I just ordered a bunch of Lee Valley hardware to use in making some fancy cases for guns and it is just a bit better than junk. It looks pretty but it is thin gauge and the rivets are crappy hollow ones.
I am depressed, am I the only one that thinks they are bit “tinny” and look better in the catalog?
Michael
Replies
I've purchased some drawer pulls and knobs and they were fine.
email customer service. they'll take it back, pay for the return shipping as well as the original shipping costs.
I am sure Lee Valley will take the hardware back if you're not satisfied. I don't have their catalog here with me, but have to ask: Did you buy at the low end of the spectrum? Not hard to imagine that they have a range of quality and prices, and that the price might reflect the quality.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
I would send it back but I don't know where else to buy some of it. I bought things like the steel carry handles for tool boxes, and they seem stronger than they looked at first.
However, the clasps were bought to make toolboxes and they just don't seem to be as solid as they look in the picture.
I am building boxes for guys to carry very expensive guns in, but they want them to look like old Army boxes not something fancy.
If there is another place to try, I would love to know. i was also ordering out of an older catalog and in glancing at the new one there seems to be more and better hardware, but again, hard to tell from the pictures...
I would use Van Dyke Restorers. Call for a full color catalog.
http://www.vandykes.com/restorer.html
PlaneWood by Mike_in_Katy (maker of fine sawdust!)PlaneWood
I could not agree more with Planewood. Van Dyke's Restorers hardware is first rate. However, if your looking for contemporary style, they don't have a very large selection.
Good luck and be safe
Dennis
I'm not sure they would have what you want but the quality is very good,you might try: Whitechapel LTD http://www.whitechapel-ltd.com/ or Horton Brasses http://www.horton-brasses.com/
I have to agree, I have purchased from Lee-Valley and 95% of the time, the product is as expected or better. I no longer order hardware from them, Horton is my first choice, great outfit, great people, consistently great hardware.
Ken
I agree that VanDyke's would be a good place to try. They have a huge catalog, so using the paper catalog is less frustrating than going on-line. I have, however, gotten "cheezy" hardware from them myself, so I think it would pay to call and have a chat with someone to get some advice on what to order.
Speaking of calling, it wouldn't hurt to call Lee Valley and have a discussion about what items you're not thrilled with and what options might be available from them. forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
I have had the same problem but I found lee valley helpful and willing to take thing back. Woodcraft has a lot of the same things you find at Lee Valley but I think Lee Valley has more items. I find woodcraft the best to deal with and they have a no questions asked return policy. You may also try Rockler. I just received a new catalogue and it has many of the items you mentioned. Once you purchase something form a wood work supplier you will be inundated with catalogues.
Michael
I work in the re-production business on older, classic auto's. Some of the things we have to offer are "tinny" as they are all that is available. We make that clear in upsell that the product is not "concourse" (show quality) or we offer it to those that cannot afford the higher grade repo's if a low-grade and higher grades are available.
After we inform the customer with that up-sell, we will still take it back if they pay for return shipping with no re-stock penalty. If a item arrives damaged or mis-marked, we 2 day air a new replacement.
I believe that LV will accept it for return if you are not happy with it. They have some things that I would consider "buyer beware" from the standpoint of not a million companies are lined up to produce. They also have some excellent quatiy products as I have 4 of the Veritas hand planes. I cannot begin to elaborate how satisfied I am with the quality and the reasonable price.
My bottom line is that not all products are top rate. And the price and description should reflect this to the customer. A good organization will not try to decieve. If you were un-informed I believe they will take it back if it's not what you visioned in your expectations.
I do believe LV to be a customer service oreinted company. We shall see, shant we? ha.. ha...
Regards...
sarge..jt
P.S. to Rob Lee.. Are your salesmen and sales-ladies giving you my messages about the 10% off ocassionally? And BTW, tell Fed-EX to rush that #6 fore plane. I'm standing here waiting to use it. he.. he...
John T...
Proud member of the : "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Hi Sarge -
Yes - I do get all comments directed to me - phone, fax, email, ecomm, etc.
We do set our pricing once a year - and set it where we can afford to sell it, and support it. If a price drops - we usually refund (unsolicited) all those that purchased the product in the previous 3 months. We also put price decreases into effect as they occur, instead of waiting for the next price change.
All this to say that we don't price extra margin into the product in the first place, to be able to take 10% out later... we track prices in our industry from around the world, and feel that we'd rather be competitive year 'round, instead of one or two days a year. From a consumer standpoint - I can understand the desirability of "10% off days" - but from a business standpoint, all that does is train people to save up their purchases. Or, in the case where a customer "needs" a product and can't wait for the sale day - it can be a source of irritation.
We are going to be doing more "introductory" pricing specials (as we did with the spokeshaves earlier), and will continue to find (and offer) clearance specials on obsolete, or discontinued products.
