Fooped
Resident HK Guru
Hey folks,
I've been waiting for this utter debacle with Lone Wolf to be resolved before relating my experiences here, and the situation has finally been rectified (You be the judge of how well).
And now boys and girls, it's time for a story about a gun.....
This all starts with my ignoring the golden rule of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" by wanting to buy a replacement barrel for my Glock 17. I had seen shooters with these nifty compensated barrels sticking out of the end of various pistols, and figured that it might make the gun a little faster for follow up shots, and reduce a little bit of the recoil for the new shooters I take to the range. Plus it looks cool, so off I go researching barrels...
I see that there's quite a few barrels available (Storm Lake, Bar-Sto, EFK etc.) and I see that the Lone Wolf barrel has the configuration I want, the company seemed reputable, and the price was reasonable (99.99 plus shipping) so off I went ordering the 2-port 9mm barrel and gleefully awaited it's arrival. This is the summer of 2007. The time line is important here.
So, my order comes as expected in a normal amount of time, and I install the barrel. It dropped in to the gun just as the factory barrel did, and I cycled the action with and without snap caps and all seemed to be well. I brought the gun to the range with a few different kinds of factory ammo and...
Things went horribly, horribly awry.
I noticed right away that the mag didn't want to seat properly anymore, not so much that that it wouldn't go in at all, but more that it required more effort to seat all the way. I figured maybe the bottom of the LWD barrel is ever so slightly larger, so I field stripped the pistol on the spot, put the factory barrel back in and seated the same mag.
Mag fit like a glove. Hmmmmmmm. Being the analytical chap that I am, I tried a few mag/barrel combinations just to rule out that it was a "bad marriage" between that one particular mag and the LWD barrel.
Nope. With each and every mag, the issue persisted with the LWD barrel, and was not present with the stock barrel.
STRIKE 1.
Moving on from this, I load up a 10 round factory G17 mag with factory ammo with the LWD barrel installed, trip the slide release and......
JAM. Failure to feed. Seriously? First round.![[thinking]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/010.gif "Thinking [thinking]")
![[rolleyes]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/042.gif "Roll Eyes [rolleyes]")
Mind you, this is on a gun that has NEVER jammed. EVER. Say what you want about Glocks, but they certainly are reliable. This gun could be lubed with Loctite, loaded with paintballs full of peanut butter and shot underwater and it would still cycle.
STRIKE 2.
I figured that maybe there's a break in period, so I dropped the mag, cleared the jam, reinserted and cycled the slide. Slide went foward, round in the chamber, ready to fire. Ready to go? Okay.....
Bang! Bang! Bang! MAG FALLS OUT OF GUN.
Yup, you read that right.
I am now looking at the ground in utter disbelief as I have now created a brand-new (at least to me) firearm malfunction! FTRTGDM (Failure to retain the God Damn magazine). I reach down, retrieve my magazine and after carefully checking the pistol for any damage or further malfunction, I insert the mag back in the gun (now with 7 rounds in it) and attempt to fire the pistol. It went something like this:
Bang! Bang! Hmmmmmmmmm...... "Where the hell are those shots going?" Bang! "Uhhhh.... Dude? (Speaking to Ezekiel 25:17) Can you watch my target for a sec?" Bang! Bang! Bang! (Zeke) "Uhhhh, dude you're nowhere NEAR the target, like a foot low and a foot or so to the right."
At this point I have one round left, and miraculously the mag is still in the gun and the gun is in battery ready to fire. I sit down, get a good bench rest, really take my time and.......
Bang! A total and utter miss. Now here's the best part:
I'M SHOOTING AT 25 FEET.![[shocked]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/007.gif "Shocked [shocked]")
STRIKE 3. Yoooooooouuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrr'e OUT!
Now, I'm no Wyatt Earp, but anyone who's seen me shoot knows I can hit what I'm aiming at. I'm fairly confident something is drastically wrong here, so I put the factory barrel back in, and take 10 shots at a medium sized Shoot 'n' See. All 10 shots are on target with most in a decent group slightly left of the 10 ring (After all, it's no H&K![[smile]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/001.gif "Smile [smile]")
![[wink]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/002.gif "Wink [wink]")
)
So.... It's definitely this POS barrel that's causing the problems. I put the barrel back in it's sleeve, leave the range with the stock G17 barrel in place, and go on with my weekend. I set the thing down on my gun bench and promptly forgot about it. This is my fault entirely, as I should have contacted Lone Wolf right away, but it became "Out of sight, out of mind" as so many things do.
