Kudos to RIA/Amscore Customer Support

[wally]

Back in 2005 I bought an Armscor (the RIA brand was just getting started) 1911-A2 .45ACP "widebody" para P-14 clone. I put on Hogue wrap around grips and shortly thereafter a red dot optic and shot the snot out of it at steel plates. Hadn't shot it much the past couple of years, but starting enjoying in again this year, running about 1000 rounds through it since January.

Had a sudden failure while shooting steel plates, plate fell, gun jammed, very unusual as its been highly reliable. Immediately it was obvious something was seriously wrong as the barrel and slide had a normally impossible relationship -- from past experience I expected either a broken link or broken slide stop pin, turned out it was the barrel lug had broken:

So I went to the RIA website to find contact info to see what kind of warranty/support I'd have with 12 year old pistol that is well over 10000 rounds. A "chat" window popped up and a very helpful employee named Jennie asked a few questions, had me upload a photo of the problem, and Emailed me a pre-paid FedEx return shipping label.

We'll see how it goes but I'm impressed so far! Their "boilerplate" in with the shipping label pdf file suggests to allow 4-6 weeks turn around. I'll follow-up after all is said and done.

This has been my best bang/buck gun purchase ever seeing how I paid like $371 out the door for it back then.

As I always say: "if you've never broken a gun, you just ain't been shooting enough!"

 

[imashooter]

Good deal. If they were lifetimed then I'm sure they'll take care of it. Probably will anyway.

 

[wally]

Got it back from RIA yesterday afternoon, pretty good turn around, sent in the afternoon of March 16th, got it back the afternoon of March 30th. Looks good, new barrel seems nice -- smooth cycling and tight.

Won't get to shoot it until next week as I've been laid up getting IV antibiotics for an infection in my knee -- just starting to move around with some semblance of normalcy. My only cost was $2 for the FedEx shipping box and a trip to a local FedEx location. Very happy. The proof will be in the shooting. I should be well enough to get out early next week. Will remount the FastFire III and bore sight it this afternoon.

 

[wally]

This should be my final follow-up on the issue. Got to the range this morning and fired four 14-round mags at steel plates with 100% function. After remounting the FastFire III at ~15 yards the POA/POI with 230gr ball ammo was not off enough to bother with tweaking it at present. Seems like a first class barrel replacement job was done.

 

[RPRNY]

I bought the Lipsey's special 1911 Compact in FDE in Feb on whim as a beater pistol. It has rapidly become my favorite pistol. The ACT magazines are admittedly a bit crappy. With a Chip McCormick 8 round extended mag, it functions flawlessly, has a remarkable trigger for what it cost, and is extremely accurate - at least I shoot it better than any other pistol I own except my R&S custom conversion 45 Colt black powder revolver. I still can't get over the value for money. Glad to hear about your customer service experience.