gold label

[mitch4570]

Does anybody have a Gold Label. I wanted one for four years and finally found one and have had nothing but trouble with it. Ruger has had it for 6 months now and still have not fixed it. They have sent it back to me twice and I shipped it right back to them both times because they had not fixed the shotgun. In fact I wonder if they really gave it any attentionto it,since I had given them a written discription of the problem with my cell number. Have any of the members hear heard of problems with the Ruger Gold Label?thank you in advance for any comments or feed back on what I should do . Really I love the look, feel,balance and fit of the shotgun but the thing just does not funtion correctly. At this point I would rather have my money back and buy a light weight Benelli now there is a shotgun that has never let me down.

[Graybeard]

What is it doing or not doing that you think it should do differently?

[mitch4570]

what this shotgun does is if you are shooting one barrel only for me the left barrel is the one I use when doing this. And the situation when doing this is skeet, five stand or sporting clays.Anyway when shooting only the left barrel opening the gun and loading the left barrel and closing, it will fail to start its sequince from the left barrel and go on to fire the right barrel. This happens even though I have carefuly opened the gun to the point the case ejects and then opened it as far as it would go just for good measure. I have not had it go more than 25 rounds before it does this. So it miss fires, no boom, just a snap, because there is a shell in the left barrel but not in the right.  This means that it has gone on to fire the right barrel even though it has been reloaded ( action recocked reset) very carefully.
Every one says "well I would never notice, because I always load both barrels". Yes you would, and here are the sanarios that you would notice it in, Say you are shooting five stand. In five stand you are aloud to shoot two times at the singles if you need to. So lets say you go through the first three clays and do not miss reloading the emty left barrel each time( you have your gun set to fire left first and have the right barrel loaded already) then you go to shoot your double and you break the first bird and swing on the secound and  nothing, not even a snap in this case because the left barrel will not be cocked.  because the gun did not reset to shoot left barrel first, Even though you opened and reloaded it you open the gun and the right barrel is fired and left shell is there with no firing pin mark. this exact same senario would happen in a hunting situation say you shoot your first pheasant with the left barrel and then reload. On your next flush you happen to flush a double and you drop the first bird and swing on the second and nothing not even a snap. The five stand senario has happened to me. The hunting senario is just theroy since I have not have had the shotgun long enough to hunt with it. Even though I bought It for just that,  six months in advace of hunting season.  I have trouble getting these guys to return my calls even though. Bob Wood has told me personaly that he would call me one way or the other he never does. To me this is just the worst service ever.  I know they have a lot of work. But you would think that they could leave me a voice amil or a letter. I mean I bought their best shotgun for $ 2,000 and its been broken since day one. I get the feeling they think fixing their problem is a real pain in the back side.

I have a Remington 700 in 375 H&H  and I shot some 300 yard groups with it, that were so nice I sent a picture of them to Remington. The sevice manager sent me all kinds of free stuff. Posters belt bukles and the like. Then in a month the president did the same thing. I received letters from both. I was not trolling for anything free just thought they should see wat their guns were capable of.

Point being, Remington saw a opertunity for cutomer relations and took it.  The president not being to high to sent a letter. Ruger has a real good reason to contact their customer. Namely their product is not working,  and they don't see a reason to send me any news or to contact me by phone or cell.

I know some of you guys don't agree,  but to me this is the definition of really, really , really bad customer service

[Graybeard]

Hmm, that is a strange one.

Is it just not switching or is it just plain not resetting the hammer for that left barrel? Does it do the same if you set it to shoot right barrel first?

Have you tried switching the selector from left to right and back to right and checked to see if it still does it?

I guess it's not exactly clear to me just what's causing it and I suppose it must not be to Ruger. Normally their Customer Service is top notch. I guess all companies mess up on it from time to time but theirs is on average really good. Which of course is meaningless to you since this time it's you and they're not doing what is needed.

I can sure feel your frustration, when you spend that much money the darn thing should work right the first time and for sure if not then when it comes back it should.

[mitch4570]

no its not resetting thts clear because the right barrel shoots on doubles. and then no second shot that is because it has not reset when you reloaded on your single. I have tested this by putting two snap caps in the gun and put tape over the right barrel snap cap. Then set the gun on left barrel and shot left barrel open the gun all the way let the left snap cap eject. Then replace left snap cap and close action. Dry fire the gun and repeat opening and replaceing left cap each time. Only the left barrel should fire , but before i do this 25 time the right barrel will fire. This is clear because the right snap cap will have a mark on the tape i placed there.

[Ptarmigan]

And I thought I had it bad.  I like Ruger guns as well and like Red Labels since I killed my first grouse with one.  Was a toss up for me to get two CZ Ringnecks or one Gold Label. Chose Ringnecks and started having trouble with light strike or failure to fire issues for both guns 20 and 28 gauge.  Gunshop I bought them through sent guns back to CZ in September, Have not heard a peep and I try an follow-up at least once a week. Even had the local company rep step in and try to find something out about the guns.  I am of the opinion they offer a five year warranty because it takes that long to fix them. 

Disappointed Ruger is acting same way or worse than CZ becasue I was seriously thinking about pushing the gunshop to take my two claim tickets and gve me the Gold Label instead.  Not so certain now.  Pity you spend good money on a new product and can't use it.  Sounds like we are paying for their R&D.  I always thought Ruger was better than that when putting out guns.  They advertised for years the Gold Label but you could never find one becasue of limited productions.  I am almost to conclusion that there is almost no way to have a decent looking and priced sxs production gun that works.  I truly beleive there is consumer interest, but it will fall off considerably if companies can't deliver.  Poor or bad customer service in my opinion will kill a product or company before it even gets off the ground.  Maybe they already know this and don't don't know how to fix the problem, which is my biggest concern.  Invested money into a product that may not work and a company that is dragging its feet in admitting it.  If they want to compete with more expensive guns then had better work.  High quality for a more economical price is bit of a misnomer when it comes to sxs's it seems.

I may have to reconsider buying a new sxs or will have to save my pennies and buy a more expensive gun to get the proper customer service, even if thats possible.  Gun probably won't work any better though and pretty wood does not help my shooting. I prefer sxs's to o/u since I love shooting an old sxs that I have.  Just don't want to put a that many rounds through it anymore since it is about a 100 years old and it still works flawlessly.  I beleive in the old saying  "If God would have intended us to shoot over and unders he would have put our eyes on top of each other".  I guess the newer saying is "If God had intended us to shoot a side by side he would have given us bigger wallets".

[mitch4570]

Ptarmigan I have a gold Label for sale. That is if they ever send it back to me. They have called me and told me there is nothing wrong with the gun and it can not be fixed. I have let four people shoot this gun on the skeet field with out telling them that anything was wrong with it, and it malfuntions the same way for them. ( This was before i sent it to Ruger) Any way its unusable, and I need to get rid of it. I makes me ferious and i'd like to sue them, but in the end I'll just have to take my loses and get rid of it. Ruger... I'm just so disappointed in them, they did call me the other day and inform me they could not fix the gun but fixed the wood on the gun. There was nothing wrong with the wood and I never complained to them about the wood. The guys there are just driving me crazy. Maybe Flash is right and they are screwing with me because I had the audacity to complain after I have sent it to them two times with two written explanations of the problem, and  they sent it back to me and still not fixed. Now they still have it the (GL) after six months and three trips there. If that is the case then really unprofessional behavior on their part. Just one mans opinion.