Urgent: XDs recall...

[Blindref757]

Pretty happy that I didn't send mine in. I've put over 500 rounds through it and had one little issue that may have been about 75% my fault. I think I'm going to keep my gun, keep it very clean, and continue to wait. I have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong with it and I am trusting my life to it. When SA has the repair down pat and they aren't sitting on 50K plus guns, I'll eventually send it to them for a real 30 day turnaround.

[Excaliber]

There are some glaring omissions in all the communications from SA. I have yet to see a clear explanation of how slam fires and double shots occur and how extensive the problem is:

What parts are involved?

How do they interact to cause the problems?

What conditions cause the issue at some times and not others?

How many guns are they aware of that actually had these problems during use? (I'm not buying their initial answer of "one.")

These are not hard questions, and the company must have answers internally by now.

The Obamalike secrecy around these very straightforward issues is not encouraging to those of us who would like to get our guns back quickly and in working order.

[Teamless]

i had a discussion this morning with my B-i-L about this, as we both have XDs (45s) and both have sent ours back within a day of each other.

They are on the verge of alienating 186,000 Springfield Owners with their lack of REAL communication.
And how they handle this issue moving forward will determine if these 186,000 owners ever come back to Springfield for business.
If these 186,000 dissuade just 2 or 3 people each from ever buying Springfields (much like Honda owners of the 1970's and '80's did), they could be pushing away 1,000,000 gun owners, for life, or for a very long time.

While car manufacturers may be able to lose 1,000,000 customers, but eventually almost all adults will buy cars, and normally probably at least 1 every 5-10 years, thats eventual 500,000,000 people, so losing the audience of 1,000,000 potentials is not bad.

But with gun owners, lets say there are only 50,000,000 pistol owners in the USA and it may not be that high, but who knows, to lose 1,000,000 of that, you have lose 2% of your potential customers, and while I may have a dozen pistols, I would have to guess that most pistol owners probably only own 1-3 guns and possibly won't buy one every 5 years.

I have rambled a bit, but you get my gist I hope.

oh, and if they end up "buying back" all of these guns, that opens up a whole other can of worms to upset those 2% of pistol owners! They need to be careful!

[Shoot_First]

Mr. Tom Reese, President
Springfield Armory
420 W Main Street
Genesco, IL 61254-1524

Dear Mr. Reese:

As the former owner of an M1A and 1911 Champion and the current owner of an EMP 9mm, an XD .45ACP, and an XDs .45ACP; I have been very pleased with your products.

I am sure you and your team are working diligently to solve the current XDs problem. I suspect you know the XD Talk Forum, Texas CHL Forum, and other forums contain plenty of negative information because of the changing time to repair the XDs. One of our Texas CHL Forum member was informed by telephone conversation with a Springfield Armory representative that the recall was prompted by a single slam fire occurrence caused my a small foreign metal particle. If that were the case, it seems the pistol would be cleaned and returned to the owner without prompting a recall. It is equally clear there is more to this problem than being disclosed by Springfield Armory. Some are now speculating that pistol cannot be repaired and that Springfield Armory’s recall goal is to get the pistols back to reduce liability exposure.

I suggest that you temper the ill will by providing a free magazine to be included with the return of the repaired pistol as did Ruger during their recall of the LCP.

I submit that all at Springfield Armory need to be completely transparent on the XDs recall. The very credibility of the firm is at stake. You are facing a clear and irreversible loss of your customer base. Perhaps a “letter from Tom” to registered XDs owners and the complete XDs recall details published in the gun rags is in order.

Warm regards,

Above is the text of my letter to SA's President. Chime in if you agree. E-mails to lower level worker bees are not going to accomplish anything.

Dave

[Excaliber]

Mr. Tom Reese, President
Springfield Armory
420 W Main Street
Genesco, IL 61254-1524

Dear Mr. Reese:

As the former owner of an M1A and 1911 Champion and the current owner of an EMP 9mm, an XD .45ACP, and an XDs .45ACP; I have been very pleased with your products.

