And they’re off…

Yesterday I shipped both my Springfield XDS .45 and my Kel-Tec PF-9 back to their respective manufacturers for warranty service.  – Let’s see who’s fastest –

This leaves me without a subcompact carry gun so I guess I’ll be carrying “The Magnum” more until one of them come back.

The Magnum, .22 Magnum that is.

I think I’ll carry the XDm .45 more also.  Just sayin’.

I emailed Springfield and Tom Macke got back to me immediately with an RMA number and pre-paid shipping label when I told them about my problems with the XDS slide stop.  No “send us your receipt” and no cost to me for overnight shipping.

Contrast the personal and professional pre-service attention I got from Springfield with the response I got from Kel-Tec last year…

I complained last year about feed failures with my PF-9, “Kel Tec Customer Service” sent me an email telling me to ship it back to them and they would fix for free it as long as I included a copy of the receipt proving I am the original purchaser.  Sound good but it lead to me shelving the PF-9…

At the time I had no clue where that receipt had run off to so the gun didn’t go back for service.  I went to the store where I bought it and they had updated their point of sale system so they couldn’t get me a duplicate sales receipt, just the transfer form.  That wouldn’t have helped.  The requirement that I pay for next day shipping also left a bad taste in my mouth. Faced with next day shipping costs and non-warranty service fees due to a missing receipt in order to make the gun reliable, I mostly quit carrying the Kel-Tec.

I did finally find the receipt a few months ago, filed exactly where it shouldn’t have been, but I had replaced it as a carry gun by that point so even paying the shipping cost didn’t seem like a good use of my hard-earned money.

Yesterday, since FexEx was already on the way to my house to pickup my XDS,  I took a copy of the receipt and wrote a note about my feed failures with the PF-9.  Then I shelled out about 15% of the value of the gun for shipping and finally sent it back to Kel-Tec for service.

While I’m not thrilled with Kel-Tec’s latest return policies, they are not any worse than most others in the industry.  Springfield’s must just be exceptional.

According to FexEx, both guns arrived at their destinations within an hour of each other this morning.