I have about a dozen of the older, “dimpled/notched” spring 9x19 XDm mags, too.
I’ve got about 70K live-fire rounds through my three XDm9s, cumulative over the last 5 years.
Virtually everything has been through the same 6 range/training magazines I purchased in November of 2010, when I started shooting. The majority, actually, rest on four of those six, but even taking the larger figure as the basis for calculation, that’s still well north of 11K per magazine. It was only at the end of this past season that I started noticing failures.
They’re not loaded 24/7 nor are they used every weekend, but they are stored loaded far more often than not, and whey they are used, they’re dropped - in sand/mud, on grass, on gravel or rocks, or on concrete. Sometimes, yes, they’re even ripped out and discarded on the unforgiving concrete that’s an indoor rage. Here in NE-Ohio, in the winter, most classes tend to take place indoors.
I also have a few segregated “defensive” magazines from this batch, which have been and remain today loaded 24/7. I exercise these magazines - with the defensive ammo they hold - once every 6 to 8 months, and so far, they’ve not had any issues. One mag was carried separately as a “test” spare for approximately 2 years, just to see what that would potentially do, and when I tested it at the end of that duration, it also fed and fired without any issues.
The first of the mags to fail were one of my two segregated dry-fire magazines. These two mags are typically not stored loaded, and when loaded, usually see anywhere from only 2 to 10 rounds of snap-caps/dummy-ammo used. Because of the way I use these two mags, I honestly do not know when they started to fail. I only realized it because I’d almost stepped out of the house without mags on a range-trip, and I grabbed these two, which are outside the safe, to save me the trouble of opening it again. I ripped off the blue tape covering their base-pads and headed right out the door. When I got to the range, I noticed that the mag failed to feed consistently, and troubleshooting easily revealed it to be a spring strength issue. The other mag fed/functioned just fine, even locking back the slide. I do not know why only one of the two failed; thinking back, I did not show either mag any favor during their use. I honestly have no clue how many times each of these two magazines’ springs have been cycled.
At a low-light class last month, I had several instances of failure-to-lock-back-on-empty. I initially attributed this to my right thumb possibly holding down the slide stop - a problem I’ve battled on-and-off over the course of the last few years - but as I checked my equipment after the class, I noticed that 5 of the 6 practice magazines (which I wrote of above), failed to be able to consistently positively push the slide-stop all the way up into the detent of my two 3.8 Compacts. Sometimes it would catch enough of the detent to effect lock-up, but more often than not, it just didn’t go up far enough. One of the 6 remained viable (and I know from its ID number that it’s my least used one). All 6 magazines continued to be able push the slide-stop up just enough to catch the detent on my 4.5-inch XDm9, if only barely. Regardless - 70K rounds spread through them, ~5 years. I thought it was about time.
I initially made the mistake of purchasing the Wolff +10% springs, too. Well, it was a careless mistake, as I also own a number of the newer magazines with the “square/ non-dimpled” springs and base-pads and I did know of the existence of this difference. :o Instead of calling Springfield - and I will say here that I am very disappointed at their response to your inquiries (I am a member of XDTalk, and based on my interaction with Forum members there, I agree with your sentiment that their CS is inconsistent; personally, I’ve had excellent service, but there have been lackluster performances of the kind you’ve cited here reported by more than just a few Forum members)- I simply purchased the dimpled/notched version from Springer Precision:
http://shop.springerprecision.com/product.sc?productId=138
I’ve only used the magazines once so far, and have only been able to fill them to 18-rounds. There seems to be a bit more room to compress to fit in the 19th round, but I have yet to be able to achieve this, even with the aid of the MagLula UpLula.
One of the practice mags uses the flat spring, and I replaced it with the Wolff +10% power unit. In that magazine, I was able to successfully - and rather easily - fill to 19.
All mags performed flawlessly at a two hour seminar I attended two nights ago.
I will be attending a 4-hour low-light seminar in another two weeks or so, and will update.
Hope this helps.
PS:
I have been thinking about swapping to Glocks for the last year or so. The main reason for this is the lack of any hard-use data from the XD-community, and thus a lack of knowledge regarding service intervals. I essentially abuse my range/training guns so that I can get a feel for what may fail and when that might happen, so that I can keep my defensive gun running well - heading off potential problems as based on the to-failure round counts of the ones I abuse.
