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Defective Winchester brass - 300WM

11Bravo18Alpha

Private
Minuteman
Mar 22, 2018
20
4
I bought 200 Winchester cases (in the bags), and of those, 66 were defective. There were folds and crimps in the shoulder-neck area. Some had only one pinch, others had many. Anyone else seen this? What can I do to get these replaced?
 

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That is ugly. Definitely get their CS on the horn
 
Trash them or fire form them. usually a sign of too much lube when they were resized. they can be saved, but will you ever trust them.
 
This has been a long known issue with WInchester brass. Get ahold of CS - they should replace it for you.
 
If there were only dents in the shoulder, or case wall, this would be over. I don't mind using brass which is slightly dented due to over-lube. But that isn't what we are dealing with here.

I don't believe fireforming would work with necks and shoulders which are so severely deformed or folded-over. The neck on some of these looks pleated. Sometimes there is one fold, sometimes several. I don't think fire-forming of brass that is this badly deformed will do anything but weaken it to an unacceptable degree. If I did get a bullet into that neck, I think the resulting diameter would be too large for the cartridge to chamber properly. I'm not going to even try. It's not worth the risk of my weapon, or my body.

I bought the brass from MidwayUSA, and I am relying on their express and implied warranties to remedy the problem. Their warranty says I can return any defective items for either a replacement or a refund. The Uniform Commercial Code implied warranty of fitness for particular purpose provides for the same remedy. I selected replacement. I made my election of that remedy clear from the outset. I have never varied from that position, although I gave them the option of replacing the defective cases with Hornaday or Remington brass, if they wished.

I have been going round-and-round with them on this. I did return all 66 defective cases to them, although the law says I can keep them until they give me replacements which are good. I am showing good faith. They can look for themselves to see the defects. There is now no excuse for replacing the defective brass.

In the last week, I have been exchanging emails. They have now passed me through three successive customer service people, and so far none has been willing to give me a piece-for-piece replacement, as I have requested, and as their warranty says is an option I could choose.

They have told me that they don't keep loose lots of brass from which they can make such a replacement. I suggested to them that the inconvenience on their end of complying with their warranty is not my concern, but I expect them to send me 66 replacement cases which are good, as their warranty said I could elect. Their warranty doesn't have a disclaimer that says, "Unless we'd just rather not honor what we said we would do, because we find it inconvenient."

I have showed them their own warranty. I have directed their attention to the really bad reviews of this brass on their own website, some going back 5 years. I have suggested that they cannot be ignorant about this problem. It seems clear that they were knowingly sending out defective brass to people like me. I have further suggested that they should stop selling this brass immediately (since it might be a safety issue), and start tearing-open a few bags of Winchester brass themselves to see just how pervasive this problem is. Then they should send the whole lot back to Winchester demanding replacement with good brass. I have cited to them the proper sections of the Uniform Commercial Code which govern all this, to help them along. I told them that during this internal quality-check process, they could sort-out 66 pieces of good brass and send those to me. Everybody wins.

So far, all I have gotten is incremental assistance. One fellow said he could send me another bag of Winchester brass, and refund the pro-rata price of the additional 16. I told him that would be silly, since the new bag of Winchester brass would likely contain just as many defective cases as all the others did, and we'd be hung in an endless loop of delivery, rejection, delivery, rejection, and so on.

The last person contacted me telling they would give me a pro-rata refund of all 66 pieces, which is NOT what I have chosen as my remedy under their warranty. I have written back to them telling them that I never asked for a refund. I don't want a refund. I want replacement, which is what I am allowed to elect. And I shouldn't be forced to go out and spend my time and probably more money buying replacement brass when their own warranty gives me the right to get replacements for the defective pieces.

I don't know what it will take to get the attention of someone there who actually believes that customer satisfaction is their 1st priority, as their slogan suggests. Maybe my next step will be to print-out all the materials I have gathered, together with all the unsatisfactory communications with MidwayUSA's people, and send that all in a packet directly to Larry Potterfield. Maybe he can top-drive a solution here. If it were my company, I could fix this in a heartbeat, and some people in the customer service department would be re-trained on the concept of "customer service".

