WARNING! Defective Winchester Ammo!

Hmm, I was going to use my certificate at Walmart too, but so I haven't yet. I hope that I don't have the issues you did there. Maybe I should go try to use it and see how it turns out.

Chances are, you will get ammo that is fine. Everything ever produced has had problems with it at some point, but thats no reason to not one particular thing based a few reviews. Now if the majority of the reviews are bad, now thats another story.

Elano - if you still have that box, please post the LOT NUMBER of that batch!

Whatever happened to quality control in the factories? I know they cannot catch every bad round through QC but they could at very least detect a "flair die" problem, or whatever problem caused this, as someone had previously mentioned (LDJ).

Win. 9mm boxes of 100 sell for about $23 at Wally World around here. I think I'll go ahead and pay the $18 for a box of 50 Rem. at the small shop where I buy most of my guns. I kinda like the idea of keeping all of my fingers and the one good eye I have left.

Yeah I know this is an old thread. My friend brought out a box today (I forgot to mention this to him) and sure enough there were 2 bad ones. The other box he had was fine of the same ammo.

Found a WWB 9mm in the trash that I was in the bin I was going through for brass that had the wall of the brass scraped down like in the pictures, but not quite as bad. Went through a 100 round box of WWB 9mm today in my Glock 26 and didnt have any problems, but that gun eats pretty much anything.

Wow what a coincedence, i just got back from Fleet Farm and i was looking at the 9MM ammo and saw the winchester 100-pack for $25 but then i found my old-faithful american eagle 50-packs for $13 each and thought "it's only a buck,i'll stick with what has worked good before",,, glad i did saving a buck or two just isint worth it

Ive been loving my CCI Blazer Alum. Never had a problem there. Sometimes the bullets are recessed a little farther in than they should but nothing bad at all

I agree with some of the others imo they should have replaced this whole box. Yes only those few rounds were defective or at least you could see they were defective, but what about the rest? What if they were low on powder, or some other issue?

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elano's ammo problems all seem to be a very specific type of problem that occurs during the seating process. The notion that there may be other things wrong with the rounds because of a seating problem is pretty far-fetched. If you want to argue about everything not seen, then potentially any ammo that looks good might be defective. Without taking the cartridge apart, do you ever really know how much powder is in it? No.

Whatever happened to quality control in the factories? I know they cannot catch every bad round through QC but they could at very least detect a "flair die" problem, or whatever problem caused this, as someone had previously mentioned (LDJ).

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QC in factories? You mean like with American cars in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s? You like with Colt in the 1970s during the same people on their pistols?

QC has always been an ongoing problem. It is the nature of what it is.

Just had a bad 44mag round yesterday -- same problem.

QC in factories? You mean like with American cars in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s? You like with Colt in the 1970s during the same people on their pistols?

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No, I mean like American cartridges being made here in American factories!

I never mentioned automobiles - which have thousands of more moving parts than a simple pistol/rifle cartridge with a primer. QC for live ammunition shouldn't be that difficult in ensuring reliability ... SO LONG AS ... everybody along the line is performing his/her job.

It's truth I have to point out here: Since 1997 I have been buying Winchester 5.56 mm for my AR and .40 S&W for my M&P. Out of perhaps 15,000-20,000 rounds total between the two I never faced one single misfire, and the pistol ammo is pretty accurate. If it has been that accurate along the way for me up until now and is suddenly beginning to climb in failure rates, perhaps departments within need some serious looking into.

Why do people want to readily adopt a philosophy of: "As time goes on we should all de-evolve from product quality and yet evolve in quantity over quality." Have we been THAT PROGRAMMED?? I would like to believe we are not "Chicom" here ... not yet at least. Give it another 14, perahps 15 years .....

That's utter rubbish!

WWB seems to have the worst QC of any of the 9mm target ammo's out there. I've actually been finding some JHP rounds in my 100rd packs of FMJ....

