A few months ago I bought a brand new Savage B22 Precision to use at benchrest competition. Great gun with an excellent adjustable solid aluminum billet chassis, great trigger and reputation for excellent accuracy. First trip to the range it shot good but not great, had more flyers than I expected but chalked it up to having to find ammo it liked. Next range trip was about the same with 3 other types of ammo. Next trip it started shooting not quite as good as the first few trips and had a few failures to extract. Long story short after trying over a dozen brands of ammo and 3 different scopes it was now having as many flyers as good shots. It didn't matter if I used cheap bulk pack ammo or $20+ match grade ammo. It also was not extracting almost every round. Tried cleaning many times, very thorough inspection and saw nothing. Finally decided to send it back to Savage. I called them before shipping and was told get it to them UPS, on my dime, or to be more accurate on my $71.00. They said it would be there for up to 3 weeks which was not bad, having no other choice I sent it in.
After about 2.5 weeks I called to see the progress and was told they had been closed the full week of July 4th so they considered it only there 1.5 weeks. Ok, I can see that so maybe I would be without it for 4 weeks instead of 3, no problem. 4 weeks and 3 days after they received it, I called again. Now was told it had gone to a gunsmith the day before and was still being worked on. I waited another week without hearing a word from Savage. Called today (5 weeks and 4 days after they received it) and was told the gunsmith had determined the rifle was not repairable so they were going to send me a brand new one. The bad news is they do not have any at the Massachusetts factory since the "Precision" model is made in Canada and they don't know when they will get one to send me.
What could make a brand new rifle that had absolutely no damage become not repairable by the factory after less than 1,000 rounds through it? Seems to me if it had a bad receiver that could be replaced, same with barrel, bolt or anything else. Sounds strange to me. Also aggravating they can't even tell me when I'll see a new one and who knows if the new one will shoot properly. I would rather have had one gone through by a qualified gunsmith and made to shoot right than taking a crap shoot on another one off the assembly line.
Before I bought this gun I did lots of research and really had a hard time choosing between this and a CZ. Only problem with the CZ was to get one with a precision chassis was many hundreds more. Could get one with a basic stock for a similar price but I wanted an adjustable chassis style of gun. I also preferred buying from an American company, I knew the chassis was made by MDT in Canada but thought the gun was American made. I read many good things about accuracy on both so went with the one from the American company and that had the chassis I liked. If I had it to do over I would have gone with the CZ...
Sorry for the long post but just had to vent.
After about 2.5 weeks I called to see the progress and was told they had been closed the full week of July 4th so they considered it only there 1.5 weeks. Ok, I can see that so maybe I would be without it for 4 weeks instead of 3, no problem. 4 weeks and 3 days after they received it, I called again. Now was told it had gone to a gunsmith the day before and was still being worked on. I waited another week without hearing a word from Savage. Called today (5 weeks and 4 days after they received it) and was told the gunsmith had determined the rifle was not repairable so they were going to send me a brand new one. The bad news is they do not have any at the Massachusetts factory since the "Precision" model is made in Canada and they don't know when they will get one to send me.
What could make a brand new rifle that had absolutely no damage become not repairable by the factory after less than 1,000 rounds through it? Seems to me if it had a bad receiver that could be replaced, same with barrel, bolt or anything else. Sounds strange to me. Also aggravating they can't even tell me when I'll see a new one and who knows if the new one will shoot properly. I would rather have had one gone through by a qualified gunsmith and made to shoot right than taking a crap shoot on another one off the assembly line.
Before I bought this gun I did lots of research and really had a hard time choosing between this and a CZ. Only problem with the CZ was to get one with a precision chassis was many hundreds more. Could get one with a basic stock for a similar price but I wanted an adjustable chassis style of gun. I also preferred buying from an American company, I knew the chassis was made by MDT in Canada but thought the gun was American made. I read many good things about accuracy on both so went with the one from the American company and that had the chassis I liked. If I had it to do over I would have gone with the CZ...
Sorry for the long post but just had to vent.
