I bought a number of my revolvers in auction lots of 5 or so guns sight unseen and out of all I got I finally realized one of them was a pig. I've never really used the 6" 686-5 that I've got some years back and I broke it out having decided to use it in future ICORE matches. Well guess what? it has a bulge in the barrel. Barely perceptible but one near the muzzle. How did I know? All the tumbling bullets tearing up the targets at 10 yds. That and of course the 24" group I was shooting told me something was wrong (same ammo different gun no problem).
My favorite revolver gunsmith in ATL just quit his job so I decided to just have SW handle it. Not expecting warranty work, just using them to do the barrel replacement. Also they'd have access to replacement barrels were as Cylinder and Slide or other smiths might take a while to locate a new barrel. I called last Friday. The CSR answered after just a couple of rings. Explained what I wanted to do and she emailed me a FedEx shipping label. I took it to the FedEx center on Saturday and it was delivered to S&W on Monday. SO FAR SO GOOD.
Today I got another, donotreply email with a new shipping label from S&W. I'm willing to bet they've mislaid my gun at the SW mail room. It hasn't been scanned in the service system. It has a return id barcode on the label. Now granted, since they say box it so that it doesn't say or look like a gun, I sent it in a TIVO recorder box. Maybe their IT department has it. I'll give them a couple more days then I'll call.