It's not as nice as the hand checkering, but they haven't made any price increases on the stocks in the last 4yrs either, so they have to make cuts somewhere. Seems to me as busy as the H&R staff is, it's no wonder they get a little short with customers occasionally, they've always been very nice to me, I think it all depends on how nice the customer is to them, I've always been polite, and they returned the same to me, even when I had a problem with an order they mis-shipped. If a customer is unhappy with the product, they've always bent over backwards to make it right.

The machine checkering is still much nicer than the pressed checkering on the Marlin rimfires, that would be a shame if they had to resort to that, so be glad they're still doing the machine checkering.
Tim