Sharing a recent experience with Colt's Customer Service.

BLUF: It was a relatively pleasant and painless experience.  Being a large corporate company that deals with a variety of consumer base, which I assumed to include large military and LE contracts, I wasn't expecting much from Colt's CS. 

I bought a Colt OEM2 a few years ago and finally got around to buying the parts to complete the gun late last year.  Once the gun was completed (with the generous help of a good friend), I was disappointed when I was not able to zero the irons at 50 yards.  The windage was all the way to the right and I was still shooting left about 2" at 50 yards.  The barrel did appear to be visually off to one side with the handguard installed (BCM KMN 13").  I was really disappointed as I was really looking forward to this Colt rifle, my first complete Colt rifle.  After some testing, it ruled out everything except for the barrel.  I mean I didn't think I was that bad of a shooter.  Haha.  After testing, it was suspected the barrel to barrel extension or the barrel extension itself was out of spec/tolerance.  So 

I really wanted this gun for a carbine class, so ended up replacing the OEM 16" barrel with a 14.5" Colt barrel.  Again, all with the generous help of a good friend.  Anyways, that combination shot well and further confirmation that something was up with the original barrel.  Contacted Colt and after a bunch of back and forth with the CS rep and consultation with folks that were in the repair shop, I got an RMA to send the barrel back for inspection.  Since the barrel was pulled from the OEM setup, I was somewhat concerned that Colt would say that this wasn't eligible for warranty work since it had been altered from the original state.  The CS rep eventually cleared things with the shop folks and got the barrel sent back. 

I was expecting the barrel to be gone at least 2-3 months and no guarantee that Colt would do anything.  So I was surprised when I receive a package from CT last week.  When I opened the box, there was a barrel with an invoice that just reported the issue as "Customer reported unable to zero at 50 yards" and a note "Replace with new barrel".  I don't think they even tested the barrel, which I assumed they would put in an upper and test fire.  Total turn around time was about 4, maybe 5 weeks.  Of that, probably 2-3 weeks of that was transit time since the barrel was shipped UPS Ground both ways. 

So Colt CS gets a 

So far, I've had to deal with Colt and HKs CS.  Both times I was warned to expect a long wait, especially for an "average consumer".  In both cases, the issues were resolved and relatively quickly. 

Now I have a brand new Colt barrel lying around the house. . . I do have a Geiselle MK14 rail that I bought on a recent sale, so that's having me thinking of starting an AR project. . . 

I facilitated a commemorative firearms buy during/after my last deployment through Colt, sixty plus firearms in total over thirty rifles and over thirty pistols. It was a few month long process to plan and finalize the commemorative inscription, graphics and layout, working with a senior customer care manager. Everything went great from start to finish and then there was a need for after care on two of the rifles. I was on hand when with the FFL to pick up the rifles from the freight forwarder our FFL picked up the pistols later solo. We inventoried the rifles verifying all of the serial numbers matched the invoice and spot checked the engraving on some. The rifles were issued off the stack to the buyers as they came  with their PTA’s we missed two that had defective anodizing. I let Colt know that two rifles had issues and they sent the owners RMA’s the complete lowers were returned. Colt knew that we had registration here so they wanted to try and fix those lowers first instead of replace them, they were able to fix one and had to replace the other. I had a really good complete customer service experience working with Colt for our commemorative firearms group buy.