ditching the XDs45, looking at the Sig Carry Nightmare

[The Annoyed Man]

TAM,
You always post so eloquently, but (for me and I think many others) the issue is not that they had a recall.
Heck if they didn't have a recall ever, they just aren't trying hard enough to innovate.

My issues is that they came out, saying how to tell when the weapon was fixed, and saying it should be about 30 days.
My XDS has been in there hands going on 3 weeks now and as of yet, they are not sure of what the fix is, and once they do, was mine the first to arrive (doubtful), was it the 5,000th? could be, and how long will it take to fix 5,000 of them?

Teamless, I get your point, and yes, it could have be handled in a less clumsy manner. In "The Other XDS Recall" thread, someone recently posted a reply from the CEO of SA, responding to the criticism about turnaround time. His answer was essentially: "We know this has inconvenienced customers, but at the time, we really did expect a 30 day turnaround. At this time, we have come up with a promising fix and we are testing to destruction to make sure that it will be the right thing to do to our customer guns."

So, it doesn't sound to me like they are being deliberate jackwagons. I think that they thought they had a fix, and they thought it would take 30 days to turn the guns around, and then somebody did some more testing and said "Nope! This ain't gonna work. Back to the drawing board." And they had to try something else.

Consider the liability issue too...... I am far from the only XDS owner who is withholding sending his gun back until this Polish fire drill is sorted out. If they had publicly said, "your gun's no good. Don't carry it. Just hang onto it until we tell you to send it back in," a LOT of people would have held onto their guns and not sent them in, and then SA would be risking that some (or all) of those guns still out there were ticking liability time-bombs. So somewhere in there they had to balance the need to be risk-averse to protect the business, with the need to look after their customers' repairs and interests.

In hindsight, could some things have been managed better? Yes, probably. On the other hand, it could also have been managed worse. Personally, I think the XDS, in either caliber, is destined to be a classic. It is a great little gun. One thing is for certain, given that the .45s were prone to this issue (and presumably the 9mm's too), it's a darn good thing that they haven't released the harder kicking .40 S&W version yet, without the "upgrade" included.

[bagman45]

TAM, another well-considered response. At the same time, I'm pretty sure you have just fielded the core reason for their approach; liability. Once they acknowledged to ANYONE that there "might" be a problem with this model, they were immediately on the hook for anything that actually did go wrong. It's called a "voluntary" recall for PR (and legal) reasons, but they HAD to try to get them off the street as quickly as possible, while notifying EVERYONE that it was a potentially unsafe product, to be used at each person's own risk.

I'm certain that as soon as they actually confirmed that the problem MIGHT occur, they started working overtime to find a fix, and having a bit of experience in fixing issues in the past gave their (as it turns out, overly-optimistic) estimate of turn-around time. While they've really not handled this well from a communication standpoint, you can see that they are learning. There are now more frequent updates, and frankly, more honesty about their struggles to come up with a "real" fix. Wish our government were as responsive and transparent OH, SORRY, DIFFERENT TOPIC

Be clear folks, this does not make them bad people. It's proven to be a good, solid company, that has a history of standing behind its products, and as TAM said; EVERY COMPANY has "teething pains" with new models (just like 1st model year cars....).

At any rate, I'm quite confident that they will get this figured out, at which time, I'll send mine in....;) If they don't get it figured out, I'm equally confident they will make it right with refunds and credits toward other products to make their customers "whole". If they don't, they'll deserve what they get, but I sure hope they do, as it's a REALLY cool little gun!!