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Posted by David Sherman on Monday, March 09, 2009 at 17:51:03 :
Pardon me while I rant for a moment.
A few months ago I bought a Marson Thread-Setter. It's sort of like a pop rivet tool except it sets threaded nuts into thin panels. It uses a set of mandrels, one for each size insert that you're setting. I bought a bunch of different size thread inserts to go with it. It wasn't cheap but it seemed like a good solid made-in-USA tool sold by an American company. I bought the tool itself through some on-line tool dealer.
The thread-setter works fine, but when I recently went to set some 10-32 inserts, I found that whoever assembled the kit had accidentally put two 10-24 mandrels in it and no 10-32 mandrel. I kludged up a temporary mandrel out of a long bolt to get me by, but it doesn't work very well. So, last week I called up Marson and explained the situation, figuring they'd be glad to just mail me a 10-32 mandrel, rather than have me go through returning the whole kit through whomever I bought it from, etc. BUT NO! I was told, "We have our procedures", "The computer won't let me", "You need to have an account with us.", "You need to return to to whoever you bought it from", "You can buy a mandrel from fastenal", "Are you sure it wasn't in the kit", etc, etc.
I talked to a lady last week who said she'd go talk to somebody else and call me right back. A week later, no call, so I talked to another lady today who said she'd go talk to somebody and call me back. If this is the way American tool companies are run these days, why bother buying American? Why not just buy a Chinese tool, assume that you'll get no customer service, and throw it out of something's wrong with it? Do they think I called twice to cheat them out of a part that can't be worth more than a dollar? Are their "procedures" so holy that nobody is allowed to think and do the reasonable thing? Is their business booming so much that they can afford to tell pesky dissatisfied customers to just go away and quit bugging them? Maybe if they keep it up, their customers will go away, and then they can go whining to congress for another bail-out to save American jobs.
Conclusion; Marson makes a good American tool, but customers are a hassle they'd rather do without. Henceforth, I'll be happy to not hassle them with any more of my business.
Okay, rant finished.
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