Ten days ago, I wrote about the problem I had with my Bersa Thunder Ultra Compact Pro in 45ACP. I am not sure exactly what was wrong. It could have been a problem at the factory with the slide bluing; perhaps the plastic bag and protective oil combined to stain the slide. I posted my issue to the forum on Bersa Chat. Some other Bersa users experienced a slight staining on their slides directly from the factory, but nothing they couldn’t remove. Mine seemed to be the worst of the bunch.

That was the bad news. The good news is that I received some outstanding customer service.
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I purchased a Bersa Thunder Ultra Carry Pro in matte finish on Friday. These pistols have been very hard to find, and I was looking forward to spending some time with it and perhaps making it my everyday carry piece.

Unfortunately what appears to be at least a packaging error if not a manufacturing defect has made me send the gun back without firing a single round.
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A week ago I wrote about my problem with my Rock Island Armory 1911 Officer magazine release. To recap briefly, the magazine locking lever’s tab sheared off after about 1,000 rounds. This made the magazine catch very difficult to push and made it impossible to load a magazine in the pistol.

True to what I’ve read on the Internet and heard from other RIA owners, Rock Island’s customer service was great. I wrote to Ivan, the company’s sales manager, on May 17, 2010. He replied early the next morning asking for my address so that he could send a new magazine catch. No questions, no debating if I did something weird to the handgun, just an offer to send the part ASAP. That was awesome!

The replacement part beat me home, as I was in the middle of my trip to Georgia when my pistol malfunctioned. I dropped the new magazine release switch in almost immediately. Sure enough, it worked — everything seems back to normal.

So, on the customer service front, Rock Island gets an A+ from me. However, I am going to sell my compact as soon as possible and already have a concealed carry replacement on the way.
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Part of our annual trip to Tybee Island involves teaching new and novice shooters about firearm safety, culminating with a visit to an outdoor range.

I helped a few of the new shooters get acclimated before deciding to put a few rounds downrange myself. I am scheduled to take a multi-day handgun training course in August, and I intended to shoot my Rock Island Armory 1911 Officer model. I wanted to get as much practice time in before my August training.

My Rock Island was loaded with 230-grain, full metal (copper) jacketed ammunition manufactured by Wolf. I fired two rounds and then the slide jammed and the magazine fell out. I cleared a failure to feed and locked the slide back. The spent casing was cracked near the mouth. These rounds were from the factory and (to my knowledge) were not reloaded.

I put the magazine back in the Rock Island and dropped the slide using the slide release lever. The magazine dropped out immediately.

I thought that maybe the magazine was bad, so I put in another one of my magazines. The same thing happened. At this point I put the Rock Island away and continued helping others with their shooting.

When we got back to my friend’s house I took the magazine catch apart. I noticed that the locking cam on the catch was sheared and bright:
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GameStop and Amazon.com are both running a promotion wherein if you pre-order Starcraft II you will get a key to participate in the beta program.

Previously you had to luck out and:

• get an invitation to the beta at random
• get a one-time buddy invite from someone already in the beta
• get a key through one of Blizzard’s ridiculous Facebook contests
• buy a key on eBay for up to $200+

I wound up pre-ordering through both Amazon and GameStop — Amazon for me, and GameStop as a thank-you to a co-worker who loves the original Starcraft.

Here’s a comparison of my experience.
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I’ve been an XM Radio subscriber twice. When I started driving to work last year during the fall I called in and got the “open secret” $77 annual membership deal. Service is usually $13 a month, so I was glad paying more than 50% off. However, as the weather got better I rode my motorcycle so much I didn’t listen to XM for months at a time. Even then, I wasn’t a big fan of their music selection and wound up listening to just two channels, something I wrote about almost four years ago when I tried XM for the first time.

Anyway, my year subscription expired about three months ago. I called in and spent forty-five minutes on the phone with an account representative and canceled my membership (which was set to auto-renew at $13/month).

What followed was a ninety-plus day barrage of sales calls trying to get me to become an XM customer again.
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I run three monitors in my home office. For awhile I used to do this via two video cards, but I had a lot of stability problems in Windows Vista and the release candidate for Windows 7. I disconnected the tertiary monitor, yanked the PCI video card, and started researching solutions. I thought I would have to upgrade to a dual PCI-X slot motherboard and run two video cards in an SLI/Crossfire configuration. That meant buying a new motherboard and a second GeForce 7600, and that would have been a pain in the ass for the former and a little difficult for the latter. The GeForce 7xxx series is now two or three generations old, and I didn’t want to gamble on a used card.

ATI’s new 57xx series features “Eyefinity,” which basically allows one card to aggregate several physical monitors into one meta-monitor. This is, conceptually, a little different from a multi-monitor display that breaks the desktop into several sections. Think of Eyefinity as making one big, oddly-shaped monitor out of whatever monitors you have on hand.

The trick to Eyefinity, however, is that you need at least one of those monitors to have a DisplayPort interface. I’d never even heard of this interface until I started researching the 57xx series. Apparently it’s on laptops and Apple has their own “mini” version of it. The problem was that my three existing Dell 22″ monitors had regular VGA and DVI.

I purchased a 22″ monitor from Dell with a DisplayPort link for about $240 shipped. I was surprised to see a shipping notification that evening, and the monitor showed up three days later. Problem solved, right?

Er, no.
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I mounted some engine crash bars made by Racing 905 on my FJR1300A not too long ago. They took forever to process my order, misled me about shipping dates, and the bars were built with such a tight tolerance I had to adjust the bolts down two turns at a time. However, once they were on they looked nice and seemed sturdy. I was happy-ish with them, even if I wasn’t happy with the company.

Fast forward to last Tuesday. I was riding home a little early to take Rosie to the vet, and was able to take a highway onramp at a higher speed than normal. I’ve dragged the right footpeg on the FJR before, and had an idea where my lean angle limits were.

I set my entry speed, leaned the bike, and tilted my head so that the horizon was level. I started my turn, and everything was going great. No traffic, road was clear and smooth, and I was well balanced on the bike. Seemed great.

I heard a scraping sound and the bike started to twitch. I stayed even on the throttle and kept off of the brakes. I figured my foot peg was scratching, but the sound and “feel” didn’t seem like I remembered. I slowly righted the bike and I heard the scratching noise again. This time the rear tire of the bike started to waver. I straightened up a little more and exited the onramp. I continued home and checked the foot peg as soon as I got the bike settled and the dogs loose.
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I buy a lot of stuff online. Like, a lot of stuff. I have a really good idea what to expect as far as order fulfillment, shipping times, customer service inquiries, and return / exchange experiences. I’ve purchased from small one-man outfits cranking out custom brackets for mounting lights on motorcycles to e-commerce juggernauts. The size of the store doesn’t matter; sometimes the small operations give you great service, and sometimes they are run by douchebags.

The same goes for the big box joints, too — although until I tried Wal-Mart’s “Site to Store” shipping service I never had a good and bad experience from the same company.
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I’m not going to recap my nightmare experience with motorcycle safety equipment manufacturer Motoport, but over two months ago the Wayne Boyer offered to take my jacket back for a full refund. I was hopeful that the issue would be resolved quickly, and I would get my money back.

Long story short: Wayne never gave me the refund, and I had to dispute the affair with Discover. Discover ruled in my favor, and I finally got my money back on December 7th.

Here’s the full time line:
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