Guess I'll never buy Federal then.

I can tolerate aberrations in QC, but I will never tolerate poor CS.

Wow.
It's not so much that they won't replace old ammo to me, but in that case they probably should.
It's more the fact that the ammo in their eyes "went bad".
Wtf? Since when does ammo go bad when properly stored?

It's old is a shit excuse.

I have ammo from the 50s I am still shooting.

Guess I need to rotate out what little ammo I have set back. I had some old imported 22lr blow up my Nylon 66 once so I know ammo can deteriorate but never really expected US made stuff to show signs like those in the pics.

It was a bad lot from the get-go. The ammo would be fine if Federal didn't screw up making it, it was bad as soon as it rolled off the line.

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Another reason to buy hornady and black hills. Thanks for the heads up OP.

Contact info for them for some hate mail? I have a small collection of old FGMM .

If it was a one-off occurrence, I can see them saying it was because the ammo was old. However this was clearly an error in manufacturing the ammo as they clearly knew about the issue. Why they wouldn't replace it is really surprising.

It was old?   What kind of answer is that?   I'm not sure how age makes ammo do what it did there.  

My caller ID shows the number as 1 (800) 379-1732.

I started shooting and reloading in 1980. It didn't take me long to figure out ANYTHING made by Federal was crap. In the 34 years since then I've seen nothing to make me change my mind. I hope this wakes people up and they quite supporting such a company. There are too many good sources of ammo and components to buy Federal and take the chance of getting taken. This is of course just my opinion, but a constant string of incidents such of this continue to reinforce it. The sad thing is, these are the people making the ammo our servicemen's lives depend on. One doesn't hear of Winchester or Remington having quality issues on a regular basis. I too have WW2 ammo that I shot, with no problems. Also, the HXP .30-06 the CMP sells is all older than this and fires fine. Actually, these failures look like some I've had with poorly made Indian and Korean ammo. I'm glad your rifle didn't blow up, but you may want to keep that possibility in mind next time you use Federal ammo.

20 year old ammo isn't very old. Federal sucks if they don't make this right with new ammo.



I will keep this in mind when I buy ammo in the future.



 

WOW! What a mickey mouse excuse. I'll be calling Federal Monday to discuss the thousands of rounds of their ammo I have set back, plus all the Federal/ATK components I have on hand. Hopefully they will be able to advise me of the exact 'expiration date' on all of my 'old' ammo to make sure I don't hurt myself or someone else and so that I can throw it away before it goes bad.





What total BS.

 

It doesn't.

Federal is full of shit.

 

I'm not quite so dismissive.  No, I don't expect a manufacturer to warranty any product that long.  I DO expect a manufacturer to admit the product was manufactured defectively, but that it's been so long they no longer will support it.  I could accept that.  I DON'T expect a manufacturer to claim the defect is due to age, when anyone with a brain knows that's not true.  Nor do I expect a manufacture to be so short sighted that they don't realize they are implying their products are nominally so poor quality that theirs do fail like this after 20 years (which isn't even true, since the age is irrelevant to this defect), when everyone else's can last more than twice that.  They are basically implying all of their product is junk, compared to everyone else's.

So let's keep count here:
-They make crap product (usually due to their sub-par brass metallurgy - by the way, if I had to guess, they probably stamped their brass too tight from the sheet stock (thank an MBA), and just barely nipped into the edge of the next one, making it slightly thinner/weaker right there at the failure point.  Read Hatcher's Notebook, and he'll talk about the exact same thing happening once with a run of Lake City ammo),
-Don't have good customer support (hey times are tight - but being beat by Wolf is kind of sad).
-And don't even have a half-brained public-relations/marketing department.

Aside from that, looking like a really well lead company!

as others have said 20 years isn't that old, in the 90s I shot ammo that was over 100 years old in my old 44-40 (I was young and dumb) it went bang fine and I reloaded that balloon head brass for over a decade after that.

I can sort of see where it is 20 year old ammo and they have absolutely no idea how it was stored, however it was also the subject of a recall so... I side with the fact they should have replaced your ammo, but I can also see their viewpoint, not everyone is like us and stockpiles thousands of rounds for decades

Federal suckered you in to sending the ammo to them so they could "get it off the streets"... they won't do an exchange, fine... tell them to send your property back to you... bad ammo or not, the cartridges still have value for pull down components.

Bowhntr6pt,
I only sent them three ruptured shell casings, not loaded ammo.

dpmmn,
I haven't held anything back.  In-fact, I published the name of the person I spoke with and his phone number.  I'm completely blown away that they won't make this right and hide behind the fact the ammo is "old", when all of know, these cases shouldn't rupture like this.

Its 20 years old. The company that owned the brand, that sold you the ammo, is now owned by a different company. The company your trying to get to make it right didn't sell you the ammo.

Your correct. I've shot surplus 7.62x39 ammo with the heads stamped 64' on it from a rusty banded crate. Ammo doesn't go bad when properly stored on a shelf and doesn't really go bad when haphazardly stored even. Hell, I've shot Hornady 75grain OTM's that were washed and dried in the laundry that I was left in my cargo pants pockets. They shot 1moa my next range visit. Unless ammo is stored in a basement under water... then it is very tenacious. Federal is being some little bitches here. Like someone else said OP, talk to another "Stupidvisor" that isn't having a bad hemorrhoid flare up that day and your results will likely end in your favor. I like emails with links to threads in Industry Forums from here and another certain forum along with the names of the douches you've spoken to previously. It almost always gets handled with kids gloves because of the paper trail and will end up in bad PR for the offending manufacturer... Keep us updated and good luck. I hate companies that won't stand up and do the right ting...

Someone mentioned federal brass being brittle.  I have seen gmm brass in 308 and 45 split on the first firing enough that I just assume the brass is crap

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