Well as most of you know I purchased an Ultra 25-06 in March of this year. Was very excited and had planned out this purchase for months, the ideal caliber for the kind of hunting that I do, hogs and deer. I made it out to the range with some 100gr. Core-Lokts the following week and the action kept opening on every shot. Tried to return it to the original gunshop but he would not refund my money as it was now a used gun, (understandable) tho I had purchased it brand new. So a call to Customer Service and a call tag sent by them and the gun was off to Mass. the last week of March. They received it the first week of April and while it was there I went ahead and paid for an extra 22" .223 bull barrel to be added. I had faith that the problem would be corrected and that I would receive back a shooter......x2. The gun came back home sometime around the last of April with the new barrel, but the .223 barrel had been packaged in the same box and not wrapped good enough and had slammed into the pistol grip area of my laminated buttstock and nicked the heck out of it. I called them again to let them know what had happened and was issued another call tag for the return and exchange of the buttstock. Irritating, but minor enough to go ahead and deal with as such. Went ahead and got back out to the range first tho as soon as I could and after firing both barrels was pretty satisfied with the accuracy of each, somewhere around 1-1.5" with both barrels and the cheap ammo....Core-Lokts in the '06 and UMC fmj's in the .223. I saved my brass and upon inspection I discovered quite noticable expansion rings on the web of each 25-06 cartridge and each had flattened primers. Well this really threw me at first as my knowledge was knill about this and still leaves a lot to be desired. After many email conversations with a certain helpful memeber of our brotherhood here (you know who you are
) I talked again with Customer Service about possible headspace and bulged chamber issues. Also after inspecting the .223 brass I discovered the same expansion rings on them too. So I used the call tag issued for the buttstock and it was off to Mass. again, for the entire setup this time. I was not very kind with them about my expectations for the correction of this problem and asked for a written acknowledgment by them upon it's return that it had been test fired and was safe to shoot, liability issues ya know. Well it came back about three weeks later, and the acknowledgement was included on the invoice and so I figure I have a great, efficient, safe shooter now. New buutstock had been added and apparently a new foreend also. Took it to the range, fired several rounds, slight expansion rings still present but I figured I could live with that as I had noticed the same slight rings on my friends .243 cartridges and he was having them reloaded by an experienced reloader who had no problem with the presence of the rings. Very slight now, understand, nothing like previous rings and now there were no flattened primers. Kept the gun and range fired it quite a few times with both barrels and hunted a few times with it......never bloodied it tho....just ask Digger on that one. Well after another member posted about having "half moon" marks on the breech face of his gun I remembered seeing something similar on mine after it's last return from the factory. So I got it out and inspected the breech face and sure enough, there were many extending up and down the whole area of the breech face. Some were very deep and others were hardly noticeable, but there were many. Got out my magnifying glass and looked closer and that's when I noticed two tiny triangular shaped chips gone from the metal of the breech face also. Never fired any other barrels from this receiver other than the two barrels fitted to it so I knew I was having some serious problems now. This was the last part of August I believe and after a call to Customer Service again and a talk with the head of Customer Service and Repair I was told that if the gun was defective that it would be replaced. Another call tag issued and it's back off for another trip to Mass. Notice that I was told that
the gun would be replaced. That told me that the whole gun, including the factory fitted extra barrel would be replaced, is that not how you would have taken it. Well this time I called them almost every day until the gun arrived. Upon the confirmation of it's arrival I asked if it had been inspected by the head of CS whom I had spoken with and who assured me that he would see to this himself. I was told no, but that he would probably look at it that day and about ten minutes later I received a call back letting me know that he had approved the exchange and replacement of my gun. OH BOY! I was really excited now....a brand new Ultra and brand new extra barrel. I called him back later to see what my options might be.....thought I might get some new calibers, nope they could only repalce what I had originally and that it would be some time before I would receive the new gun because of having to clear the change in registration of a new weapon with BATF. Yep it took a long time alright, it was almost 6 weeks before I got my gun back. I did though and that was just last Tuesday, the same day I took my 84 lb. doe with my Huntsman. :mrgreen: Ok, it's October now and I have learned enough from being a member of this forum by now to know to
thoroughly inspect this gun. I began looking it over and discoverd that I had a new serial number...good....but after thoroughly inspecting it here's what I discovered. Only the action had been replaced, still had my original 25-06 barrel with the same last three numbers of my original serial number still etched into the barrel lug. Same stocks and the foreend spacer had one screw completely stripped out. After removing the spacer I discovered a very thin peice of plastic shim underneath it, apparently placed there during the headspace issues trip. The .223 barrel had the last three numbers of the new serial number stamped on it but there were machine marls all over the barrel lug, as if they removed the original numbers and restamped the new ones over them. To top it all off the buttstock had a big nick gone from it caused by the same packaging of the extra barrel that had occured before. :evil: Well I couldn't take anymore, I called the next morning and even though I was very upset and disappointed I did maintain my composure, after all we had to get this worked out. Well I was told many things about how H&R does their fitting of barrels and such, I won't repeat a lot here now though because that is just another issue entirely. I was right about only the action being replaced and after telling him (head os CS again) of the damaged stocks, he agreed to replace them now. "That's the best you can do?", I asked. Yep the best he could do. So I proceeded to tell him how that I am now three weeks away from the opening of rifle season here in OK and that I have owned this gun since March and have yet to get it sighted in and haven't even settled on the best factory ammo it likes to shoot. He then makes me an offer I couldn't refuse......to buy the gun back from me for the original purchase price if I send him the original receipts. Needless to say, the gun is now back on it's way to Mass. for it's final trip to there and I'm interested to see how much I will receive back. I included the receipt for the purchase of the bull barrel and the Ultra scope rail I purchased for it.
So that's about it for now. Just wanted everyone to know that while this has not been a satisfactory history with H&R in many aspects, it appears that they are genuinely concerned about keeping their customers happy and that this story may have a happy ending after all. I'll post more after I hear from them again. I do intend to purchase another Handi with the refund money BTW.
Thanks for reading my l-oooooooo-ng story.