Later that year, I'm cleaning up my bench and come across the barrel and I figure I might as well give LWD a call and see if there's anything they can do. I figure they can fix or replace it as they are the manufacturer and the barrel is under warranty, so I give them a call and speak to their armorer. I explain the bizarre myriad of faults that occurred during my range trip, and inquire if there's anything they could do to help me. Mind you, I'm not looking for a refund at this point, but just a barrel that works! The whole time while I'm explaining the three-ring circus that this barrel caused on the range, I can hear in his voice that he thinks I'm some kind of dipshit that doesn't know what end the bullets come out of, and that this must all be my fault. Needless to say, I wasn't face to face with him but you can tell when somebody "rolls their eyes" at you over the phone.
Nonetheless, he tells me to send the barrel back to him and they'll make it right, which for me is just fine. I waited to contact the company, so I can't bitch about the down time with barrel since the summer, so I packed it up and sent it off to them at my expense. I also wanted to have the barrel blackened (it comes in a stainless finish), so I requested this as well. I asked him what the lead time would be to get a new barrel (or this one fixed and blackened) and was told two to three weeks total. I figured this was more than reasonable.
So.... 6 weeks or so passes, no barrel, no email, no phone call, no nothing. Being the detail freak that I am, I document everything I do in these scenarios, and contact LWD trying to find out the status of my barrel. Well for one, I can't get the armorer on the phone, so I'm left re-explaining this WHOLE scenario again (albeit with more brevity than is used here), and I leave a message for the Armorer.
Couple more weeks, no return call, no email, no smoke signals, carrier pigeon, morse code....nothing.
So I call back, and demand that Armorer guy com to the phone (I'm withholding his name for obvious reasons), and he spins the biggest pile of bullshit this side of the DNC. He tells me that the delay is due to two things;
1: He had to "modify" my barrel to get it to work with the ammo I told him I was using (more on this in a moment).
2: They send out the barrels in batches to be blackened and the next batch was not due to ship for another 3 weeks or so, and then the turnaround on getting the blackened barrels back was ANOTHER 3 weeks!
In order:
1: Bullshit. Utter, steaming, freshly laid BULLSHIT. I said to him: "Let me see if I get this straight, you had to MODIFY your product to work with factory 9mm ammo? (I had mentioned the types I was using; real off-the-wall stuff like Federal red box, WWB and so on...) If you have to modify the barrel to accept the most common handgun ammo on the planet, what kind of ammo was it built to accept WITHOUT modifications in the first place?"
Dead air on the other end of the phone. The kind of dead air when you've caught someone in a downright lie and they're stalling to come up with some half-baked bullshit answer, but they've got the mental capacity of a dishtowel.
2: Unacceptable. I said: "You told me 3 weeks or so, now we're looking at FOURTEEN weeks instead? (Mind you, this is long before the firearm craze we're undergoing now and things were moving along at a reasonable pace). Tell you what, forget the blackening, and just send a barrel that works. Please test fire it before hand as well."
Here's the best part: THE ARMORER DIDN'T REMEMBER ANY OF THIS STORY WHEN I FINALLY GOT HIM ON THE PHONE. I don't know about you, but when I have someone who's unhappy with me either personally or professionaly, I remember them.
So, a week or so later, I receive a replacement barrel. I take it to the range, load up a mag and...
FTF on parade. God Damn thing just doesn't work at all, and when it did go into battery, I couldn't hit the berm with it. Now, I'm not sure if this was a new barrel, the same barrel with these "modifications", or the company just completely jammed me and sent me back the same shitty barrel.
At this point I give up completely and put the barrel in a conspicious place so that I won't forget about it. Not to return it, but more to remind myself to be more careful about purchasing gun mods in the future, and that customer service is indeed king. This is roughly February 2008.
Fast forward to early April of this year, and with the economy being what it is, I feel like I've set a hundred dollar bill on fire as far as this barrel is concerned. So I call up LWD again, and ask if maybe I could send it back to them in exchange for something else (night sights, parts, clothing) anything that I could use instead of this paperweight sitting on my bench. Well I get the armorer back on the phone (same guy) and guess what? He still doesn't have the faintest recollection of this whole experience. Even after prompting him with the whole "I'm the guy with the G17 where the mag falls out of the gun" routine, no recollection.
