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Dealing with Taurus customer service

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#1 ·
Late last year I bought two Taurus PT-111 G2 9mm pistols. They both functioned fine during the initial break in, but then first one then the other began having serious problems with double feeds. Despite my own attempts at troubleshooting they got worse over time, so in January I finally broke down and had my LGS send them back to the mothership. Months went by and the guns just sat there. Finally I called them late last month to ask them how much longer it was going to take. After a 30 minute hold time I finally reached a live human, who advised me that the guns were close to the front of the line but it would probably be another few weeks. So another month went by, and finally this morning I had had enough and called them again. This time the hold time was 40 minutes, and when I finally reached somebody they told me the guns had been shipped back to my LGS two weeks ago (?!?). After I got off the phone I called the LGS, who confirmed the guns were there but nobody had bothered to call me that they were in.

Oh well. I went over there on my lunch break to pick them up, and it turns out after a four-month wait they simply replaced my two pistols. Because they were different guns I had to go through the paperwork and NICS all over again, despite being on break and not really having the time to do all of that. The LGS salesman gave me the guns for inspection but I threw them back in the boxes because I didn't have time to go over them.

Well, at last I'm home and I take a look at them, and they both clearly appear used. They were supposed to be new, and they have newer serial numbers, but both had several scratches in the steel that went down to bare metal. One has a small nick in the plastic frame, and on the other one the grip texturing is slightly squashed in one spot. Also the triggers are absolutely atrocious on both. I can only thank The Maker that these were both cheap pistols, because if they were expensive ones my blood pressure would be going through the roof right now. Of course I haven't even fired them yet to see if they're reliable or not, but if they're not they're both going on Gunbroker with a .01 cent starting bid and I'll try to forget the day I wasted $500 of my hard-earned money on a couple of Taurus pistols. Two lemons in a row with the same exact problem, followed by months of waiting to get them back, with poor communication, to not being notified they'd even been shipped back to me... with two ratty-assed used or refurbished pistols being given back to me in place of the two clean, new ones I sent in.

And no I am not going to call Taurus back. They've already used up enough of my time.
 
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#11 ·
Best customer service anywhere is Wilson Combat, albeit totally different class of gun. At one point in my gun history, I owned a Taurus 44 mag, a Taurus Raging Judge, and a Taurus defender. None of them worked reliably. I was able to sell two of them, but the Public Defender languishes in the counter of my LGS gathering dust even at a fire sale price.


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#3 · (Edited)
Yes I've heard Colt's CS has gone downhill as well in the past year. My most recent CS issue was with CZ which was very disappointing. The only company I've dealt with in recent years that was superlative was SCCY... they replaced a cracked grip frame on my pistol and had it back to me in just 9 days.

Looking closer at these two pistols, they haven't been shot much so they were apparently just test-fired. However the marks all over the outsides show a total lack of care. Neither pistol still had the hang tags on them. I did take some cold blue which has hidden the marks on the steel, but these will be bang-around pistols for sure since there's no point in trying to keep them looking nice (something I do with ALL of my guns, even the cheap ones). That's assuming I'm not further disappointed when I take them to the range. The triggers smoothed up somewhat with an application of lube, but I'm still annoyed because I hand-picked the first two I bought out of several and chose the ones with decent triggers.
 
#4 ·
Interesting. I have a PT111 G2 in stainless which eliminates the finish issues/scratches you are having with your finished pistols. I find my PT111 to be a wonderful pistol. However, I'm wondering what was so wrong with your originals that they had to replace them both??? Did you get a copy of the Work Order explaining what was wrong and why they were replaced?

Also, I hear you about Taurus' lack of communication. I ordered 3 Taurus Spectrum magazines off of their website last week. I received no email notification that they shipped. Drove into my driveway after lunch today and saw a bubble mailer envelope sitting on the front porch. Picked it up and low and behold it was my three Spectrum magazines. Almost every company I have ever dealt with as far as purchasing gun parts sends me an email notification with a tracking number when my items are shipped!
 
#5 ·
Interesting. I have a PT111 G2 in stainless which eliminates the finish issues/scratches you are having with your finished pistols. I find my PT111 to be a wonderful pistol. However, I'm wondering what was so wrong with your originals that they had to replace them both??? Did you get a copy of the Work Order explaining what was wrong and why they were replaced?
They were both replaced under the pretense of the trigger recall, which tells me they decided not to even waste their time diagnosing my pistols. I spent two months myself trying to figure out what was wrong with them... I checked the extractors, cleaned the chambers real good, even replaced the guide rod assemblies with Lakeline units. With one pistol it would leave the spent brass in the chamber and try shoving a fresh round in behind it at least once every couple of magazines. The other one did the same thing, but less often... about once every 50 rounds. Both pistols were flawlessly reliable during the initial 200 round break-in.
 
