I had to pickup some thing’s for work and as I was walking by the tool area this sander caught my eye. It had a big clearance sign for $32. I couldn’t resist and bought it. I’ve been thinking about buying something similar for a while because my current disk/belt sander is way too big for model railroad stuff.
When I got it home I found out why it was on clearance. It was slightly used but the real problem was that it was not assembled properly and the disk was rubbing against the guard, which made a terrible noise. I loosened some bolts, which was way over torqued, and I adjusted the guard. It now works great and no noise. I wonder how many items get tossed or just sold cheap, because no one took the time to look it over to see what was wrong.
I hear about this sort of thing all the time, but this is the 1st for me.[8D]
Yeah, I’ve had similar experiences - one time my wife’s company had a brand new high-powered UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply - battery backup) they were going to throw away, because it didn’t work. My wife asked if she could take it home, and they told her to go ahead. She brought it home to one of my computer- whiz sons, and he discovered that the reason it didn’t work was because nobody had opened the case and plugged in the battery!
Corporations can be really wasteful.
I wouldn’t mind lucking into one of those sanders, though! [:D]
Having been a short time Sears hardware salesman (never again!) you would be surprised at the number of people who buy a saw or battery oeprated handtools and return it as defective or they no longerwant it when their project is finished. Then they go ballistic when you show them the 15% restocking fee on used merchandise.
After retireing, I worked at Home Despot (not a typo) for 8 1/2 years. Problem #1 Most big box stores will take almost anything back for almost any reason. Problem #2 Year by year the quality of employees has gone down as penny pinching CEO’s have cut labor expenses to get their big bonuses. Problem #3 When you hire someone for $7/hr, and don’t give them any real training, they don’t know what they’re looking at when something is returned.[X-)]
Bottom line: some of the returned merchandise is garbage and some of it is perfect - or needs minor “tweaking” to work. Take a close look at marked down items - may be a real bargain there sometimes!! My [2c]
You got a killer deal on that! That’s normally around $130 for that Delta model! Nice find!
I had a company GIVE me a 60 gallon 5hp compressor once. They said the head was blown and it was making a horrible noise.
The set screw that held the pump pulley to the shaft had come lose. [:D]
Items get returned for all sorts of reasons. Some legitimate, some not. The ones that really deserve a special place across the river are the ones that need a part. They take what they need and return the item to the store as unsuitable for their purpose. Since it’s not defective, the store simply puts it back on the shelf. I have an uncanny ability to sort through the inventory and find them.
I now open every box, sealed or not and check the contents against the parts list.
I assembled bicycles for a big-box toy store for a while. That’s where I encountered this classic.
A customer brought back a discontinued bicycle in the original box with a sad story that it had been overlooked in the garage and never assembled, and now the child had outgrown it. The service desk refunded him the last sale price and the box got put in the pile for assembly. (It was to be sold assembled, at the clearance price, since it would be a one-of-a-kind.)
When I opened the box, it became obvious that the bike had been, “Rid hard and put away wet.” Then, when it was of no further use, it had been totally disassembled (including some items normally assembled at the factory) and each part had been lovingly wrapped with Saran! The desk staff had seen the plastic wrapping through the handholes in the box and swallowed the crook’s line clear back to the reel!
From the store’s point of view, it was a total loss. I salvaged the hubs (virtually the only un-bent parts!) to use as foundations for a couple of turntables.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Other people just refuse to read the instructions. I remember when I worked at Target one Christmas (I loved that time, especially Christmas Eve. People would offer to buy an empty box and we sold more globes that day than the rest of the year combined!) and people were bringing back R/C toys because they didn’t work. They worked fine, if you put in NiCad batteries and charged them up. Would not work a lick with regular batteries. My buddy and I picked up a bunch from charge back (the store would write them off as defective and you could get them for a nominal fee with manager approval) for $1 each. Still have some 20 years later and they still work fine. We tried to explain to people standing in line bringing them back and they would claim they tried that. We would get them in back and they would fire right up.
I saw that exact same sander in an independent lumber dealer’s store today with a price tag of $234.
If they’ll match the lowest price someone could find, then they’d be at a huge loss, lol.
I work as a process control engineer for a large manufacturing company. In my job I am charged with finding the most cost efective method to perform jobs thruout the plant. While filling in for the Maint dept supervisor one day I had an electrician come to me and request permision to purchase a new handle for a ball pein (sp?) hammer. I told him to just purchase a new hammer as it would be cheaper. Confused as to my reasoning he went ahead and purchased the handle and spent approximatly 1.5 hours obtaining the handle and doing the R+R on the actual part. I told him to just replace the handle as the Labor & Burden rate for his dept. is in the $35/hr range and his repair cost $50-$55 to do + the cost of the handle. The exact same hammer at the hardware store he got the hammer from was $19.95. My wife used to work in retail. When they took something back in on return, most manufacturers gave them credit and told the store to destroy and dispose of the item. Since they never checked on the items I usually wound up with a bunch of cool stuff at home including a brand new circular saw that supposedly did not work. Once I purchased and installed a blade it worked fine.
Anyway, the cost associated with trying to repair something that might not even be repairable is why most places won’t even try.
To keep this train related I did borrow the electricians Phone wire crimpers to make some cables for my DCC system
Dan Pikulski
I’m always the one who pays the $234. My wife was real uptight when she saw me carrying this thing up the driveway, but she was OK after she saw the receipt.