I am a long-time customer, and have spent a lot of money at MidwayUSA. I always shop their site for whatever reloading supplies I need. I don't think the people I have been corresponding with so far understand the long-term cost of ticking-off even one single customer. Why someone there hasn't already torn open a few bags of Winchester brass, and sent me by hurry-up delivery 66 pieces of good brass demonstrates how out-of-touch those in their customer satisfaction department really are with the concept of "customer satisfaction".

I'm not ok with being jerked-around over all this much longer. MidwayUSA needs to honor its warranty, as written. I will keep you posted.
 

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while i do feel for you...5 years of bad reviews and you didn't just get better brass in the first place?

i've never seen or experienced this type of issue with midway before though. always great CS i'd have expected 100 cases the next day
 
while i do feel for you...5 years of bad reviews and you didn't just get better brass in the first place?

i've never seen or experienced this type of issue with midway before though. always great CS i'd have expected 100 cases the next day

b6graham, Winchester brass (when made right) is very good brass. It has a larger case capacity than almost all others, and it is affordable.

I have bought lots of Winchester 308 brass, from a couple of sources (mostly from MWUSA), and never had a single complaint. So, I expected that 300 WM brass coming from MWUSA would be of high quality too. It wasn't, and I didn't see the reviews until I started having problems with MWUSA. Then I looked on the internet, and even on MWUSA's own website, and found LOTS of defects with Winchester 300 WM brass identical to those I experienced, going back a while. The bottom line is that MWUSA was informed through reviews on its own website multiple times recently about the high numbers of defective brass in every bag. In spite of that, MWUSA was sending out more of it to consumers like me, with a statement that it was of high quality. That's a false promise.

I figured that if MWUSA is selling it, it is good stuff, right? Their commitment to quality on their website, and other advertising, made me feel I could trust them. Winchester has known about this problem for years. MWUSA has known about this problem for many months. Why MWUSA continues to buy (and sell) any more 300 WM brass from Winchester after being informed about this issue is beyond me. The law doesn't require me to do quality control checking before purchasing what MWUSA advertises as good brass. It's the job of MWUSA to do that quality checking before selling it to me. That's the law.

Even after all the contacts with me over this issue spanning many days, MWUSA is still selling the Winchester 300 WM brass as if it's all high quality. They should have pulled it off the racks, and taken down the internet advertising immediately, in my view.

You are certainly right on the expectations. If I were running MWUSA, I would have sent a couple of 50-count bags out next-day with a letter of apology, and hoped there were more than 66 good cases in those bags. That would have not only been great customer service, restoring my faith in MWUSA, but would have also satisfied their express and implied warranty obligations under the law.

I spoke to one of their customer service people by phone for a half-hour yesterday morning, and even after explaining to her that all I wanted was a replacement of the defective brass, like the warranty said I could have, she told me in no uncertain terms that they were not going to do that. She actually told me that MWUSA "couldn't" do that. She said the only two options available to me are that I could only get a refund, or I could apply the refund credit toward buying more brass from them. She steadfastly refused to simply send me 66 good cases for the 66 defective ones that I have already returned to them.

I reacted with amazement to her "couldn't" statement. She said it was impossible to simply ship-out bulk brass in that odd quantity. I was shocked, and told her that I had just done precisely that when I sent the 66 defective cases back to MWUSA. I told her it was most certainly possible, but MWUSA just was refusing to do it because they found it inconvenient. She did confirm that MWUSA had in their warehouse plenty of bags of 300 WM brass and so it would be possible to tear open a few bags of Winchester brass, and send me 66 good pieces of brass. I told her it would be wise for MWUSA to do precisely that with this particular batch of Winchester brass, as part of their own internal quality control check. During that check, there would be some good cases discovered. When those get to 66, just ship them to me. Simple. She just kept insisting that doing so was not something MWUSA was going to do.

