Quote History Quoted:
Personal insult for posting a fact? Guess that’s acceptable in a tech forum. I paid for a job to be done right the first time, not play the mail tag game. I am not required to give a free pass just because a person providing a service, and is so highly revered amongst the membership here, didn’t get it done right when originally accepting payment for the service. I’m happy for the OP. My outcome was different. Respected or not, criticism of Mr Thomas for not properly installing the FSB is not a crime. I am in the minority and this tiny blip will not tarnish his reputation as well respected gunsmith. Honesty is obviously not taken well here.
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Sir, I'd suggest you might be the one who made it personal when you opened up your posting with the following line:
"Glad somebody’s happy with his work."
I've posted an example of the work that John Thomas did right with the photos to back it up. Between this thread and many others, there's been countless others who have done the same.
We've yet to see photos of your "screwed up" "perfectly good barrel" that he installed a "FSB with a significant cant" on.
As for the complaint about having taken payment and not caught that it wasn't up to the standard you expected, we had a member here on AR15.com post that LMT...Lewis Machine and Tool...managed to let a barrel get out the door, sold through a dealer and home with a customer before the new owner realized that the FSB didn't have pins drilled and installed:
https://www.ar15.com/forums/ar-15/Am-I-stupid-or-are-there-supposed-to-be-pins-in-the-FSB/118-728452/
If you can't accept that anyone could have some human error to the point that you can't email or call someone after you're disappointed with the work and then give them a chance to make it right, I'd recommend you start doing everything yourself so you can ensure it's always exactly how you like it. Perhaps you have, you can tell us, or maybe you just jump from each manufacture you choose once you run into problems. In either case large and small business operations are going to have the occasional work example that gets out the door that doesn't meet expectations. Assuming that there's only a small number of problems making it out the door without getting caught, how they handle those issues with the customers after the fact is what matters.
My experience with John Thomas says that had you contacted him, not only would he have taken the upper assembly and barrel back to fix the issue, he would have covered the shipping costs for the return trip and if the issue couldn't be resolved without concerns on integrity of the barrel, he'd replace the barrel out of his own pocket and make it right.