#10 · (Edited)
The CZ 1911 had a defective thumb safety that allowed the sear to move when the trigger was pulled, creating an unsafe situation. But instead of replacing it with a new one they simply peened the contact surface to remove the excess play. After I got it back (six weeks later) and realized what they had done I contacted them again and demanded that they actually replace the defective part, but they said since Dan Wesson built the guns they had no spare parts and I'd have to contact them instead. So I contacted Dan Wesson and they said they don't handle warranty on CZ-branded products. So I essentially got the shaft. Soon afterwards I began to detect movement of the sear again, but by that time I found somebody who was selling the thumb safety off his gun as a take-off part so I bought it and ended up fixing it myself. Unfortunately the terrible CS experience I had with CZ-USA left such a bad taste in my mouth that I couldn't begin enjoying that pistol, and last year I sold it having fired only 200 rounds through it.
 
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#12 ·
Ah okay, so it wasn't a 75 type gun. Yeah I don't know how I feel about their (Dan Wession really) 1911s since they are a subsection of CZ and not their own show anymore. I like how the guns are made but stuff like this would turn me off a lot to trying one.
 
#13 ·
Somebody told me once that since CZ didn't make or import the 1911s they were ill-equipped to handle warranty claims on them. It should have been up to Dan Wesson to do the repairs since they built the guns and should've had the parts on hand, but somewhere in the management chain there was a serious failure to communicate between CZ and DW. That shouldn't have been my problem though.
 
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#15 ·
Believe it or not, my luck with Ruger CS was also bad. About 25 years ago I ordered a Ruger 10/22 Deluxe sight unseen from the company warehouse supplying the hardware store where I worked. It arrived with nasty dents and dings on both the stock and receiver, and with fine sawdust stuck to the front sight which told me it got dropped or fell over while still at the factory. I could not return it as it was against warehouse policy to take firearms back, so I had to call Ruger to see if they would refinish the rifle under warranty. They refused, and I was stuck selling it to a local gunshop for around $50 just to get rid of it.

My luck with guns needing repair or warranty service ain't too good. :(
 
#17 ·
In the end that's usually what I do as well. Whenever possible I just fix it myself, even if it costs me more money. Fortunately I can do it easily with a 1911, but with some guns like these Tauruses it's impossible to buy spare parts from the manufacturer so I'm stuck dealing with them. The fact that you can't buy spares from Taurus combined with the fact that their CS wait times are measured by the changing seasons means they're not the kind of guns you want to stake your life on. If your gun goes down it stays down until you replace it with another one, because they're essentially disposable.
 
#18 ·
I bought a Taurus OSS 24/7 in .45 on the very day the Supreme Court announced it's Heller Decision (06/28/2012). It worked reliably for a year, and I had no complaints. I had not fired it for a few years. Recently I took it out and it was nosediving terribly, not feeding the next round even if it was ball ammo. Didn't matter which of the factory mags I used.

Online suggestions said it was probably the 12 round magazines, and that the 10 round .45 magazines were more reliable. I called Taurus to try to buy some new mags. After 30 minutes on hold, they very nicely told me there was a class action suit on this exact pistol which conveys lifetime warranty service at their expense. They gave me a shipping label and I sent it back. They will either repair the safety issues (of which I never had any) or give me a new pistol. I won't know anything until Labor Day.
 
#19 ·
At least they sent you a shipping label. I had to pay to send my two pistols in! :mad:
 
#20 ·
Finally got to the range this evening. 100 rounds through each pistol, the same Federal 115gr FMJ I was shooting when I experienced the double feeds. No double feeds or failures to eject this time, but with pistol #1 I had two FTRTB and two failures to feed. With pistol #2 I had three failures to feed. These happened with more than one magazine, by the way.

