Okay, let's talk about tools...and I mean the kind you use to repair things, y'perverts.
As kids, my sons took a heavy toll on the collection of Craftsman hand tools I had assembled before they came along. Most recently, I gave the socket set Carol bought me for Christmas 30+ years ago to #1 son. He was using it more often than I, and I got tired of hollering at him when he didn't stow it properly after use. So I gave it to him. That, and Prime Day, and having some extra cash on hand, occasioned replacing that set and a bunch of other tools that are likely in shallow graves in the yard somewhere.
Craftsman, which my grandfather taught me to be a fan of from a young age, is no longer what it was. The lifetime warranty is now limited, you can't run to the local Sears for replacement, and they've been manufacturing in China for a long time. So Craftsman no longer represents a superior consumer-grade option. Since I don't earn my living with tools, I'm not going to pay the hefty premium to buy Snap-On or MAC tools. So I gave in and ordered some tools from Amazon, including a 30-piece set of combination wrenches bearing the name Tekton. I figured it for just another Chinese brand on Amazon.
The wrenches arrived yesterday afternoon. Fit and finish seemed good. But the metric set came with two 20mm wrenches and no 19mm. Fuck. Yes, I know, I could box it all back up and drop it off at the UPS store and order another set. But that's a pain in the ass, and has on more than one occasion confused hell out of Amazon which led to weeks of me arguing with them over whether or not I had actually returned the item in question.
What I needed was just to swap a wrench. So, I got online to see if there was any way to do this. Tekton has an Amazon store, and from there it pointed to their website. Turns out they are a Michigan company, so I wasn't going to have to be calling China. This was promising. So I opened a support case, explained the problem, and included a picture of the duplicated wrenches. This was at 6:15pm last night. When I woke up at 5am, I saw that I had an email from Colin - a User Engagement Specialist for Tekton. He needed the part number for the set. I provided it. A minute later he responded that he needed an address to ship me a replacement wrench. I provided that. He responded a minute later that the wrench would be shipped today, and that I could keep the duplicate.
Now, this is not as immediate as was running to the local Sears for a replacement as I used to do before Sears went to pieces. And we'll see if the wrench in question gets here in a reasonable timeframe. But it was cheaper and less of a hassle than a trip to Sears would have been, were that still possible. Coupla emails, and done. And I didn't have to decipher the accent of somebody in Shanghai over the phone. So this is promising. Tekton has a good website with the ability to order individual pieces, and a comprehensive line of the fundamental mechanic hand tools. So I think I may have found a brand of tools to be loyal to.
This was not a paid endorsement.