In the end, she said she would charge my card, and send me a box of 50 Hornaday cases, and apply a pro-rata credit to my card for the other 16 cases. I told her we weren't done yet. We still have 16 bad cases to resolve. I asked, why do I have to spend my own time and money, to go out and replace the defective cases, at a likely higher cost, to satisfy their warranty? I told her the law says that if MWUSA says they will replace defective items in their warranty, then MWUSA needs to do precisely that, and not force the customer into another option that he did not select. I told her the law doesn't say that MWUSA should honor its warranty unless it's inconvenient to do so. The warranty requires replacement of defective items, and that is all I have ever asked for since day one. She refused to even acknowledge the sense in all that.

I have kept records of this entire mess, and I guess my next step is to put together a packet of materials and send it all to Larry Potterfield personally, and tell him that the people in his customer service department are not honoring the MWUSA warranty. I have been a loyal customer of MWUSA for years, and have purchased a lot of stuff from them. But this whole episode has really shaken my confidence in their integrity and honesty. I no longer believe that customer satisfaction is their number 1 priority.

I will keep you posted of further developments.
 
Not yet. I saw that they haven't been good about honoring warranties. I elected to go with the one I trusted most, MWUSA.
 
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.
 
I had exactly the same issue with the last 100 I bought. I called Winchester CS & after jumping through a hoop or 2 I returned the 27 pieces & got a check for $42 a couple weeks later.
Even with that I'm done with Winchester. Their primers flame cut my bolt face & after sending in the 10 they asked for they told me there wasn't anything wrong with them. They offered to test more but at my expense even after changing lots cured it.
I'll use up what I have & switch to another manufacturer. Already switched to CCI primers.
 
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
 
I don't remember where I got the brass, it was a small mom & pop shop online that happened to have the .458 WM brass as all the major retailers were out at the time (late 2014). I kept it with the intention of turning into 458x2" American when I eventually get around to setting up a big bore subsonic rifle. Worse case I trim it straight and it should work well enough although a little short. The .300 WM factory ammo brass has odd crimps on the case mouth and would have required trimming back to 2.45" to get rid of them.

While we treat the brass as individual pieces to Midway each bag of 50 is one unit. The warranty is set up to replace on a unit for unit basis. I am in no way saying that they should not honor their warranty as they absolutely should but in this case Midways warranty is on the bag of 50 not the individual pieces of brass. To fufil their warranty they would need to replace the bag with a new non defective bag. That is where the issue lies with Winchester, their warranty is on the individual brass cases as they are the manufacturer, since they continue to put out defective products in every single bag I see the fault lying with Winchester rather than Midway.

Personally if I was Midway I would have stopped selling Winchester brass entirely once the lack of quality became apparent. However I do not know the relationship between them, Midway could be required to sell the brass as part of their contract and dealing with the handful of reloaders pissed off at the lack of quality of their brass is the price they pay for getting to sell the far more lucrative Winchester Ammo.
 
I’ve placed many orders with midway over the years and finally this year had my first issue. The box got roughed up during shipping and a couple plastic ammo boxes were crushed along with about half a 500 ct box of reloading bullets were loose inside the box and escaped out the bottom. I called them... they shipped the replacement ammo boxes and 300 bullets which was about 30 more than were missing. I sat on hold for a while but was totally satisfied with the way their customer service handled it.
 
I had an issue identical to yours with win 223 brass years ago but it was only 3 or 4 pieces out of 100 count bag. I have never encountered the same issue with any other brand of brass regardless of price. The only brass I use now for 300WM is Nosler or Norma, pretty sure Norma makes both. I bought 100 pieces of Hornady as well to try and wasn't impressed at all with its consistency or weight variances.
Have allways wished Lapua would come out with 300WM brass but I'm sure I'm way down on that wish list.
 
For belted mag brass I use Norma or Nosler. Peterson made some for a minute or two but I haven't been able to find any. I used some Winchester brass to make a load because that's what my father had for his rifle, and I was not impressed.
 
but in this case Midways warranty is on the bag of 50 not the individual pieces of brass. To fufil their warranty they would need to replace the bag with a new non defective bag.