Shit dude, at least lie to me and pretend you remember me. This guy has the people skills of a Carp. So I tell him that barrel does not function and I honestly am, ready to cut it up and throw it away (I was NOT going to resell it, as that simply wouldn't be cool.) He offers (after telling me that it couldn't possibly be the barrel and my G17 must be defective) to refund my purchase price. I gladly take him up on his offer, write another letter detailing the whole thing and send it back to him, at my expense once again. I also told him that I didn't want to print my credit card info on the letter for security purposes, so I would call him when the barrel was received and we could do the return then.
So, I shipped the barrel on 04/16/2009, it was signed for (by the armorer) on 04/24/2009, and I left a message in his voicemail on 04/27/09 asking him to call me back to confirm he in fact did have the barrel and so I could give him the CC info.
No call back, no contact.
I get tired of waiting, and call him on 05/06/09 and once again, have to get the receptionist to track him down. I get him on the line, ask him to confirm that he's got the barrel in hand. HE DOESN'T REMEMBER ME. AGAIN. At this point, I am so pissed I can barely speak. He confirms he has the barrel, and I give my CC info.
One month passes. No credit. No contact. I decide to remove my pal from the equation and email their customer service manager directly. She gets back to me same day and apologizes for the confusion, and fesses up that the ball was simply dropped and that I should email her with my CC info and the tracking number (Both of which the Armorer has). I actually called her, as I don't like the notion of sending CC info via email, and she was pleasant and attentive. I asked her if she could also refund my shipping (since I've now paid three times to ship this barrel and still have nothing), and she said she would see what she could do.
I receieved a 99.99 credit today on my credit card. No shipping charges we refunded, and I could have my God Damn amateur pilot's license with all the hours I've got into this ridiculous situation.
The Lone Wolf Scorecard:
(1 being the worst and 10 being the highest)
Product: -19
Timeliness: 1 (When I sent them money I got everything quickly, other times... well you know)
Honesty: -15
Customer service: 6 (They DID refund the purchase price of the barrel some two years after the purchase date. Mind you, I didn't ask for this resolution but they offered it.)
Overall accessibility: 2
Final score: Crap.
Thanks for reading.
I've been waiting for this utter debacle with Lone Wolf to be resolved before relating my experiences here, and the situation has finally been rectified (You be the judge of how well).
And now boys and girls, it's time for a story about a gun.....
This all starts with my ignoring the golden rule of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" by wanting to buy a replacement barrel for my Glock 17. I had seen shooters with these nifty compensated barrels sticking out of the end of various pistols, and figured that it might make the gun a little faster for follow up shots, and reduce a little bit of the recoil for the new shooters I take to the range. Plus it looks cool, so off I go researching barrels...
I see that there's quite a few barrels available (Storm Lake, Bar-Sto, EFK etc.) and I see that the Lone Wolf barrel has the configuration I want, the company seemed reputable, and the price was reasonable (99.99 plus shipping) so off I went ordering the 2-port 9mm barrel and gleefully awaited it's arrival. This is the summer of 2007. The time line is important here.
So, my order comes as expected in a normal amount of time, and I install the barrel. It dropped in to the gun just as the factory barrel did, and I cycled the action with and without snap caps and all seemed to be well. I brought the gun to the range with a few different kinds of factory ammo and...
Things went horribly, horribly awry.
I noticed right away that the mag didn't want to seat properly anymore, not so much that that it wouldn't go in at all, but more that it required more effort to seat all the way. I figured maybe the bottom of the LWD barrel is ever so slightly larger, so I field stripped the pistol on the spot, put the factory barrel back in and seated the same mag.
Mag fit like a glove. Hmmmmmmm. Being the analytical chap that I am, I tried a few mag/barrel combinations just to rule out that it was a "bad marriage" between that one particular mag and the LWD barrel.
Nope. With each and every mag, the issue persisted with the LWD barrel, and was not present with the stock barrel.
STRIKE 1.
Moving on from this, I load up a 10 round factory G17 mag with factory ammo with the LWD barrel installed, trip the slide release and......
JAM. Failure to feed. Seriously? First round.
