Fear and Loathing at Harbor Freight

[Marc Swanson]

> I have to chime in with a positive Sears experience...a couple weeks ago, I
> went to the Newington, NH, store

Ahh yes, my old stomping grounds.  My favorite purchase from that store
was a 100' air hose reel that was on sale for silly cheap but was out of
stock so they sold me the floor model for even less than silly cheap
($30 IIRC).


>  to replace my usual assortment of broken
> Craftsman hand tools.  OK, I felt guilty enough about using the screwdriver
> as a chisel to just toss that one, but I did have a T-40 torx bit from my
> various misadventures with Merkur halfshafts.

I got some very funny looks for returning a 1/4" breaker bar that I
twisted into a candy cane shape.  They were impressed.

> They were out of stock, but offered to ship me one in the mail.  I gave the
> guy my address, and a week later, a package with THREE bits arrived, no
> charge.  That's a pretty amazing turnaround from the usual "we're out for
> now, tough #$%^" attitude they used to give.

wow, that is good service.  Another 'wow' story for customer service was
from MSD.. I needed some plug boots for my 7A 20vt project on my 4ktq so
I asked them if they had anything that would fit.  They asked how many I
needed and before I knew it there was a padded envelope waiting for me
with exactly what I needed at zero cost.


> And my last Harbor Freight experience was when I borrowed Marc's spring
> compressor and ended up buying it when the threads stripped out on it
> changing struts on my Saturn.  Ooops.

Hehe, yes.. I remember that!  You felt really bad and reimbursed me for
it but I almost felt bad taking the money since it was obviously poorly
built to break on you like that.  I bought the next model up from the
one you borrowed and have had zero problems with it after a few jobs.  I
think they used a higher grade steel on the threaded sections which
solved most of the problems.  Plus I kept the threads lubed with grease
so they don't seem to bind.

Best Regards


-- 
-Marc Swanson-
95.5 //S6 Avant
87 4ktq
88 90q
www.mswanson.com/audi