Hopefully S&W changes their approach to customer service, or at least fired the guy at S&W T/C, from 6yrs ago. My Encore FX came with buggered up threads in one of the top receiver holes. I discovered the problem when I used a q-tip to clean the holes before trying to mount a picatinny rail. I tried to just run the 6-48 screw into the hole by itself to possibly clean out a slight bur or condition the jacked up threads enough for the screw to hold. It didn't work, so before redrilling and changing the holes to 8-40, I called up T/C and the guy in about 5 seconds of the conversation of me telling him what was wrong, he says my warranty was then voided because I didn't use a T/C 6-48 screw...yeah, pathetic. Considering it was a hole threading issue and not a screw issue, but I got the vibes of how it was all going down.
I did have some sport with the guy and asked what the differences were between a T/C brand 6-48 screw and a Warne brand screw. Of course he didn't know, and I pointed out they were likely sourced from the same screw manufacturer. So, I was told my only option was to buy a new barrel at a ridiculous price, like 3/4 the price of the gun. When I asked what the price would be to drill & tap the hole, he replied they wouldn't take the time to do that procedure.
So, I drilled and tapped them to 8-40 and fixed the problem in about 10 minutes. I know, a lot of drama over the issue, but the moral of the story was the ridiculous stance either that dude had or S&W or T/C. Hopefully dude was just having a bad day,
. (Yes, I would buy one of these new ones to FAFO in hopes all is water under the bridge)