I try to buy the Federal Champion from WM whenever they have it in stock.

been a lot of complaint threads on WWB lately. seems their QC is in the toilet. i've read that's also why their PDX1 often fails to expand. i prefer ATK products like federal/speer/blazer. they're cheaper anyway.

seems like the more expensive WWB got, the worse the quality got lol


incidentally, all ammo/gun makers have suffered QC problems to one degree or another since Obozo was elected and there are record sales. however, i've heard the most about WWB, like squib loads, duds, etc. so i won't buy that brand anymore.


on a related note, here's an upside down loaded 9mm federal HST round i found in my box lol:

I recently had several remington std vel 22lr fail to fire. The firing pin hit the rims hard but no bang. I emailed remington and they sent me a fed-x label to return the remaining rounds (100 round box 26 rounds left). They sent me 2 boxes and a letter explaining my bad rounds had no primer in the rims. The whole deal only took about 10 days. I was pleased and will remain a Remington customer. btw I had 5 bad rounds.

I only had one box of WWB 100 pack, I was pleased as it contained 101 rounds. All were fine.

Shot over a thousand rounds of .40 S&W WWB and they were all fine as well.

I'm not the least bit surprised as I've been seeing that kind of ammunition from all the major manufacturer's for over 30 years. It's for that reason and other's that I don't shoot factory ammunition any more. The problem you can see is only the tip of the ice berg. I've disassembled numerous factory rounds over the years and have found powder charges so inconsistent that it makes me shake in my shoes to think that some unsuspecting individual could have fired that through their weapon. Bullets that are out of round by .002", powder charges that run +/- as much as 20%, and seating depths that vary by .030" is enough for me to never risk shooting factory ever again.
To someone who doesn't reload a variance of .030" doesn't mean much. But as an example, a 9mm round that is seated .030" deeper than listed can more than double the chamber pressures from a normal 28,000 to over 62,000 PSI. Don't get me started on this topic. Factory ammunition is loaded to a spec. that is considered one size fits all. Whats even more is, many shooters think that higher priced top shelf factory is going to be a high quality product, nothing could be further from the truth.

Remington Ammunition

Personally, I like Remington Ammunition. I use Remington UMC for my 9mm Browning Hi-power and .44 Rem/mag for my lever action rifle and experience no problems. I also use .22 Remington ammo in my Ruger Mark I Standard automatic and have had great success with it. I quit using Winchester ammo years ago because I found it left more residue than I cared to deal with, especially in the automatic pistols, but I never experienced the probs some of the writers here have. Looks like I left them in time. Remington is much cleaner, IMHO. Also, I purchase my ammo at Walmart and save lots of money-less than 2 bucks for a box of 50 .22s. The 250 round bulk-pack of UMC 9mm at Walmart is also very economical.

i stopped using UMC a long time ago. almost every box i bought had bad rounds. bullets sunk into shells, duds, near squibs etc. worst ammo i've ever used.

Some commercial ammo has gotten pretty sorry, especially handgun ammo. My son and his friend were firing Federal ammo in a Glock .45. One round was a squib load. They removed the bullet from the barrel. The next round in the magazine gave much heavier recoil and the empty did not eject. The gun was locked up; the slide and frame were bulged. Federal refused to make it right.

Incidents like these are the primary reason i use handloads in self defense guns.

Winchester quality has declined dramatically, even their premium $1 per round ammo has been affected. You could buy better ammo for less money than Winchester.

Apocalypse-Now-


with the cost of HST's, and them being a "premium" round and/or carry round if you might say, i would have been PISSED.


what did they do to fix it?

It has been proven that Quality Control or inspection won't prevent defective products from leaving a factory.

The production line must be designed so that is impossible for a defective product to be produced.

Ammunition may seem simple compared to a car, but its production is done at some of the highest speeds of any products; possibly cigarettes or food and beverage cans are faster.

Sounds like WW has a serious problem with their production process. In a modern facility, it seems like it would take a conscious decision to ALLOW these defective products to ship.