and used would immediately indicate if there is a problem.

We are, therefore, concerned that a limited number of customers will not get the product we have promised them and what we have always delivered, the very best pistol on the market, in short, a GLOCK.

For these reasons, we have made the decision that in the interest of customer service, replacement frames will be offered to anyone who has a firearm in this range and decides to take advantage of this offer. The replacement frames will have identical serial numbers to our customer's original firearm except the numeral 1 will be added as a prefix. If you believe your firearm is within this range, please call 1-866-225-4098 to take advantage of the ultimate in customer service.

Nothing less than the best for our customers is acceptable to GLOCK and, as always, we will continue to work towards Perfection."

 

[Lone_Gunman]

That is pretty much good enough for me.

 

[cratz2]

Around these neck of the woods, they do seem to be much affected. When I was in buying my new Makarov, three people were in front of me, all buying Glocks. G23s are pretty hard to come by as are of the 30 and 36.

 

[Hk Paul]

Will Glock/USA recover from their PR nightmare?

To me this is no big deal.
Glocks are great guns and havnt faild me once.
I havnt herd about them living on the edge of disaster.

 

[Nero Steptoe]

"Friends don't let friends shoot Glocks. "


People who have friends who read and believe Dean Speir have friends with sub-normal I.Q.'s.

 

[Redlg155]

I don't think it hurt Glock very much if at all.

The guys who sit behind the computers and go to places like here and Glock Talk hear about these problems. Compared to the numbers of gunowners out there we are a relative minority.

How is the general public supposed to know unless Glock sends a recall notice or warning to every person who purchased the weapon?

The same thing with vehicles. If you go down to your dealer and ask to see his book on how many advisorys and recalls your vehicle has on it, you would be very surprised. I had this happen with a mass airflow sensor on a Chevy Corsica. It went out after 140,000 miles. Went to the dealer and he told me that part was an affected part, but since I made it past my warrantly period and it didn't die I wouldn't get a new part for free. I know..it's not the same magnitude of a glock failing when you need it. This is just an example.

Good Shooting
RED

 

[Dean Speir]

Of course they'll recover!

They are simply too entrenched to not recover, #1, and, #2, their core customer is not the "gun-buying public," but law enforcement agencies which they are handling with "kid gloves." (Even NYPD after almost six [6!] years of the "tastes great/less filling" hassle about the curious Phase Three malfunctions.)

The fact that Glock has now acknowledged to its sales staff that there are 169,782 pistols at risk of the frame slide rail breakage, and that those non-MOS in jurisdictions like, say, the entire state of California, are screwed if they possess one of those pistols, won't cause more than a ripple in the company's remarkable success story.

 

[10-Ring]

Still a sore point w/ me :banghead:

Does Glock care? Nope. Will it affect them negatively? Nope. They've got too many buyers & users an percentage wise, so few complaints Will they someday crash and burn doubt it