I was told that by Maria after I emailed the pictures to Eric. Eric told her to tell me that as the reason they would not replace the barrel. I was told if the gun functions, why would I care.
I asked to talk to Eric and he did not want to talk to me.
This pistol did not function. The second one is 100% reliable and the barrel looks nearly the same. It also has made this pistol impossible to sell as I believe one needs to disclose any defects when selling a firearm.
That is why I do not believe every thing that comes from the factory.
I talked to Eric about this. He said there was a period of time that their barrels were not being produced to the quality they would have liked, but the barrels were well within acceptable tolerances in the industry and that was all the stock they had. Eric says the barrel quality was comparable to his personal Colt Commander, in his opinion. Part of the problem with producing a gun like the R-9 is finding a barrel supplier that will produce such limited quantities of barrels. They struggled with parts issues and suppliers from time to time.
There was time when company policy was that Eric was not speaking to customers and information was going through Maria. Eric says he never refused to talk to a customer when he was available and permitted to do so by company policy.
Regardless, I guess all of this is ancient history at this point. Barrells will be coming from a different source, customer service will be handled by a much larger company, and speaking to one of the owners of the company won't even be a possiblity...
