There's two sides to this. I bought a problematic gun, unknowingly, in a pawn shop. It's a S&W 4006, mfg in 1990, and looked "as new", I like 3rd gens, so I had to take it home. I now know why it looked new: extractor problems. This thing would shoot anything high-dollar with nickel-plated shell casings without problem, but with brass I'd get a FTE every third round or so. WWB was the worst. My trusted local gunsmith upped the extractor spring twice and polished the chamber twice. No improvement. He called S&W, but they wouldn't sell him an extractor because he's not certified by S&W on that specific model (their rules), but told him to ship it to S&W for a no-charge repair. This is what we did.
S&W replaced the extractor, the extractor spring and polished the chamber, cleaned and lubed all the internals, and returned it, all I paid for was shipping. It's now flawless, even with WWB. The end result is I have a perfectly functioning 20 year-old but "as new" 4006, that because of it's "problem", was never carried and rarely fired. The 4006 is the "first .40", as it's the first pistol S&W designed in conjunction with the cartridge... maybe not "collectable", but certainly "historically significant". If this one wasn't "problematic" outta the box, it likely wouldn't still look like new. So in this case, I'm the beneficiary of an original factory defect.
Kudos to S&W. That's impressive backing of a product.
Les
