Well Mr. Kassnar just remember you asked us not to hold back , so here goes .
While it is nice that you will indeed pick up shipping both ways "as I know from personal expierence" but a LIFETIME WARRANY should truely be for the lifetime of your product regardless of who owns it .
My very first gun was S&W 586 that had a problem and I took it to an approved local warranty station and they never asked me a single question regarding proving I was the original owner "which I was" and they repaired my gun in 1 week exactly . They replaced the extractor star and I never had another problem with the gun .
Now here's how your people handle things .
I bought a brand new 1911 model EFS about 3 years ago all paperework included , it had a mangled barrel bushing from the factory , it ran fine for months but then began breaking the recoil spring plugs due to the uneven pressure the bushing was putting on them . At the time I didn't have a set of calipers and it also looked as though the slide might be slightly out of specs on the front end .
I called and was sent a shipping tag and returned the gun .
I then waited a full week and called back to see what the progress on it was and was told it wasn't there despite it having been shipped UPS overnight air .
I waited a couple of days and called back and was told it was there but it hadn't been touched due to a backlog that was about 4 weeks behind .
I called a third time a full week later and was given the same response as above and then again for the 4th time in another week .
A day or two later I received a letter stating that your people wouldn't honor the warrenty because I had bought the gun used which I hadn't , so I made another and the 5th call to them .
I was told the gun had been made in 1988 and I couldn't have purchased it new in 2004 and that I hadn't registered a Warrenty . I had registered my Warranty at the Web site "after all on the site there is a place for this if you know your own site" as such I didn't bother to reregister it by sending in the card as no other company would require such nonsense .
I had to call the dealer I had bought the gun from and he kindly faxed a copy of my receipt to factory after which they agreed to work on the gun .
Now they had my gun for 3 full weeks before they started playing these games and I distinctly recall being asked for the guns seriel number in the very first call before it was even sent in to them .
All they did to it was to replace the barrel bushing , claim they test fired it and sent it back from what I could see .
Total time to replace a barrel bushing was 4 1/2 weeks .
Fortunately the gun now functions almost perfectly and is very accurate .
I since have bought a NEW model EMS that has a sticky grip safety I think I'll take it to a local Smith rather than dealing with a bunch of people who will call me a liar about buying it new and try to weasel out of their commitment to the product .
While it is nice that you will indeed pick up shipping both ways "as I know from personal expierence" but a LIFETIME WARRANY should truely be for the lifetime of your product regardless of who owns it .
My very first gun was S&W 586 that had a problem and I took it to an approved local warranty station and they never asked me a single question regarding proving I was the original owner "which I was" and they repaired my gun in 1 week exactly . They replaced the extractor star and I never had another problem with the gun .
Now here's how your people handle things .
I bought a brand new 1911 model EFS about 3 years ago all paperework included , it had a mangled barrel bushing from the factory , it ran fine for months but then began breaking the recoil spring plugs due to the uneven pressure the bushing was putting on them . At the time I didn't have a set of calipers and it also looked as though the slide might be slightly out of specs on the front end .
I called and was sent a shipping tag and returned the gun .
I then waited a full week and called back to see what the progress on it was and was told it wasn't there despite it having been shipped UPS overnight air .
I waited a couple of days and called back and was told it was there but it hadn't been touched due to a backlog that was about 4 weeks behind .
I called a third time a full week later and was given the same response as above and then again for the 4th time in another week .
A day or two later I received a letter stating that your people wouldn't honor the warrenty because I had bought the gun used which I hadn't , so I made another and the 5th call to them .
I was told the gun had been made in 1988 and I couldn't have purchased it new in 2004 and that I hadn't registered a Warrenty . I had registered my Warranty at the Web site "after all on the site there is a place for this if you know your own site" as such I didn't bother to reregister it by sending in the card as no other company would require such nonsense .
I had to call the dealer I had bought the gun from and he kindly faxed a copy of my receipt to factory after which they agreed to work on the gun .
Now they had my gun for 3 full weeks before they started playing these games and I distinctly recall being asked for the guns seriel number in the very first call before it was even sent in to them .
All they did to it was to replace the barrel bushing , claim they test fired it and sent it back from what I could see .
Total time to replace a barrel bushing was 4 1/2 weeks .
Fortunately the gun now functions almost perfectly and is very accurate .
I since have bought a NEW model EMS that has a sticky grip safety I think I'll take it to a local Smith rather than dealing with a bunch of people who will call me a liar about buying it new and try to weasel out of their commitment to the product .