So... send them back again and wait another four months? Toss them in the nearest river? Leave them out on the sidewalk and hope some perp is dumb enough to pick them up? Four PT-111 G2 handguns in a row... not a single reliable one. :mad:
 
#22 ·
I shot them last week again, and they're still having repeated failures to feed. One isn't too bad, but the other one chokes all the time. I can't put these things back on the open market knowing that somebody may buy them, keep them as their home defense gun and then someday find out the hard way they're pieces of crap. I think I'll just chalk it up as a $500 lesson and play with them on my bench whenever I'm bored, seeing if I can get them to work. If I can't then there will be some used Taurus PT-111 parts for sale on eBay soon.
 
#25 · (Edited)
The plot thickens...

I just got a call today from my LGS, telling me my two Taurus pistols were there. What the flying f***? I already picked them up four weeks ago! So I went there, and they had my two old pistols, having been fixed with new extractor springs. So there I was wondering if Taurus made some sort of blunder, but as these two were obviously my pistols I brought them home. So now I look at the repair receipts, and I see my name on the ones for my two pistols but not the other two (both pairs of receipts have the gun shop's name, but only one pair has my name as well). So did I previously pick up two guns belonging to somebody else??? Now I need to call the LGS tomorrow and ask them to do a head count of all the PT-111s they are supposed to have and also any they may have sent off for warranty service, either their own stock or another customer's. This might explain why I got two pistols that looked used. Maybe they are! :eek:
 
#27 ·
Yeah, but it'll be more interesting to find out whether I got two free pistols or if some other poor bastard owns the other two that are still malfunctioning! :(

Assuming my first two pistols are fixed, I think it's ridiculous to have waited five months just to get two tiny springs replaced. If Taurus was like Glock or most any other manufacturer they would've been able to just mail me a couple springs to try out instead of sending the guns in and waiting so long.
 
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#28 ·
When I was talking to the Taurus Rep about sending in my pistol, he told me that turnaround time on their U.S. built pistols such as my Spectrum was much faster due to the fact that parts were readily available due to the gun being manufactured and assembled in the U.S.

Is the PT-111 built in the U.S.? I dunno...
 
#30 ·
There was a lot of good word being spread about the PT-111 G2, especially online from Hickok45 and Sootch00. When the prices dropped to $250 and under I figured I couldn't go wrong and bought two. Until they suddenly started malfunctioning they were actually my carry guns. I definitely won't trust them again however until I've put several hundred rounds through them without any more issues.

And yes I'm talking about the two that actually belong to me and were repaired and sent back. I called the gun shop this morning regarding the other two, telling them that something didn't feel right about the fact that I sent in two guns and received back four. They went and did an in-store audit, and later called me back telling me the other two guns were theirs! I bet it's good to actually have honest customers, eh? :rolleyes:
 
#31 ·
And yes I'm talking about the two that actually belong to me and were repaired and sent back. I called the gun shop this morning regarding the other two, telling them that something didn't feel right about the fact that I sent in two guns and received back four. They went and did an in-store audit, and later called me back telling me the other two guns were theirs! I bet it's good to actually have honest customers, eh?

Thumbs up to you for honesty! :rock:

At least now you don't have 4 Taurus to send back in 3 months!
 
#32 ·
They told me they sent in the two guns they had for the trigger recall about the same time I had them send in my two guns for repair. When the first two guns came back someone got confused and thought they were mine. I assume they were display examples since like I said earlier they had scratches on the outsides yet showed little to no evidence of having been fired on the insides.

Oh well. I have already put 150 rounds through each one, and learned that they both have feeding issues. Since they're not my guns they're no longer my problem! It'll be up to the gun shop what they decide to do with them, either send them back yet again or put them on the discount shelf. I hope they don't try to pass them off as brand new to somebody.
 
#39 ·
I finally took them to the range today during my lunch break to put 100 rounds of the same Federal 115gr ammo through each one. Not a single bobble, which was a huge relief. If either one jammed again I probably would've hung it on the target carrier and shot it to pieces. However I'll be putting a few hundred more rounds through them before I trust them as anything but range guns again.
 
#34 · (Edited)
Unfortunately it might be awhile. My schedule is pretty much booked for the next couple of weeks. The proof in the pudding won't be with the first range visit anyway. These guns worked perfectly at first, but then the double feeding issues began intermittently and quickly got worse after just a few hundred rounds. Assuming Taurus was right about the extractor springs being the problem it means they were OK when new but then quickly lost tension. I might have to put a thousand rounds through them just to finally feel confident in them. $400 worth of ammo through two $250 pistols just to make sure they are reliable enough for defense... yeah that makes perfect sense. :dope:
 
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