CMP, Where did you get this information on their warranty? Their site doesn't say that the warranty is on a bag-full, but in fact says "item". it doesn't say "bag of items", so maybe you are seeing something I'm not.

Thanks.
 
I’ve placed many orders with midway over the years and finally this year had my first issue. The box got roughed up during shipping and a couple plastic ammo boxes were crushed along with about half a 500 ct box of reloading bullets were loose inside the box and escaped out the bottom. I called them... they shipped the replacement ammo boxes and 300 bullets which was about 30 more than were missing. I sat on hold for a while but was totally satisfied with the way their customer service handled it.

This is the only time I can recall having some trouble with them. And it was so simple to fix. If they had done for me what they did for you, we would be so done now...
 
Update -

I got the replacements for the first 50 of the defective cases in the mail today from MWUSA. They said they would send me 50 replacement Hornaday pieces for the defective Winchester pieces, and they did. I expected to get the standard fancy plastic box that all the Hornaday brass comes in, and you see on the shelves at Cabellas, and elsewhere.

But there must have been a miracle! (sorry for the sarcasm, but this is RICH).

The lady on the phone at MWUSA said that they absolutely don't have any bulk brass at all that they could put in a box to send to me to replace the 66 defective pieces. But when I opened the shipping envelope, what did I see? A small cardboard box with MidwayUSA logos all over it, and inside I found 50 pieces of Hornaday brass... BULK brass. And the card they put inside the box talked about how buying bulk brass is a better deal, and so on. That pre-printed card is familiar to me. I have found it in all the other bulk brass I have bought from MWUSA in the past. So, it seems that if they are selling enough bulk brass to have a stack of pre-printed cards to put in each box, and since I just got 50 pieces of Hornaday 300 WM bulk brass in a MWUSA box with that little card, then something is really weird at MWUSA.

You see, what was declared to me by their representative as totally impossible for MWUSA to do a few days ago, is somehow precisely what they just did for 50 of the 66 defective pieces of brass. So, it seems to me that somewhere they actually do have some bulk brass that they are putting into MidwayUSA boxes to send out to customers.

This seems to be pretty good evidence that they most certainly could have shipped me 66 pieces of replacement brass (I told them they could send me Winchester, Remington or Hornaday, their choice) on the first day I asked for the replacement.

Can this get any more silly?
 
Hopefully for your sanity the silliness has ended.
Glad to hear they made it right for you even though it was irritating.
I have ordered alot from MWUSA over the years but have never had the need to deal with CS as they have allways delivered without any issues.
 
Hopefully for your sanity the silliness has ended.
Glad to hear they made it right for you even though it was irritating.
I have ordered alot from MWUSA over the years but have never had the need to deal with CS as they have allways delivered without any issues.

XLR, I wish. I am still short 16 pieces of replacement brass. They sent me 50 replacements for the 66 defective units. It's "almost right" now.

Crazy, right?
 
I will say no more, don't have room to put my other foot in mouth ;)
XLR -

No foot in mouth at all. Your heart was right, hoping that they had made it right with me by sending 50. I do thank you for the good wishes, though.
 
Wanted to add my Win brass experiences. I was getting ready for a prairie dog trip and needed a couple hundred pieces of 22-250. This was a few years ago and brass was still really hard to find (still is in certain calibers). Anyway, Cabelas had Win brass in bags of 100. I ordered 3 bags. I had several pieces of brass that looked like the original photo and were totally unusable. Several more were improperly formed and split upon the first firing.

When I got back from my trip I contacted Winchester directly. They were actually very helpful. I wanted to let them know about my experience to (hopefully) improve their quality control. I didn't ask for anything but they offered to send me a shipping label and I wound up sending back the defective cases, which was about 20 out of the original 300. I also returned the original Win bag with the lot number on it. About 2 weeks later I received a check for approx $55.

I have never had this type of deformed case problem with any other brand. I think it's a QC issue.

Will I buy Win brass again? Pretty much only as a last resort. Too many other options now that are much higher quality. For my Creedmoor it's Lapua and Starline,

Just be aware what you may run into if you try to save a few $'s with bulk Win brass.