The timing was perfect because I’m planning on building a Curved Trestle Bridge and I couldn’t decide whether to buy a ‘JV Model Curved Trestle Kit’ or try to scratch build one. This sander might be exactly what I need to make my own scratch Trestle Bridge. All I need now is to work out the trestle details.
Check out the Grand Central Gems pre-assembled and pre-stained trestle bents. They come in packs of five in three different sizes in O, HO and N scale. I recently built an 8-foot long curved trestle on a HO club layout using these and it was much easier than trying to scratch build the bents or use any type of kit.
I got a “deal” from Lowe’s in the mail. Two discount cards, one worth $10 off on on a $50 purchase, and the other worth $25 off on a $250 purchase, both cards limited to use by July 6. I can’t use them because my wife doesn’t want to us make any more purchases from Lowe’s. We bought a washer-dryer combination a month ago and she was disappointed with the delivery and installation.
I am adding the discount cards to my collection of unsolicited “sample” imitation credit cards received in the mail. I have used them as places to set out glued wooden parts-- the white glue doesn’t bond much to the plastic surface. And I am planning to build an Arte Moderne building from the late 1930s withy lots of curved corners. The “make-believe” promotional credit cards should make good FREE styrene material for these tough financial times when modelers need to cut corners.
Thanks, Lowe’s!
i know exactly what you mean , i’ve bought a couple of things that when i got them home i found had been opened before and now have a part missing . back it goes . this really hurts now that we don’t have a car and have to rent one for both trips . grrrrrr
ernie
By the way, that disk sander with a 300 grit pad on it makes a great way to grind turnout points. I made a jig with two pieces of staggered rail side by side soldered to a piece of sheet brass. If you turn the rail being ground upside down between the rails you can sand it down to a feather edge after you allign the jig and sand it down a little so the longer rail just meets the sandpaper. Just be sure to do it on the side where the rotation is downward into the table. You can make a jig for the point on each side.
Isn’t the stupidity of people just awesome?? I have a ""Auction Barn’’ near me that sells returned merchandise from Sears,Kmart and hardware stores. Where exactly they get the stuff nobody has ever explained to me, but I don’t quibble, the reason, 80% of the stuff is brand new! Some of it has minor defects or is missing a small part, like the ‘‘assemble it yourself’’ furniture, maybe it’s missing a screw or three, or a piece is cracked. I don’t care, it’s usually an easy 5 minute fix and you’ve got a $200 entertainment center for $15.
Couple of years ago they had 20 or so huge boxes of Christmas lights from Kmart, all had yellow ‘‘defective’’ tags on them, but they were going for $5 a box, me and the wife got three boxes and when we went through them we found 10 strings of multi sequence colored lights [still in the original package], each had a $20 tag on it and the only thing that was wrong with them was a burned out bulb! [and thoughtfully provided with each string were 5 replacement bulbs] some goofus paid all that money for those lights then brought them back because a bulb was burned out…all I could think was ‘‘what a freekin’ idiot!!’', the other strings of lights were the same, burned out bulbs. It made me wonder if the people who bought them were so stupid and inept that they couldn’t figure out how to replace a bulb!!
This same auction place sells Sears stuff every week, tool boxes [with dents or missing keys] for 1\10 of the original cost or in some cases much less. Weedeaters that need a minor repair for $5 or $10, sometimes a buggy load of weedeaters or shop vacs for $10, makes the guys that repair that stuff happy I expect, 100’s of dollar
I got the same deal. Used the cheap card to buy potting soil and some steel studs for benchwork. The bigger deal went to a new washer - unlike your experience, ours was as good as I’ve ever had (and far superior to the other big appliance sellers I’ve dealt with.)
My wife is happy with her new washer, I’m happily converting steel studs to benchwork and the plants are happy with the potting soil. Win, win, win!!!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I came across a pretty good deal on a 30 gallon air compressor at Home Depot the other day.
It is a 30 gallon compressor rig with a lot of tools that came with (impact wrench, air hammer, spray gun, air ratchet, die grinder, hose, and spare connectors.) All I needed to go with it was the sandblaster nozzle I bought for myself some months back and the oil for the tools.
The whole thing cost $300 normally, but I got it for just under $200. The box was cut apart, however the box containing all of the tools was sealed.
What had happened was that some local guy went out and bought it for use with his garage work, brought it home, started to open the box, and got called back to work. The guy’s wife came home and saw it sitting in the back of the guy’s truck, found the receipt and took it back for a refund and spent that money on stuff for herself.
Needless to say that caused a bit of a ruckus with the husband when he got back home. He went back to Home Depot to try to buy it again, but found that his wife’s spending spree left him with not enough to get his compressor, so he bought a smaller one instead.
The Home Depot employee we found to help us look the compressor over told us that this was the second time that he sold this specific rig. He told my wife and I about the entire debacle, and how furious the guy was that his wife got rid of his rig to get herself stuff out of his account, and how they had to escort the wife out of the store because of her attitude and agressiveness. He helped load and unload the compressor in it’s return trip.
They could not charge full price due to scratches and a dent the wife put in the compressor and it’s pump casing, and the partially missing box. (Part of why she was escorted out.)
The employee then got us a cart to put it on and made my wife promise that she would not abuse the rig, and told me that he did not want to have to sell it a third time.
We got the compress