A Tale of Two Leupolds

About 10 years ago, maybe more, I had a gig in Houston to teach an FMEA course to a consulting company.  This particular consulting outfit had a contract to teach Failure Modes and Effects Analysis to their customer, and they had taken the assignment without knowing anything about the topic.  It happens more often than you might imagine.  It was no big deal for me as I’d been teaching FMEA for years, I had a class ready to go, and I was in and out in a couple of days.  There was a nice paycheck at the end, and it was all easy peasy.

While I was in Houston, I found a local gunstore.   I stopped in to check out what they had. I do that pretty much every place I go and I’ve been doing it for nearly 50 years. You never know what you’re going to find.  The Houston gunstore was a disappointment (like most have been in the last 20 years) because all they offered (rifles, handguns, and shotguns) were these black plastic abominations.  Like the cannibals say, there’s no accounting for some people’s taste.

Anyway, the Houston gunshop had a junkbox/discount container holding all the gunshop detritus they were blowing out.  You’ve seen that sort of bargain bin before, I’m sure…things that are one step away from the dumpster. In that box was a beat-up old Leupold 4X scope that was so severely worn there was almost no anodizing left, the lenses at both ends were scratched  and chipped, and there were dents and dings along the scope’s length.

But, it was a Leupold.  In the scope world, that’s as good as it gets.  Leupold scopes are the best.  I bought that scope for $20, figuring maybe I’d use it if Bass Pro ever ran another scope sale where they give you $40 on any trade-in scope. They used to run sales like that, and I’ve used decrepit scopes as trading fodder, but my trade-ins were always cheapie scopes that had failed and didn’t cost much more than $40 when new.  That wasn’t the main reason I pulled the trigger, though.  That scope was a Leupold.  Even though it was trashed, it was still a Leupold.

The hoped-for future scope sale at Bass Pro never materialized (I guess they learned their lesson from guys like me on past sales).  The Leupold went under a shelf on my reloading bench and I kept it for when I had to mount scopes with twist-in rings, figuring the clapped-out old Leupold 4X was good for that kind of abuse. With all the damage on the lenses you couldn’t hardly see through the thing.  It became my scope mount installation assembly aid.  Now it was in my junkpile instead of the one at that gunstore in Houston.

About a month ago good buddy Greg and I were on the range and a different Leupold scope (a 3×9) that I had on a .22 250 Ruger No. 1 wouldn’t adjust (it’s the scope on the No. 1 in the large photo above).  That surprised me, as a Leupold scope had never failed on me before.  The elevation dial was stuck.  I wasn’t worried, though.  Leupold scopes have a lifetime warranty, as mentioned in the video below:

When I got home I took the 3×9 scope off the No. 1 and sent a note to Leupold’s customer service.   Then, just for grins, I told Leupold about the old 4X (the one I described above), and I asked if they could refurbish it.  I didn’t know if Leupold offered that kind of service for old scopes.   Within a day, I had an email from Leupold with a return material authorization for both scopes, and off they went.  I didn’t think they’d be able to do anything with the 4X scope, and they didn’t tell me what they would charge to refurbish it.  But I sent it in anyway.

The Leupold 3×9 came back a couple of weeks ago and it’s fixed, cleaned, and it looks great.  Leupold somehow managed to refinish the minor marks in the anodizing (you know, what you get from the scope rings), and the scope could almost pass for new.  I’m very satisfied with it.

And then, a week or two later, the 4X scope (the one I paid $20 for) arrived.  Except it wasn’t the scope I had sent to Leupold. It was instead a brand new Leupold FXII 4×33 (they don’t even sell these anymore), but there it was, brand new and in a new shrink wrapped Leupold box. As a point of reference, when this scope was last offered by Leupold (I’m not sure when that was), they went for $389.

My charge? $0.

Yep, Leupold replaced that beat-up old scope with a brand new one at no charge. I wish I had taken a photo of the original scope.  Trust me, it looked like a $20 bargain bin item with one leg in the trash and the other on a banana peel.  In its place, I now have a brand new Leupold.

You might wonder:  Why a straight 4X scope?  Even though many scope companies don’t offer fixed power scopes in 4X these days, I think that a simple 4-power magnification is the best there is for hunting.  The higher mags have too narrow a field of view, it takes too long to find the target, and the whole variable power thing, to me, is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.  Nope, I’m perfectly happy with a straight 4X scope.

Leupold doesn’t offer the straight 4-power scope any more, but they have a wide variety of variable scopes.  The most frequently seen variant is the 3×9 Leupold.  This is the Leupold you see on that beautiful Ruger No. 1 you see at the top of this blog.   I have the 3×9 Leupold on my Model 70, too…the same one I used on a successful wild pig hunt a couple of years ago.

Folks, trust me on this:  When people say Leupold has fantastic customer service, they speak the truth. I can’t imagine ever buying another scope from any other company.

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