I think the issue is more the specific 66 pieces of brass rather than honoring their warranty, why not just send back a pack of 100 with the 66 in it in exchange for a new 100 pack?
My guess is that their system probably has no way for them to process 0.66 of a product, they either deal with the whole product or they can issue a refund for the difference. While it may be simple for you to pick out the 66 bad cases it would be a logistics nightmare to try and incorporate that into their system.
I would also surmise that they take the defective product, go back to the manufacturer for a replacement and the manufacturer won't accept partial replacements of half empty bags of brass. Winchester doesn't want to deal with odd numbered replacements from all their different vendors, if they had the man power to do that they would have better QC in the first place.
Look at it this way say you buy a Remington 700 from a gun shop, it's advertised as sub MOA but you can't get less than 4" groups due to the barrel having major machining marks. Would you go back to the gun shop and demand they take the barrel off another 700 to put on the one you bought? No you would go to Remington because they advertised it as a sub MOA rifle and it did not perform as advertised due to a lack of QC.
While the example is obviously more extreme than a bag of brass from a logistics standpoint it is the same, 1/3 of the purchased product is defective so rather than replacing the entire thing you expect the middle man to only replace the defective part. That is simply not how the business works.
As for Midway not selling it, there is 41 reviews averaging 3 stars and going back 8 years. I would imagine they have sold thousands of packs in 8 years and it only has a handful of bad reviews, as far as they are concerned most people have no issues with it. If people stop buying it then they will stop selling it.
Personally I would have sent all of it back and purchased another brand as that many defective cases is a sign of bad QC and I would not want to deal with that every time I bought brass.
I bought two boxes of Winchester 300 WM ammo 7 years ago and was not a fan of the quality so I refused to use it for reloading. Few years later I bought a bag of .458 WM brass and the case mouths were 1/16" difference in length from one side to the other, after that I vowed to never buy winchester brass again.
Good discussion. Thanks for your input.
Your first question is easy to answer. Why not just send back the bag and get a new bag? Two quick reasons. I had already reloaded most of the bag before discovering the defective ones. So, I couldn't send it back as it came to me. Secondly, I bought four bags, and a lot of defective brass was found in each bag. But a lot of good brass was found in each bag as well. So, let's play it out as you suggested. If I were to put all the good and defective brass back into the bags, and send them back, and they sent me four more bags, there is almost no chance at all that the replacement bags they would send me would have 100% good brass. The percentage of defective brass was averaging 33%, and each bag had a large number of defective pieces. So, we would be hung in an endless loop of me sending back four bags, them sending me four new bags, me finding defective brass, me sending the bags back to them, and them sending me four new bags, each with more defective brass... forever. Even they agreed that engaging in this endless failure loop would be silly. What I did was send them back the defective brass, in the original containers, so they could look at the lot numbers and take appropriate action from their end regarding Winchester. Under the law, I wasn't obligated to send back the brass at all to take advantage of their warranty. But I wanted to show good faith on my end. I went the extra mile.
Of course, MWUSA should be sending back some or all the bags of Winchester 300 WM brass in their warehouse to Winchester for either a replacement or refund. That is something internal to MWUSA. But what MWUSA decides to do with Winchester doesn't impact what MWUSA should be doing with me. I would rather they not continue to send out defective brass, but it's their business decision, not mine. All I wanted from the beginning was to get what I paid for - 200 rounds of good Winchester 300 WM brass. What I got was 66 rounds short of what I paid for, and an amazing amount of hassle when I asked them to do what they promised they would - send replacements.
I don't think your example of me purchasing a rifle (made up of lots of individual, different parts) and then finding a defective barrel, and then asking for a new barrel, is really the best analogy. It doesn't really fit. Of course a defective piece of a rifle might just make an exchange of the entire rifle the smart move.
But let me change the analogy, and it will fit, and even make more sense. Let's say that I am a private maker of rifles. I buy 200 barrels specifically for a Rem 700 action, because I need barrels. When I open the 4 shipping crates, I find that 66 of those barrels are badly bent and unusable, but the remaining 134 are just fine. Let's also say that the seller's warranty is that these barrels are all high-quality, good barrels, and if they aren't, I can either return them for refund, or exchange for good ones. The law says that since the seller knew of the use to which I intended to put those barrels (building rifles), there is an implied warranty that
all of those barrels are fit for the intended use. But 66 barrels are unfit to be used to build rifles. The law also says that the seller's express warranty (these are all good high-quality barrels) should be honored as written, and if it says I can return any defective item for a replacement, then that is what must happen to honor the warranty. With this analogy, it would be silly to stop my rifle-making process by depriving myself of the 134 good barrels just because I had 66 unusable ones. I can use the 134 good ones, and then demand the seller replace the defective ones. I don't need to reject the entire lot to take advantage of the warranty. And in fact, the law agrees with me.
You say that the "middle man" shouldn't be held responsible to fulfill his own warranties because he's been given bad product from the manufacturer, because that's "not how the business works". Well, I must respectfully disagree. The Uniform Commercial Code, together with the law on express warranties made by either manufacturers , or "middle men", says that this is
precisely how the business must work. Whether it does actually work like that or not determines whether the law is violated or not. Pretty simple.
You seem to suggest that a difficulty in logistics in assuring that Winchester is turning-out a uniformly acceptable product, or MWUSA's logistical requirement for replacing a number of pieces of defective products should be a factor in whether MWUSA should honor their express and implied warranties. I would be interested in learning why you believe that.
I find nothing in the UCC which excuses honoring a warranty because it's difficult, or because a supplier gave a bad product. The consumer isn't supposed to be punished for the perceived difficulty of compliance with a warranty by the maker of that warranty. The relative logistical costs of honoring an express or implied warranty by the company are the kinds of business decisions that need to be made by the maker of the warranty in their offices, before they make that warranty. Once they have chosen the specific language expressing the warranties, then it is enforceable as written. The logistical difficulties behind the scenes certainly shouldn't be a topic of discussion with the consumer.
You indicate you have looked at the reviews. The reviews of the brass on MWUSA's site serve as notice to MWUSA that the brass they were selling was most likely to be defective, in large part. If you will look at the dates of the reviews more closely, you will see that virtually all of them have been bad in the last many months. Three stars is probably a false rating, given recent history. Those reviews alerted me to the fact that I was not alone in my experience, and made me wonder why MWUSA hadn't already taken decisive action to stop further sales of that brass. I believe they should never have offered that brass for sale once they had been given notice that the bags of brass had a large percentage of defective and unusable pieces.
And you know that one review probably represents a much larger number of unreported problems. A better metric of delivery of defective brass might be the number of returns - which are not reported on their website. Then again, even that might be very low. There are likely a number of people who have just decided privately to toss the bad brass and go get new brass without relying on the warranty, making a complaint, or in any way notifying the company. And those people probably have decided to seek their brass elsewhere. I have no doubt but that MWUSA might have already lost much more in repeat sales than the cost of taking decisive action to stop the shipment of defective brass, and then promptly honoring their warranties.
Where did you get your defective Winchester brass? What did you do about it?
Thanks