Cheers -
Rob
Rob
I already knew that as evidenced by the over $400 I have sent you in the last several weeks. I just like to rib you. :>)
BTW, the #6 fore plane arrived yesterday on schedule and the iron will be honed to-nite. Another nice addition to the 4 1/2, L/A smoother and medium shoulder plane.
Even though I understand your price structuring and am very happy with the reasonabale prices, I will continue to pursue the 10% discount. It's just the American Way, we don't give up easy!
ha.. ha... ha..ha..ha...
Regards...
sarge..jtProud member of the : "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
I have to agree with Rob (sorry Sarge). I don't find 10% discounts of much value unless AT THE TIME I am buying something, I learn it is discounted, then I save money. One of your competitors (with whom I shop regularly because they are local) offers 10% discounts all the time but most times it is on things I don't need then; I often think as a business person , why waste the discount if I am going to buy it anyway. If someone offers a $100 item for 10% off, I am not inclined to buy it for $10 off, UNLESS I NEED IT.
Sailalex
You might have missed where I stated that I was just ribbing Rob. Every time I get a saleman or saleswoman on the line I ask them to be sure to tell Rob L when is the 10% discount coming.
I like to kid and rib a bit. In the last year I have purchased 5 Veritas hand planes and their twin tail vise without any discount. The truth is, if I need it I will purchase it. If their happens to be a 10% sales that's great. That would pay for shipping. If not it falls back to "if I need it, I purchase it if the product is quality and the price is reasonable". I do my home-work and I have not yet found one Veritas product to fall outside that description yet.
If I were serious, I would ask for a 40% discount. Now that is serious! ha.. ha... ha..ha..ha..
Regards...
sarge..jt Proud member of the : "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Rob,
Thank you for responding, that is pretty impressive. The hardware I ordered looked to me to be the best that you offered for the type of items I needed. I figured I have gotten enough free reading out of the catalogs over the years to call it a wash. Also, I am bitching about a $2 part...not one of your beautiful planes or other items.
I was just really stunned that the rivets holding the clasps together on the lock clasps were cheap spun rivets. I am using these to build transit chests for vintage machineguns and their tripods and they whole thing will weigh about 50 pounds. While I don't expect the cases to be treated roughly (the guns and parts inside are worth $10k-$15k) I don't want the lids pulling off. I will put washers under the the locks to support them and do what I can to reinforce them.
I am ordering more stuff (those magnets are going to solve a LOT of production problems I have) and I am happy with some of it. I completely understand that some stuff just isn't made the way it used to be and making that way would be prohibitivly expensive.
I will continue to use you as a wonderful resource and recomend you to others.
Michael Bush
I'm sure they'll take it back, but this is something you have to be careful of when dealing with Lee Valley. I still buy stuff from them - ordered some stuff yesterday - but on a number of occasions have found that items that looked heavy and substantial in the catalog were really cheesy plastic garbage. I've had that experience with them much more often than with other vendors, so my first instinct is always to doubt them.
Mark,
My experience is similar to yours: Some of the products I've obtained from Lee Valley / Veritas have been terrific, while others have been mediocre or worse.
They seem to make compromises in the interest of hitting a price point that sometimes results in products are less than acceptable. As a result, my expectations are more consistent with Sears than Lie-Nielsen, and when they manage to hit a home run I am very pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, many of their product seems to live down to my expectations.
Good luck,-Jazzdogg-
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.
I think you're exactly right about the reason for the sometimes-poor quality, i.e., trying to hit price points they believe customers will like. The business problem it creates, however, is that with a mix of very high quality products (e.g., a shoulder plane I bought recently) and pretty low-quality products, their "brand" suffers from lack of clarity as either great-and-expensive or mediocre-but-cheap. I'd think that the clarification of their brand must be one of their most important management issues, because you don't want customers to be confused about which quality they're going to get on a particular order.
Well said. I've been a victim of the Lee Valley/Veritas Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act on more than one occassion. The quality of some of their products is amazing, while other items are barely above Five and Dime junk.
Mark -
We sell 14,000 products - but manufacture fewer than 1000 of them. Our brand is "Veritas". Don't see where the confusion comes in - it's quite clear to most that we sell a large number of products we don't manufacture.
Certainly - not all of the items are of the same quality. Each has a particular price/performance point. There are limits to how high the quality will be on something like a pair of hinges for 84 cents - they just won't be the same as Brusso's - yet we will continue to sell both.
It's really up to the customer to select the appropriate quality level of what they purchase - generally price varies directly with the quality. We have a broad spectrum of customers - and not all are interested in always buying the acme of any given product. Sometimes, "good enough" is what they're after.
Many times - what we sell IS the best available quality, even if it's not particularly well made - that's just business.
In truth - our main "brand" is our service, and support, and technical knowledge, and you'll not find many better.
Rob Lee
"Don't see where the confusion comes in - it's quite clear to most that we sell a large number of products we don't manufacture."
Thank you for your response. Let me try to be clearer.