Mind you, this is on a gun that has NEVER jammed. EVER. Say what you want about Glocks, but they certainly are reliable. This gun could be lubed with Loctite, loaded with paintballs full of peanut butter and shot underwater and it would still cycle.
STRIKE 2.
I figured that maybe there's a break in period, so I dropped the mag, cleared the jam, reinserted and cycled the slide. Slide went foward, round in the chamber, ready to fire. Ready to go? Okay.....
Bang! Bang! Bang! MAG FALLS OUT OF GUN.
Yup, you read that right.
I am now looking at the ground in utter disbelief as I have now created a brand-new (at least to me) firearm malfunction! FTRTGDM (Failure to retain the God Damn magazine). I reach down, retrieve my magazine and after carefully checking the pistol for any damage or further malfunction, I insert the mag back in the gun (now with 7 rounds in it) and attempt to fire the pistol. It went something like this:
Bang! Bang! Hmmmmmmmmm...... "Where the hell are those shots going?" Bang! "Uhhhh.... Dude? (Speaking to Ezekiel 25:17) Can you watch my target for a sec?" Bang! Bang! Bang! (Zeke) "Uhhhh, dude you're nowhere NEAR the target, like a foot low and a foot or so to the right."
At this point I have one round left, and miraculously the mag is still in the gun and the gun is in battery ready to fire. I sit down, get a good bench rest, really take my time and.......
Bang! A total and utter miss. Now here's the best part:
I'M SHOOTING AT 25 FEET.
STRIKE 3. Yoooooooouuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrr'e OUT!
Now, I'm no Wyatt Earp, but anyone who's seen me shoot knows I can hit what I'm aiming at. I'm fairly confident something is drastically wrong here, so I put the factory barrel back in, and take 10 shots at a medium sized Shoot 'n' See. All 10 shots are on target with most in a decent group slightly left of the 10 ring (After all, it's no H&K
)So.... It's definitely this POS barrel that's causing the problems. I put the barrel back in it's sleeve, leave the range with the stock G17 barrel in place, and go on with my weekend. I set the thing down on my gun bench and promptly forgot about it. This is my fault entirely, as I should have contacted Lone Wolf right away, but it became "Out of sight, out of mind" as so many things do.
Later that year, I'm cleaning up my bench and come across the barrel and I figure I might as well give LWD a call and see if there's anything they can do. I figure they can fix or replace it as they are the manufacturer and the barrel is under warranty, so I give them a call and speak to their armorer. I explain the bizarre myriad of faults that occurred during my range trip, and inquire if there's anything they could do to help me. Mind you, I'm not looking for a refund at this point, but just a barrel that works! The whole time while I'm explaining the three-ring circus that this barrel caused on the range, I can hear in his voice that he thinks I'm some kind of dipshit that doesn't know what end the bullets come out of, and that this must all be my fault. Needless to say, I wasn't face to face with him but you can tell when somebody "rolls their eyes" at you over the phone.
Nonetheless, he tells me to send the barrel back to him and they'll make it right, which for me is just fine. I waited to contact the company, so I can't bitch about the down time with barrel since the summer, so I packed it up and sent it off to them at my expense. I also wanted to have the barrel blackened (it comes in a stainless finish), so I requested this as well. I asked him what the lead time would be to get a new barrel (or this one fixed and blackened) and was told two to three weeks total. I figured this was more than reasonable.
So.... 6 weeks or so passes, no barrel, no email, no phone call, no nothing. Being the detail freak that I am, I document everything I do in these scenarios, and contact LWD trying to find out the status of my barrel. Well for one, I can't get the armorer on the phone, so I'm left re-explaining this WHOLE scenario again (albeit with more brevity than is used here), and I leave a message for the Armorer.
Couple more weeks, no return call, no email, no smoke signals, carrier pigeon, morse code....nothing.
So I call back, and demand that Armorer guy com to the phone (I'm withholding his name for obvious reasons), and he spins the biggest pile of bullshit this side of the DNC. He tells me that the delay is due to two things;
1: He had to "modify" my barrel to get it to work with the ammo I told him I was using (more on this in a moment).
2: They send out the barrels in batches to be blackened and the next batch was not due to ship for another 3 weeks or so, and then the turnaround on getting the blackened barrels back was ANOTHER 3 weeks!