I am sure you and your team are working diligently to solve the current XDs problem. I suspect you know the XD Talk Forum, Texas CHL Forum, and other forums contain plenty of negative information because of the changing time to repair the XDs. One of our Texas CHL Forum member was informed by telephone conversation with a Springfield Armory representative that the recall was prompted by a single slam fire occurrence caused my a small foreign metal particle. If that were the case, it seems the pistol would be cleaned and returned to the owner without prompting a recall. It is equally clear there is more to this problem than being disclosed by Springfield Armory. Some are now speculating that pistol cannot be repaired and that Springfield Armory’s recall goal is to get the pistols back to reduce liability exposure.

I suggest that you temper the ill will by providing a free magazine to be included with the return of the repaired pistol as did Ruger during their recall of the LCP.

I submit that all at Springfield Armory need to be completely transparent on the XDs recall. The very credibility of the firm is at stake. You are facing a clear and irreversible loss of your customer base. Perhaps a “letter from Tom” to registered XDs owners and the complete XDs recall details published in the gun rags is in order.

Warm regards,

Above is the text of my letter to SA's President. Chime in if you agree. E-mails to lower level worker bees are not going to accomplish anything.

Dave

It's a good letter and on point.

I have not concluded that the guns can't be fixed. I don't yet have enough information to know one way or the other. However, SA's management of the situation is a classic "how not to do it." They are now experiencing exactly what happens when one totally fumbles the crisis communication tasks and created lots of room for doubts, speculation, and rumor. (See the list of what usually happens when a bad situation is managed by the seat of the pants here and ask yourself if it applies.)

I've always liked SA as a company. I have several of their products, and I like them too. I've also had good experience with their customer service on prior occasions. However, their management of the XDs situation has endangered the high opinion many of their customers had of them before now, and their messaging has created significant reason to doubt that they have a viable fix developed even today, a month after the announcement. I sincerely hope they do and it's just their communications that have broken down.

I also hope that they quickly bring somebody who knows how to manage a situation like this on board to give us some straight answers on the basic questions and some timelines that we can count on, regardless of how long those may be.

[LTUME1978]

Folks,

I was just relaying information that I got from SA. I think this may have been the first incident that they got a report on and decided to react rather just inspect and return the pistol. I wish I knew more about the foreign object that was in the pistol and where it was found. Foreign objects can make their way into any firearm so I am hoping there is more to this than we know and agree that it would nice if they shared the details (I also realize that lawyers may not let them disclose any additional information). I do have to wonder if this recall is the results of an overzealous lawyer that is not being tempered by some sound engineering judgement?

Re the doubles, do you think those could be a result of someone trying to do a trigger job that went south? I tried to improve the trigger on a Ruger 22 semi auto pistol 30 years ago. It doubled every time I tried to fire it with the case failing on the second shot. I sent it back to Ruger, they replaced the parts and returned the pistol with a note saying "don't do that again". There was no recall because this event was the result of operator error, not a design flaw (and this was before the lawyers took control of everything).

We had our club IDPA match yesterday. One of the shooters had a Glock 9mm go off when the slide closed following a magazine change. He was being videoed at the time and it was very clear that his finger was off the trigger (and out of the guard) and the trigger was in the rear position (did not return forward when he took his finger off the trigger). The pistol only fired one shot (fortunately into the berm) and then functioned correctly the rest of the stage. I don't know any more about this event but have watched the video a number of times to make sure what happened. Does anyone think Glock will initiate a recall of all their pistols over this event?

Look forward to getting this one in the rear view mirror.

[The Annoyed Man]

I wonder what this modification means:

[Excaliber]

I wonder what this modification means:

XDS-repair-confirmation.jpg

I suspect it's just an easily seen mark that indicates the gun has been repaired. I can't imagine how a roll pin in that location could have any functional purpose.

