Displeased with Federal's response after ammo problems

[Erich]

Man! Three letters and no response!

 

[dougader]

Yeah, Federal is not big on customer service, IME.

 

[Erich]

Guess not.

 

[Sugar River]

About 10 years ago I had the same problem with Fed 32 H&R ammo. I emailed their CS and got a response that they suspected corrosion cracking due to storage near cleaning solvents. They also replaced all 8 boxes of ammo.
But this was before ATK too over.

Pete

 

[5of7]

You know, I recall that sometimes primers back out when pressures are too low - you ever fire those primer-only wax bullet loads?

Exactly

The cracks are what bothered me, though. And the absolute indifference of the reply to the fact that I deliberately chose their ammo thinking that the brass would be good to reload.

The brass was not properly annealed after it was manufactured. The drawing process has a tendency to work harden the brass and needs to be annealed to prevent this sort of thing. 8)

PS....for what it may be worth, I accessed Federal Cartridge's web site and fount the "contact us" button and suggested that they look at this discussion and posted the URL to this thread.

It might be interesting to see if they respond to it. I will post any response here if indeed there is any....

 

[5of7]

Pursuant to the PS in my above post, I already received a response to the missive that I sent to Federal Cartridge Co....To wit:

Joel

Thank you for the "heads up", we appreciate you contacting us about this forum discussion.

Have a great day!

Who knows, perhaps something may come out of this.... 8)

 

[Erich]

Thanks, 5, but the "contact us" button was what got me the lovely response in the first place. They clearly don't give a hoot - oh well . . . .

 

[dougader]

Here's a tidbit for you. Seems a fireman in Vancouver, WA, who is also a hunter, was very impressed with some Federal rifle ammunition he had tried out. Being a handloader, he sent a letter to Federal asking if they would ever consider selling the component bullets and/or gun powder so he could tailor his ammo with these components.

No response from Federal, but a few weeks later the Secret Service showed up at his place of employment and grilled the fireman, his superiors and co-workers to see what this guy was up to. He was treated like a criminal, and understandably, was scared about what was going on.

The only thing this fireman could figure out from the interrogation was something he had paid no attention to: a visit to Portland by then President George H.W. Bush.

So this is how Federal reponds to requests from their customers. When my HST ammo is gone, I won't be buying anymore Federal products. The last time I even touched a Federal product was when someone left 28 once-fired 30-06 cases at the range. I used them for necking up for my 338-06.

 

[Jayhawkhuntclub]

I deliberately purchased what I thought to be quality Federal ammo because I wanted the spent cases for reloading. Please contact me about this.

I was really surprised when Federal wrote back a terse, "Go Away" email:

You bought old ammo, it has been sitting on the shelf. The brass split due to stress corrosion cracking. It was manufactured in 2003.

Thanks
Federal Ammunition

I was pretty amazed by this, and responded:

Are you kidding me, or are you just insulting me? I've been happily reloading much of the same brass since the '80s, and you're going to tell me that your new, never-fired brass from only ten years ago will split when fired in a low-pressure factory loading in the .32 S&W Long cartridge.

I've not heard back. I'm not pleased with Federal/ATK's handling of the situation; I would have expected that Federal/ATK would stand behind its products or care more about its customers.

What lying sack of crap wrote that? I think I'd be finding our who their supervisor is and let them know. That ammo shouldn't do that if it was 100 years old!