I really can't tell what I'm seeing in the rifling. whatever it is, a mess that is so visible that I could see it on a stamp sized thumbnail is bad. QC probably saw it and shipped it anyway. That is how it works now. fix it and throw away a perfectly good barrel? No, just ship it and see if it passes the last qc test, the consumer. products ship all of the time with no testing at all because it's cheaper to go through the warranty service on a few than to spend time testing them all. products get a cursory test at best. Are the five dollar christmas lights even plugged in before shipping? Not a chance, those things go from one end of assembly straight into shipping cases.
some Polymer guns, as far as I can tell are so easily interchanged that they are probably assembled, the function tested manually, and off into the box. Taurus, probably every brand, have a number of inspectors who fudge things. Big old chunk missing? meh, ship it off. No time to strip the components and throw away the ugly frame. We turn a little steel and a bit of work into a gun and sell it wholesale for probably about $100 give or take on a slim margin.
We can buy a fine, well designed polymer frame pistol for small bores for the prices of a few bottles of glenlivet, and that is a miracle in a day when labor and machining costs are a 'workable wage'. here are a few rules to know when dealing with 21st century manufacturing.
Never expect any product to come off of the shelf in a working condition. examine and test everything that you can before you put it on the register.
Don't expect a warranty to be an answer, as this incident just showed.
sometimes getting that extended warranty from the store is a better idea than you would think. changing out defective merchandise at the store instead of through a warranty center is much better.
Buy cheap and get cheap.
Never assume that something as simple as a coffee maker will have been around for so long that it will be just as well designed as the other ones are, most products now are barely recognizable as you move from top to bottom of the quality lists. The cars of the eighties, IMO, were amazingly poorly designed. water pumps with plastic bearings. Every item was designed for the least cost per unit, and designed to a minimum level of functionality. Most of the really major design changes were made to cut costs, not build better cars. the strut was created to make more room and less weight. FWD was a space saving, material saving, cost saving design used for small vehicles after the olds and buick models went under. zero insertion force chipsets were designed to prevent damage on high end sets, not to make the cheap laptop cheaper.
caveat emptor. Take the responsibility into your own hands. don't trust all of those faceless drones to look after your interests, even putting a cheeseburger together correctly is too much to ask.
Forget brand loyalty, there is no brand anymore. I never bought anything but sony from 1970 or so forward, and yes, it paid off. My sony stereo bought in 85 is still great, I've only replaced speakers and turntable needles, but will a sony television last now? Not if you buy the common numbers.
A lot of the cost of high end firearms like springfield and kimber is because of the care taken in designing and making them.
I'm astonished by optics. I don't know how the companies can manufacture a decent product some times, but they do. Much of the difference between hundreds and thousands, however, goes into the glass.
