Done with POS Craftsman junk...and I really tried
 

Harbor Freight from now on for me I guess. If Craftsman is going to make junk at twice the price, why wouldn't I?

About 18 months ago, I bought a new Craftsman lawn mower and received their top of the line garage door opener as a present.

As of today, the lawn mower starts when it feels like it, even though I have gone through the cleaning and maintenance videos and everything "appears" to be working correctly. The almost-hard-to-imagine-how-stupidly-built-and-designed height adjustment broke within about a week into ownership and now requires a strategically placed zip tie to make sure the damn thing doesn't drop down to the lowest setting in the middle of my grass, thus causing me to start over and create a putting green.

Meanwhile the garage door opener has a light on either side that are supposed to turn on when the garage opens and is actually appreciated since its often dark in the garage. I should say it WOULD be appreciated if either light worked. One light hasn't worked since it was installed and the other followed within about 4 months. If you go mess with the bulb, they both come on...just to go out the next time the garage is opened/closed.

So, I'm done with Craftsman. I buy the occasional wrench here and there but that's it. They are clearly no better any Chinese crap and barely survive on their reputation. So much for Made in America....if they even are any more.SmileWavy

*rant over

I gave up on them years ago. Sears was gutted by a private equity firm.

The harbor freight stuff is actually usually pretty good. Most everything I bought there has worked great (with occasional fiddling). Not to mention its 50% cheaper than home depot/sears...

I've said it here many times, the 3/8 HF ratchet is the one I reach for. The Craftsman is a piece of junk that got thrown across the street every time I used it....

(It's the original handle I bought in the '70's but the ratchet mechanism failed and was replaced a couple of times. Throughout the years, the quality of the replacement part degraded to such an extent that I don't even care to try any more.)

Yet, ironically, over on Garage Journal, there are threads devoted to vintage Craftsman tools like the Block Grinder

my newish craftsman tool chest is a total piece of garbage.
my top chest is 25-30 years old. solid. it works like a charm.
sears mechanized gardening tools? i concurr - total junk.

My harbor freight ratchets last longer than the Craftsman ones. (who's ratchet mechanisms always go bad).

Only issue is that the heads on the HF ones are so big... Hard to get them into tight spaces.

I have a Craftsman mower I bought used several years ago, I just bolted it's engine on a mower to replace the Honda engine that kept sticking valves. I'm not sold on Craftsman power equipment, but I've got to give that powerplant its due.

I don't think such a broad brush can be used. --both have crap design/builds. --both have some gems.

I agree Island, my point was more along the lines of since it's hard to tell which is which, I have to default to price.

Nothing pisses me off more than paying top dollar for a giant turd. Annoying part is with my two products, I'm not the only one. There are lots of posts on forums with the same issues. I feel that if the height adjustment on the mower can be fixed with a $.05 zip tie, surely their engineers can fix it permanently!

Just bought a washer and dryer from sears. Took a month to get them due to several delays, miscommunication between store and warehouse and shippers. Paid $70 for delivery and hookup, but when they finally got here, they said they were to leave them on the deck and that's all. They relented finally and hooked them up. The left hand has no clue what the right one is up to. Then i went to the store to pay them off and they couldn't find my account in spite of giving them my account number, home and work phones and credit card. Circling the drain for sure.

That's what she ... oh never mind.

I picked up a Craftsman Professional box last fall. It's every bit on par with lower end Snap On stuff, no joke. Not the typical tinny crap Sears sells. Of course this box is NLA. It was built by Waterloo. I did a lot of research. There are gems if you look. I got this one 1/2 off.

Have 2 old craftsman compressors from the '70's that won't quit.....3 old Craftsman tool chests I'll keep forever.

Wife recently bought me a battery powered weed-eater-JUNK.......Looked at recent PLASTIC Craftsman tool chests at a garage sales....Couldn't open the drawer due to sagging under the weight of a few tools...

Try to get a belt for an old Craftsman riding mower......It's an all day job just to get one on order........

Lampert really doesn't care about Sears other than how much $$ he can squeeze out of it before it goes bankrupt.

I took a 1/4" open-end wrench to the store last week for a swap since the end snapped off--tool dept. said "we don't swap those individually, you need to bring in the whole set and we will give you a new set"

How is this economical?

