And the shop I worked for sold Taurus.
We had a spiral notebook of all the stuff sent back.
Many times items went into limbo, would just show up 6-9 months later.
Often the repair was not done, or if it was, then something else was a problem.
Not joking.
Its not internet BS.
If one has had good luck w Taurus, swell.
There were problems, and coming from a manufacturing background, and knowing people...........after using the nonsense filter, yeah........
Taurus had a lot of problems.
Different guns from diff distributors, meaning different time periods.
It wasn't just a bad run.
They had QC, design and manufacturing issues.
But by golly they were ISO certified (if you understand that scam, ISO certification doesn't mean diddly).
All ISO cert does is say some folks checked what you wrote and saw that you did what you said.
It does NOT mean there is quality built in.
Might help, this supposed accountability. But ISO aint the customer.
And it is THEY that will hold a company accountable (rightly or wrongly).
I know some old Taurus guns that got shot a lot and never had a problem.
Also know of many that were problematic.
Most of them had issues when new/fairly new.
Also know a lof of former Taurus customers.
The Beretta service auto clones seemed to have the better rep.
The Beretta clones were made using the same tooling, not a surprise the quality was good and ISO is indeed a scam that promotes nothing in terms of quality. It's all paperwork and it tends to have a detrimental affect in that once places get ISO certified the owners feel they're quality is top notch and continuous improvement no longer needs to be done. First shop I ever worked for wasn't ISO certified and they had the best quality of any place I ever worked for.
I'm not going to deny that Taurus had issues in the past, from what it sounds like they were doing 20+ years ago what other companies today are doing: ship junk now to meet quotas, make it work right after it gets sent in for service. Problem was that Taurus back then didn't have the service department they do now.
With the new facility in Bainbridge, GA, the turnaround times and quality have improved and the focus of the company appears to be on improving customer service and initial quality.
Taurus semi autos (apart from the PT22 and PT25) have all been pretty decent guns and a great price. The 92 clones have been their bread and butter for decades, G2's and G3's have been successful, their new .22 has been highly acclaimed, and I saw they've got the TH series polymer DA/SA pistols which look interesting.
It's really the revolver side of things that Taurus gets questionable, but they discontinued the 85 in favor of the 6 shot .38 or .357 that replaced it and took that same frame and made it into an 8 shot .22. I don't believe they would have dumped the 85 for no good reason, my belief is they believed the new guns were a better design engineering and manufacturing engineering. The large frame revolvers, Judge included have been pretty solid in terms of reliability for many years, so I feel that Taurus has largely dropped the lemons and remade themselves over the past 10 years.
It sounds crazy, but I honestly do find myself looking at Taurus (revolvers) with more confidence than I do Ruger's and Smith's. If Taurus would get around to making .32 revolvers, I might never think about buying another Ruger again.