WARNING: Federal Sells Defective Ammunition and is UNRESPONSIVE TO SAFETY REPORTS!!!

As an avid geek-with-guns, I enjoy plinking .22 shorts, LR, and mag rounds with a variety of revolvers and pistols.

I recently purchased a bulk ammo pack from Cabela's containing a number of boxes of Federal 'Premium' 36-grain copper-plated hollow-points in .22LR:

LOT 1SP259

I went to the range with my Smith 317, and much to my dismay, found that 2 out of 8 rounds were defective in three different ways:

failure to fire (most likely due to bad/no primer)
double-charged round (due to excessive propellant in the casing)

and worse:

under-charges (which resulted in a lodged bullet in my revolver!)

This was very disappointing. First, as you know, you cannot return purchased ammunition. Second, there's no way to get a refund without going through Federal's warranty policy, which is an involved process requiring you to call for an RMA, then packing up and sending the ammo back (expensive), and hoping for a refund.

I figured I could eat the cost, but I wanted to let Federal know about this lot because I could just imagine a youngster plinking with a rifle, then firing an over-charged round into a lodged bullet in a barrel (known as an obstruction)!

So I called Federal at 1-800-379-1732 at start of business on Nov. 20, 2017. The operator reported that 'no one was available, but a tech will return your call'

So I then called back at 12 noon the same day, and was told 'We're very busy, but will call back." I told that operator that my info was important concerning over-charged and under-charged rounds and stressed that I was worried.

I never got a call back. So thanks, Federal, for looking out for your customers. I certainly learned a good lesson and won't buy Federal ammo again.

By the way, I filed a notice with Saferproducts.gov:

"Thank you for using SaferProducts.gov to submit your Report to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).  We received your Report No. 20171120-A4358-2147395237 on Monday, November 20, 2017."

So I hope that in the terrible chance someone does get hurt with this lot of ammo, there will be a record on file and a report of the lot number (I filed all pertinent info).

Federal: bad company, bad ammo, bad customer support, bad safety policies!

I also left a negative review about this ammo on Cabelas web site (as a registered customer), and guess what? Cabelas won't publish the review!

Not only that, but Cabelas is STILL SELLING the ammo! (as pictured above; could be a different lot, but who knows?).

Very disappointed in Cabelas as well.