I will say that my 5-year old craftsman push mower works like a champ despite the abuse I heap upon it--sits outside under a tarp when not in use even through the winter--pulled it out last weekend, changed the oil and air filter and it fired on the second pull.

Interestingly, SHLD still has a market cap of $4.4BN and an enterprise value of $8.0BN.

I haven't paid much attention to SHLD but the idea seems to be that the company is basically a big real estate portfolio plus a retail business that is losing $1BN/year.

Some craftsman stuff if good, some is crap. Some HF stuff is good, some is crap. It's up to us (and sometimes luck) to figure out which is which.

Best thing I ever bought was one of them big fancy harbor freight floor jacks.
Haven't used it a single time since I drug it home.
Better than any warranty. A jack that prevents cars from breaking down ;)

The best solution for tools, IMO, is to scour eBay for used Snap-on or Mac stuff. Sometimes Craigslist has yielded results, (like my old Snap-on roller chest for $100), but that is more time consuming than combing the web. Of course the reality is that usually I need a new tool right now, like in the middle of some project, so I buy Sears and HF stuff as well. Craftsman hand tools are still ok, seem the same as ever. Too bad about their lawn mowers but here again, I'd buy some old Lawnboy in good condition before a new lower end rig if I had a lawn. :cool:

I swapped out a Craftsman 1/4" breaker bar since I broke the original one. (How does that happen?) New one is made in China. So, why not just go to Harbor Freight.

But then again, if you get lucky, you can find some killer tools at garage sales. My neighbor is in the storage bidding business. She always gives me good deals on stuff she finds. (Except for the $35k in gold she found recently. No joke.)

Not sure Craftsman to HF is a step up. Snap On, Mac, Proto would be though.... As for lawnmowers, all the pro's I see around use Honda. Door openers I can't say...
-C

That's the thing...the whole "made in China" movement has made for dirt-cheap consumer goods for Americans for the last 25-30 years and now people think that a good lawn mower or garage door opener should cost less than it did in 1978. I'd blame it on Walmart and HF, I'm affected by it as well.

In the old days, you'd buy a cheap Murray or no-name lawn mower for cheap and get crap or step up and buy a Lawnboy or Toro and spend a lot more but it would be quality and last for decades. Today, you buy a cheap Chinese mower for $229 or step up and buy a Honda and get quality. It's really not different. Same with tools. :cool:

Proto was my all-time favorite back when I made my living with tools.
Still have lots of proto tools. Even the challenger stuff was good and it was proto's cheap version.

I wonder if they still make the good stuff?

The best lawn mower I ever had was a 3.8 hp Murray purchased at walmart for $99. That thing started every time for 10 years with 1 spark plug replacement and 1 oil change.

The worst lawn mower I ever had was a $400 Honda. That awful thing could not go a month of homeowner-type use without breaking its drive sprockets or some other garbage. After about 3-4 years it would die once warm and you wouldn't be able to restart it. I spent about $170 having the Honda power equipment dealer try to fix it and they got nowhere. Biggest pos ever.

Man I wish I still had that Chinese Murray :(

I've had my Craftsman mower for several years now--no problem ever. The biggest appeal to me on Craftsman tools is the lifetime guarantee. Wife bought me a Craftsman tool chest a couple months ago, and it seems kinda flimsy. Nothing like the one my dad used to have.

Just bought myself a big metal closet from Husky a couple weeks ago. Sturdy, well designed, not too expensive and it also has a lifetime guarantee. I'm kinda starting to like Husky (at least for storage cabinetry).

The bulbs in there are whatever came in the box. I thought about LED for a while but the lights are on so infrequently, the pay back would be eons. Actually it would be infinity since the damn things never work!

That's weird, most pro lawn services swear by Hondas. :cool:

I have Craftsman tools only, starting to get them in 1968. They are the best for me and I'll keep using them forever. Today if I were starting out, I might not go with them, but they have helped me in every restoration I did for over 50 years.

I bought a Sears 6 horse power washer a while back. It was a pretty good washer until I ran it on the side of a hill and oil starved it. When I went online for parts the serial number on the engine showed a five horse engine. That pissed me off. No more Sears tools for me.

Here's a fun one:

Buy any of the upper-end cman ratchets like the premium and slim line-

See if you can get them to last more than say, two uses each. I have both, and the premium locks up constantly and the slim line exploded undoing interior fasteners.