You're no different than every other retailer in the sense that you sell things you don't manufacture. That's basically what retailers do.
My point is only that with most retailers the consumer has a very good idea of the quality he's going to get no matter which product he buys. You buy in Sears you get Sears quality, you buy in Neiman-Marcus you get Nieman-Marcus quality. But when you buy at Lee Valley sometimes you get K-Mart quality and sometimes you get Brooks Brothers quality - you just never know from product to product. There's no way to tell from your catalog or the Web site.
The variation in quality is even apparent in the Veritas brand itself. I recently bought your shoulder plane, w hich is terrific. A while ago I bought that red "sharpening pond." The sharpening pond is not exactly a piece of junk - I didn't return it - but it's plastic and flimsy and the aluminum cross-pieces that are supposed to hold the stones don't do a very good job of it and in general it's the K-Mart quality rather than the Brooks Brothers quality.
I'm telling you, as a consumer I just never know what quality to expect from Lee Valley generally or even from the Veritas brand. When I am looking at your Web site and see a product I might want I always do a double- or triple-take wondering whether the quality will be of the shoulder plane variety or the sharpening pond variety.
Based on nothing but a random thought, one possibility might be that people who like the quality of your shoulder plane would like to pay $7.83 more (or whatever it might be) to get a higher quality in products like the sharpening pond - less plastic, more substance. But in any case it does seem to be a business issue going forward what level of product quality the consumer associates with the Lee Valley and Veritas brands.
Well Mark -
That's one of the issues with buying by mail - you have only the photograph, write-up, and price to make your judgement from. That's why a liberal and fair return policy is important.
More than 1/2 of our sales are retail, and it's really not an issue when consumers can handle the product they're buying. We pick a price/performance point for most products, and will often offer two (or more) quality levels where appropriate. In other cases, we supply the only quality available - it becomes a binary decision at that point - offer what exists, or offer nothing.
Rob Lee
Hey Mark,
with most retailers the consumer has a very good idea of the quality he's going to get no matter which product he buys. You buy in Sears you get Sears quality, you buy in Neiman-Marcus you get Nieman-Marcus quality.
Not sure I completely agree with this. It might have been true at one time, but certainly with Sears it is no longer. Sears still offers a few items of the old Craftsman quality, but most of their stuff is re-branded foreign-manufactured; some is good, and a lot of it is junk. For appliances, they change manufacturers all the time, so quality varies year-to-year. I don't think I've ever bought anything at N-M but my friends used to call it "Needless Markup" so...
90% of the time, the only reliable indicator of quality is price. We have to use our judgement and experience sometimes to decide whether the increased quality is really worth the increased price, but almost always we can determine relative quality from price alone. If it's cheap, there's a reason.
I think LV's marketing strategy, combined with their service, is right on. There are certain kinds of hardware that they are virtually the only source for; and their prices seem to be a direct indicator of quality, in my experience. Service has been great."Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." A. Einstein
http://www.albionworks.net
Mark, Over the past 15 years I've probably spent upwards of $4-$5,00 dollars on their products. With very few exceptions the quality has been what I expected ,in line with the price. Thirteen years ago I purchased the red plastic stone pond . I agree that it looks a little cheap but I have used it on a nearly daily basis all these years and it still does the job just as it did on day one. Whada ya know sometimes even the cheesy looking stuff does what it was designed to do. Steve
Michael,
I guess I've ordered quite a bit of stuff from LV, and everything is functional. I did place one order for some drawer pulls and box locks, and to my suprise the Asian box locks were far better qulity then the French drawer pulls. Go figure. Seems to me that you get what you pay for from LV.
If you're trying to mimic old surplus hardware, why don't you just use old surplus hardware? Just a thought, have a good one,
Been Ordering From Lee Valley for years. Best Co. to Deal With
I would invite anyone to obtain every woodworking catalog available in the entire world. Examine them carefully and if you can find any catalog with more careful, accurate, honest, descriptive (unlike some of their competitors who just throw a fuzzy picture on a cheaply printed page and tell you zilch about the item) I would certainly like to obtain a copy. "Polished brass" is one that really bugs me. Does this mean plated? Or is it real solid brass? LV always states what an item is made, they even give you the Rockwell hardness of most of their tools where it is relevant. Try to figure anything out from a Rockler catalog. Now, just today, I received LV&Veritas' new Hardware Catalog. It apears to be their first. It liteally has everything and it accurately explains what they are selling, its use, its size, what it is made of, what is used for. Moreover, their prices seem to be based on a fair profit as many of their items are unique in that they are made only by Veritas. I found their major competitor bases their prices on what they can get, i.e. if they have an items that no one else has they will charge just as much as they can get away with. LV&Veritas does not do this. Recommend that you obtain their new Hardware Catalog and see for yourself.
P.S. I have no connection whatsoever with this company.
Post is from 2004
JoeBleau
This post is seven years old. By now for sure the OP has seen the light.
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