A Kudos for Thompson Center Arms

I have to give a hat's off to Thompson Center Arms. Several months ago I picked up a TC Renegade at a local gun show. The gun was represented to me as being unfired and it was still in it's original box. There were also some accessories included. The gun was priced around $200 and the dealer was willing to move on the price. Too willing to move on the price. I figured I could sell the extras for around $50 if I had to. The stock alone would bring $100+ at auction, so, I figured an offer of $170 was safe. He took it and I made a phone call to a friend. He had seen it the day before and informed me it was without a nipple when he saw it. He also informed me that someone had cross threaded and messed up the nipple hole. sure enough I got it home and got a nipple wrench out. Pulling the nipple confirmed it was the same gun. Still it was a pretty safe buy.

Some further inspection revealed an issue with the lock. Everything seemed fine until the barrel was on the gun. Then the the half cock was too far forward to be functional. A quick call to Thompson Center was made. They informed me the lock was under warranty and to send it in. They wanted $85 to replace the bolster which would have solved the nipple problem. I sent in the lock and bought myself a couple nipples with oversize thread diameters from Cains. The oversize nipple carefully forced into the damaged threads succeeded in chasing them out to funtionality. A week after sending in the lock, it was back with a new style hammer which solved that problem. At this point I was ready to put the gun up for sale in an attempt to make a profit. Which was my original intent. Then my 14 yr old stepdaughter out of the blue asks if she can deer hunt with me. Well, she would need a gun. Heck, I have the perfect gun right there waiting for her. So off to the range to get it sighted in. It liked Maxi Balls over round balls and it didn't like tripple seven or pyrodex. Real black powder in fffg granulation got the ignition right.

Saturday we went hunting. At lunch time I told her to shoot the gun and we would reload with fresh powder when we came back. Well sometime in the last 15 minutes we were in the woods the new hammer screw was lost and the new hammer with it. Today I called TC again and talked to Tim in the service dept. A ten minute phone call got us a new set of parts at no charge sent via fedex They should be here in time for the princess to be back in the woods this weekend.

Quite a few companies could take lessons in customer service from Thompson Center Arms.