Garbage- warranted them, and replaced them with T72 snap on and a 120xp gearwrench.

Problem solved.

rjp

I inherited a lot (three rollaways full) of old school Craftsman stuff from my dad and Grandpa. I still have yet to break a socket or wrench.

My main 3/8" ratchet is a Proto that has to be at least 40 years old. Same with my Challenger 1/2" ratchet. All I do is oil them occasionally. I often wish I could have experienced a time when American craftsmanship was second to none.

I have a set of old craftsman socket and wrenches from my college years when I had to fix my cars. They are still around somewhere in my tool boxes. This was in the late 80s. Now, when and if I need to buy something, I go to Lowes and pick up a one or two tools. No more craftsman wrenches for me. I have never been a big fan of their none mechanic tools or lawn mowers or garage openers. By the time I was old enough to buy any of those things out of necessity, they were starting to be garbage. If I need a chain saw, I buy an Echo at my lawn care place. They seem to hold up pretty well. My hardwood floor installer swears by Harbor Freight's flooring nailers. He buys 5 at a time. They are under 100 bucks and last about 70% of a professional tool at $350+. When they start to have issues, it goes in the trash or he buys their warranty and goes back for a new one. Clever little bastard.

You can still experience it. Just buy cool old stuff. :cool:

I refuse to buy cheap rubbish regardless of were it's made or what store it's in.

My pet hate is cheap hydraulic bottle jacks. If you can find a good one they'll last a life time but the cheap Chinese versions are so unpredictable.
Considering what they are they should be built to work reliably every time IMO.

My other tools are Mostly Snapon or older second hand Euro made stuff like Stahlwille.

I was thinking more along the lines of watching a Saturn V launch, live in person.

I went Craftsman (junk) to Toro (average) to Honda (awesome). Just upgrading my mower made my yard look better due to the higher quality cut. Money well spent.

My craftsman "click" type torque wrench broke and when I tried to get it replaced, was told that they would only replace the "beam" type torque wrench! The locking ring on the 1/2" torque wrench I have cracked and won't lock. I explained to the Sears store owner that I also was thru buying craftsman tools and would be shopping elsewhere from then on!

I had my battles with Sears 5-7 years ago. The end result was cancelling my Sears credit card and I pretty much only shop there to buy parts for stuff I already have. Prior to this, I was spending $2000-$3000 a year building my tool collection.

Things I learned:

-Only their hand tools are warrantied for life. Anything else is warrantied for one year.
-A LOT of their stuff is Harbor Freight quality at premium prices. My experiences were with the floor jacks and air compressors. There are a few gems if you look hard and do your research, but most of their stuff is cheap crap.
-Their computer systems and their procedures haven't been modernized since the 1980's. This is a big reason why the store, warehouse, and delivery service are never on the same page.
-Their repair service is slow and expensive.
-While Craftsman and Kenmore contract out manufacturing, they always have one common wear part that is different from their mass-market counterpart. For example, the filters on a vacuum cleaner or the motor brushes on a circular saw. You can only get this part from Sears, and it is NLA after a couple of years. (Found this out when my Ryobi-made Craftsman circular saw died a few years ago. The motor brushes were Sears-only, and had been discontinued.)
-Their call center is like Comcast: they will tell you anything to get you off the phone. After complaining about my broken floor jack and air compressor, I was told that I would be sent 2 $50 gift certificates. I only got one. Subsequent calls showed "no record of me be promised a second gift certificate." I called back every week for almost a year, and never got the second gift certificate. I cancelled my Sears credit card as a result.

Gave up on Craftsman several years ago (though I have a bunch of older tools...excellent for my purposes). I've had a couple of Sears push mowers years ago (good, but not great). You'll not likely find a pro (in this area) using Hondas btw...lots of "good" choices....Honda doesn't get selected :D.

I proudly ride my SCAG....keep yer jokes to yourself SmileWavy

I have Sears/Kenmore Elite (high end) appliances in my house. They are utter garbage. Never again. Tools have been the same. Actually I have found the Husky stuff from Home Depot to be what Craftsman used to be.

Just out of curiosity, everyone seems to think so-so about HF, Sears & Craftsman hand tools, what the hell are we gonna buy then?? what seems to be the front runner now only Husky??
Options seem to be dwindling!!