Nope. The OP edited his thread because initially it started off with him saying NEA had done hard by him because his gun didn't work with a cheap mag. Everyone pointed out that you don't judge a gun based on a crappy magazine. He tried better mags and ammo, the problem persisted, and NEA replaced his upper. Not sure what the OP of this thread is trying to show by quoting that other thread?
The NEA issues, as far as I know baed on CGN, are as follows (in no particular order).
1) A dozen or so rails were accidentally installed and shipped which were out of square. NEA replaces them free if you are affected.
2) I've seen two posts where people complained that their chambers had reaming issues. In each case I know of, NEA shipped (overnight) the affected people new uppers at NEA's expense.
3) Some people don't like the greyish anodizing. Fair enough. If you prefer a darker AR, buy another brand.
4) I had one person pm me that their NEA upper had an out of spec top rail. Not sure what to make of this as the one I measured last week was fine and I've not heard of anyone else having a problem, but I heard of it, so it's posted here.
5) Some people complain of the "splotchy" barrel finish. Like the grey anodizing, the barrel finish is an NEA-unique process that leaves the barrels a very light grey colour. It's some sort of salt bath ferritic nitriding finish, not unlike the tennifer Rauch Tactical did on VZ's. I had a RT VZ and it was splotchy as well, though darker. The tennifer splotchiness was permanent, while the NEA splotchiness wiped off with an oily rag on the two barrels I've had. I think that the long-term performance of the NEA barrels is yet to be proven or dis-proven. For now I am happy with mine. Your mileage may vary, but NEA will likely NOT warranty your unhappiness with the colour of the barrel as they don;t view this as a defect and neither do I.
6) Heavy trigger/hammer springs. The first batch shipped with full-auto M16A2 spring sets. If you have a 12lb trigger pull, NEA apparently ships free lighter AR15 spring replacements to you.
7) Undersized gas port. I have no idea how widespread this is, but on the first dealer shipment some percentage of uppers had undersized gas ports that wern't picked up due to test firing with a can. NEA ships new uppers to you if you are affected.
9) Machining marks on the upper/lower/handguard or whatever. Frankly I've not seen pics of anything problematic, but I believe there are likely surfaces showing end mill swirls. Ever seen an LMT MRP or other billet gun? If not, then I suggest you go look at one. Every billet gun I have ever seen had this evident to one degree or another. It can be eliminated by slower feed rates and more frequent tool bit changes during manufacture, but that would increase price a fair bit. unless it's really bad, I would not consider this much of an issue personally. Your mileage may vary.
I think that covers the issues I know of. Most of these are confined to a single shipment of guns and have reportedly been corrected on subsequent production.
I found all these readily available in NEA's own posts except for the one issue I was pm'd about. I hardly consider that a coverup.
My band played last night and as a result the fingertips on my left hand are sore this morning, making typing slower than usual and uncomfortable. For this reason I am glad you typed this all out because it's about what I would have said, and now I don't have to type that much.
I think it's a legitimate concern to be asking yourself, "where is NEA's QC process at?" because they seem to be letting guns out the door which shouldn't be going.
As I work on editing my big tech article together here is one thing I will say: the components are good. This gun is built out of the right parts (commercial buffer tube excepted).
It's pretty clear that NEA has some figuring out to do as far as keeping track of what's making it onto the trucks and I'm forced to wonder, as was mentioned, how they managed to get trouble-free guns out the door for contracts overseas. I am guessing those were gone through extremely carefully just because they'd be harder/slower to replace if anything went wrong.
Every manufacturer has some mindless fans and some mindless opponents. That is nothing new...I have seen people with a hate on for every manufacturer I can think of except possibly KAC and Noveske, which I think is just because the really moronic hate stuff is generally spread by people who don't know that much about guns, so they've probably never heard of the boutique manufacturers.
I have also seen people wax poetic about Hesse and DPMS and Olympic. You don't have to build good, or even fair, guns to have legions of worshipers.
I haven't really seen worse dogpiling on NEA problem threads than on anything else.
Imagine if you posted on here that your LMT wouldn't cycle...you'd get the same kind of "what mags are you using? did you lube it? just call Questar etc" responses which I think are not unreasonable.
The majority of AR problems ARE with magazines. Once you make it past the mags, having it properly lubed is the next most likely thing to be causing problems. If it still doesn't work, even cleaned and lubed and with good mags, contact the manufacturer or retailer.
It's a little frustrating that a bunch of early NEA guns had issues, because it really doesn't take a lot of time to #### up your reputation. On the other hand, they've been up front about fixing problems AND instituting procedures to ensure the problems are permanently fixed.
I think we'll probably continue to see a few hiccups and speed bumps here and there as the production run starts to smooth out but overall I'm not too worried. I would guess that the first 100 rifles would be the ones where you'd see some twitchiness, and those are probably all out there being shot now, and anything that's going wrong is getting reported and fixed.
Given what I know about the building blocks of the NEA rifle, I'm pretty comfortable saying that if the thing is assembled properly, the gun is good to go. If it's not, log the issues, send it back, and help get NEA up to 100% of cruising speed.
I have nothing against any other seller of ARs in this country but I am not sure that I have heard stories of people with problem Stags or LMTs (and those do exist, in reasonable quantities) having anyone just shoot them a new upper and shipping label to return the old one.
That is a high level of service and I doubt very much NEA wants to continue having to do it on a regular basis.
Give it a bit of time...I think the rifles will be solid performers.