Just happened upon this Beretta rant...

[dvc]

While searching the net for info on Jarvis barrels, I happened upon this Beretta rant.
It concerns barrel failure, weapon service life, warranty and the general attitude of
Beretta customer service.

Anyone care to give it a read and offer your opinions?

If this rant is indeed valid, it would probably sway my interest in the Beretta Cougar.

Thanks.

http://www.stokesworld.com/berettastory.html

 

[Tamara]

Well, I'll get the obligatory devil's advocate nonsense out of the way first...

Most manufacturer's specifically state that reloads will void their warranty. This isn't because they're trying to hose us, but because some suit in the legal department noted it would keep them from having to rebuild a pistol every time some guy tried to cook up a 3,000fps 9mm load and wound up picking bits of slide out of his bridgework. They may still work on a pistol that has been shot extensively with reloads, this just allows them to bow out gracefully if the breakage was clearly the handloaders fault. Secondly, polygonal rifling and unjacketed bullets moving at greater than walking speed do not mix. The tighter gas seal behind the bullet in a polyganally rifled barrel allows serious lead deposits to be vaporized from the rear of the projectile and left on your barrel. Greater lead deposits=higher pressures=higher slide velocities=busted parts...

On the other hand, this twink at Beretta seemed seriously deficient in customer relation skills and could have offered to at least fix the thing at cost and thereby kept a customer and avoided having his company smeared on the Internet for the world to see.

Go figure...

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!

 

[craigz]

I've only been shooting for a year and a half and I know next to nothing about reloading. However, I do know that if you shoot reloads with lead bullets in a polygonally-rifled barrel, you have to be very careful about cleaning all of the lead out of the barrel frequently, like every 100-200 rounds. I also know that the .40S&W is a high pressure round and that you have to be very careful when reloading it or you could blow up the gun.

So here's a guy who's apparently never heard of any of this and who's never read the manual that came with his gun, shooting thousands of rounds of hand-cast .40S&W lead reloads. He blows up his gun and instead of being grateful that he still has ten fingers and a face, is shocked to find out that Beretta won't fix the gun for free.

Admittedly, the guy at Beretta was full of crap and obnoxious as well. Film at 11. But, the bottom line is that the guy is now getting a barrel designed to shoot lead bullets, which is what he should have done in the first place.

 

[loknload]

I own and shoot Berettas. I don't reload and I don't shoot reloads. Have always used factory ammo. Now I have to admit I don't shoot as much as this guy but as far as my dealings with Beretta, I've never had any problems with mine. But when I called Beretta for parts I could not have delt with anyone nicer and more helpful. I have also heard that if you have problems with Beretta in Maryland you should contact the top man in Italy, I understand he doesn't like to hear problems like this and goes out of his way to resolve them

Just my thoughts

Happy Shooting

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We preserve our freedoms by using four boxes: soap,ballot,jury, and cartridge.
Anonymous

[This message has been edited by loknload (edited April 30, 2000).]

 

[Jeff Thomas]

A good friend purchased a used 92FS. Had problems with stovepiping and failure-to-feed. Called Beretta, and they said to send it in.

Three weeks later they sent it back, in a Beretta plastic carrying case, with an owners manual. Apparently it had been assembled incorrectly by the previous owner, and was dry as hell. Charge? Zero. That's right - zero. Beretta fixed the gun, provided the carrying case, sent an owners manual and paid the shipping back to my friend.

I don't know how a company could provide better service, and I certainly don't see this in any other retail industry.

Stay in business long enough, and you're sure to p**s a few people off. This reloader must have been one of them.

Regards from AZ

 

[Tamara]

It's true that this is unlike Beretta's usually stellar customer support. I'd forgotten about the stories of people occaisionally getting satisfaction by calling the home office.

If our disgruntled reloader had called Italy something tells me that there probably would have been a job opening in Beretta, U.S.A.'s customer service dept. posthaste...

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!

 

[James K]

Not good PR at Beretta, but Holy Slidelock, Batman, pistols do wear out sometime.

250,000 rounds from a 1911? As much as I like the 1911, I doubt that story or at least doubt that the pistol was left anything but scrap.

Jim

 

[jimmy]

I've had only positive experiences with the service people at Beretta. However, nobody's perfect, so it wouldn't surprise me if they messed up from time to time--which they did in this case, since there's no excuse for being rude and condescending to a customer. OTOH, if I'd abused my 96 as this shooter did, I think I'd have been embarassed to send it to Beretta in the first place.