[LTUME1978]

I asked about the roll pin as well as I DO NOT want that in a thin piece of plastic. My concern is that it could come out or break the grip safety and jamb things up, making the pistol inoperable. I expressed that this is a self defense pistol, not a match pistol and it must be completely reliable. The person I talked to assured me that they have considered movement of the roll pin and that it won't come loose. They also indicated that it had an actual function (Seemed to indicate that it connected or held two parts together but I can't imagine what it could be since the grip safety is so thin already. I could not get any additional information). I look forward to their update next Friday on their web site. If it does not have anything of substance in it, I will call them again.

[The Annoyed Man]

I wonder what this modification means:

XDS-repair-confirmation.jpg

I suspect it's just an easily seen mark that indicates the gun has been repaired. I can't imagine how a roll pin in that location could have any functional purpose.

It would seem to me to be far easier, less costly, and and less likely to weaken the structural integrity of the part if they just struck a mark on the side or edge of the grip safety. Using a roll pin for that purpose doesn't make sense to me..........but I've been wrong before.

I asked about the roll pin as well as I DO NOT want that in a thin piece of plastic. My concern is that it could come out or break the grip safety and jamb things up, making the pistol inoperable. I expressed that this is a self defense pistol, not a match pistol and it must be completely reliable. The person I talked to assured me that they have considered movement of the roll pin and that it won't come loose. They also indicated that it had an actual function (Seemed to indicate that it connected or held two parts together but I can't imagine what it could be since the grip safety is so thin already. I could not get any additional information). I look forward to their update next Friday on their web site. If it does not have anything of substance in it, I will call them again.

The grip safety is made of plastic? It didn't feel like plastic to me, but I was also assuming it was metallic.

[OrangeAnimal]

Yes the grip safety is metal.

After all this reading I am very tempted to completely take mine apart. It shouldn't be too hard to do either. I am waiting to see what comes about on Friday. We are supposed to get some type of update hopefully.

[joshv53]

I was in the market for an xds 45 before the recall occurred. Can I still order a new one or has production also been shut down? Also it says a certain set of serial numbers were affected. Was it essentially ever xds ever made or just newer or older productions?

[mr surveyor]

I was in the market for an xds 45 before the recall occurred. Can I still order a new one or has production also been shut down? Also it says a certain set of serial numbers were affected. Was it essentially ever xds ever made or just newer or older productions?

I believe you will find that it's every XDs.

There are still XDs pistols on the shelves of a few shops that I know of. The shop owners have money invested in them, and SA isn't going to give them a refund anymore than they are going to give me a refund until they (SA) cry uncle over the current "issue" (whether it's truly warranted or not). I'm not even going to speculate on the final outcome. If they decide they have a fix for it, that's fine ... I was looking for a "non-safety lever", slim .45 acp when I bought the XDs. For me, it was between the XDs and the Kahr (I do like my Kahr pistols), but the C series Kahr 45's seem to be plagued with magazine issues that I just didn't want to spend the time to work out. If SA does give it up and offers a refund, I'll put half the money into doing some refurb work on my Kimber and the other half on a good airgun (the last thing on my current bucket list).

I'm not in a bind, and am patient enough to give them a couple of months to come up with a reasonable solution.


JD

[NordicTexan]

This testing is nearing completion and we will post any new updates as soon as we have identified a final upgrade solution. We will post our next update no later than Friday, October 4, and we will communicate immediately if a final solution is identified prior to that date.

Well, as of now, there isn't an update on the springfield XDS site. Since they said they would update sooner if they found a solution, I would suspect they haven't yet found one. I would also suspect that they won't update the web page until the end of the day. That way customer service can go home before they are overwhelmed with questions.

Hopefully I am wrong and they are just trying to wordcraft the good news...........

[Teamless]

That way customer service can go home before they are overwhelmed with questions.

I had exactly the same thought, as I have been watching their site all day as well.

I have even emailed them, TWICE.
Not even an autoresponder.... Grrrrrrrr