Questions about taking delivery of new lathe

[tom lucas]

Tough luck on the shipment from Grizzly and the table. My lathe arrived in a pristine crate. And that crate is very well made with everything bolted down inside. Someone (the trucking co.) tossed that thing around and mishandled it. It almost looks like it was dropped. Hopefully Grizzly will get you a replacement right away.

[Patrick Johnson]

Yes, you did the right thing to refuse it. What a mess! Of course the shipper thought they could make it all better by saran wrapping it...oh boy.

[Alex Zeller]

Alex - They told me they would be using the same carrier. But they said it was very unusual for the journey to have included so many stops - thry are going to talk to the carrier about it.

David - I'm hoping for the same result.

Brian - I was more sad and annoyed than mad. The driver was a nice guy and the damage wasn't his fault. No point in getting mad at him.

Thomas - Out of the box the table had zero hydraulic fluid. The box was dry so I'm assuming it never had any. Not a big problem - I filled it up with fluid and it pumps up fine. But one of the two swivel casters doesn't swivel. I took a close look and it's not something I can fix and it's not something I can live with - the table is very hard to move around. It would be impossible to move with a heavy load on it. This table was not checked by quality control.

With Harbor Freight the customer is the quality control. If you accept it then it's a pass. if you reject it then they give you a replacement to inspect. It's actually a very good way to do QC. This way HF never has to control to a standard higher than the customer demands.

[Brian Tymchak]

With Harbor Freight the customer is the quality control. If you accept it then it's a pass. if you reject it then they give you a replacement to inspect. It's actually a very good way to do QC. This way HF never has to control to a standard higher than the customer demands.

As long as the target customer for HF expects to get failures fairly often, then I guess it's good for HF. But I have to think it's less expensive to spend 5 or 6 minutes in QC during manufacturing than to incur the labor and shipping expense of handling a high number of returns. And the perpetuation of poor quality products has to limit sales. I know I've steered away from them on numerous occasions.