In order:
1: Bullshit. Utter, steaming, freshly laid BULLSHIT. I said to him: "Let me see if I get this straight, you had to MODIFY your product to work with factory 9mm ammo? (I had mentioned the types I was using; real off-the-wall stuff like Federal red box, WWB and so on...
) If you have to modify the barrel to accept the most common handgun ammo on the planet, what kind of ammo was it built to accept WITHOUT modifications in the first place?"Dead air on the other end of the phone. The kind of dead air when you've caught someone in a downright lie and they're stalling to come up with some half-baked bullshit answer, but they've got the mental capacity of a dishtowel.
2: Unacceptable. I said: "You told me 3 weeks or so, now we're looking at FOURTEEN weeks instead? (Mind you, this is long before the firearm craze we're undergoing now and things were moving along at a reasonable pace). Tell you what, forget the blackening, and just send a barrel that works. Please test fire it before hand as well."
Here's the best part: THE ARMORER DIDN'T REMEMBER ANY OF THIS STORY WHEN I FINALLY GOT HIM ON THE PHONE. I don't know about you, but when I have someone who's unhappy with me either personally or professionaly, I remember them.
So, a week or so later, I receive a replacement barrel. I take it to the range, load up a mag and...
FTF on parade. God Damn thing just doesn't work at all, and when it did go into battery, I couldn't hit the berm with it. Now, I'm not sure if this was a new barrel, the same barrel with these "modifications", or the company just completely jammed me and sent me back the same shitty barrel.
At this point I give up completely and put the barrel in a conspicious place so that I won't forget about it. Not to return it, but more to remind myself to be more careful about purchasing gun mods in the future, and that customer service is indeed king. This is roughly February 2008.
Fast forward to early April of this year, and with the economy being what it is, I feel like I've set a hundred dollar bill on fire as far as this barrel is concerned. So I call up LWD again, and ask if maybe I could send it back to them in exchange for something else (night sights, parts, clothing) anything that I could use instead of this paperweight sitting on my bench. Well I get the armorer back on the phone (same guy) and guess what? He still doesn't have the faintest recollection of this whole experience. Even after prompting him with the whole "I'm the guy with the G17 where the mag falls out of the gun" routine, no recollection.
Shit dude, at least lie to me and pretend you remember me. This guy has the people skills of a Carp. So I tell him that barrel does not function and I honestly am, ready to cut it up and throw it away (I was NOT going to resell it, as that simply wouldn't be cool.) He offers (after telling me that it couldn't possibly be the barrel and my G17 must be defective) to refund my purchase price. I gladly take him up on his offer, write another letter detailing the whole thing and send it back to him, at my expense once again. I also told him that I didn't want to print my credit card info on the letter for security purposes, so I would call him when the barrel was received and we could do the return then.
So, I shipped the barrel on 04/16/2009, it was signed for (by the armorer) on 04/24/2009, and I left a message in his voicemail on 04/27/09 asking him to call me back to confirm he in fact did have the barrel and so I could give him the CC info.
No call back, no contact.
I get tired of waiting, and call him on 05/06/09 and once again, have to get the receptionist to track him down. I get him on the line, ask him to confirm that he's got the barrel in hand. HE DOESN'T REMEMBER ME. AGAIN. At this point, I am so pissed I can barely speak. He confirms he has the barrel, and I give my CC info.
One month passes. No credit. No contact. I decide to remove my pal from the equation and email their customer service manager directly. She gets back to me same day and apologizes for the confusion, and fesses up that the ball was simply dropped and that I should email her with my CC info and the tracking number (Both of which the Armorer has). I actually called her, as I don't like the notion of sending CC info via email, and she was pleasant and attentive. I asked her if she could also refund my shipping (since I've now paid three times to ship this barrel and still have nothing), and she said she would see what she could do.
I receieved a 99.99 credit today on my credit card. No shipping charges we refunded, and I could have my God Damn amateur pilot's license with all the hours I've got into this ridiculous situation.
The Lone Wolf Scorecard:
(1 being the worst and 10 being the highest)
Product: -19
Timeliness: 1 (When I sent them money I got everything quickly, other times... well you know)
Honesty: -15
Customer service: 6 (They DID refund the purchase price of the barrel some two years after the purchase date. Mind you, I didn't ask for this resolution but they offered it.)
Overall accessibility: 2
Final score: Crap.
Thanks for reading.
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