Harbor Freight: Friend or Foe?

[GasSavers_maximilian]

It'd be a lot easier if their stuff all sucked consistently!

[GasSavers_maximilian]

I finally got fed up with being bombarded with Harbor Freight coupons that were only good in their stores, since I'm about 5 hours from the nearest one. If you go to their unsubscribe page, however, you can cancel just that portion of their emails. Since it's been a long time since they've had any specials I cared about I was going to nix the whole thing, but they also allow you to control the frequency of emails, so I changed it to once a month. FYI.

The poll has a mean satisfaction of 31.54%, but given how pathetically small our sample size is, that's really misleading. Because people's experiences are based on an unknown number of products ordered (and over an unknown period of time when quality could've changed), it's not possible to do a really in depth analysis without making all sorts of hand waving assumptions. But to try and get a feel for how uncertain out data is (and because I already had the spreadsheet set up to do it), I ran the poll results through to analyze them with a 5% confidence interval to generate a cumulative distribution:



The column graph attempts to show two cumulative probability distributions, bracketing the likelihood of one choice being 95% likely based on the data.

For example, the chance that a randomly selected person who's had dealings with Harbor Freight will have 80-100% satisfaction could be as low as 2.6% and as high as 27% (with 95% confidence). The chance that they'd have between a 60-100% satisfaction could be as low as 10.4% and as high as 36.1%. Etc. The last column doesn't add a whole lot, because all it says is that the chance of satisfaction being between 0-100% is 100%. No kidding?! Anyhow, the hugely sized spreads show that, indeed, our sample size isn't very statistically significant.

I think I've done a lousy job explaining this, but if anybody has an interest in such stuff, I'd be happy to try again. Also, suggestions for easier ways to communicate the results would be greatly appreciated. I made this spreadsheet to interpret Amazon product ratings. Sometimes you can get enough data for things to firm up pretty well.

I can come up with convincing arguments for that last column being all red or all blue. Driving me nuts!

[101mpg]

For those of you who want to use the 20% coupons not in a brick & mortar store - if you call up the customer service line they WILL do it for you but you have to whine a lot. I use this to get stuff they don't carry at my local 2 HF stores. For those of you who live farther away, it can be a godsend.

If you break your impact sockets or what have you, if you have saved your receipts they WILL exchange them for you - most have a lifetime warranty, especially hand tools.

Many things you can buy up to a 2 year "no question exchange" warranty on like pneumatic tools. I just bought a 70 lb postal scale - works on a 9v battery - included - or the included power supply. 2 year warranty on it was $10. Just ask for the warranty when you buy it!

But by all means - SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS. You'll find this good at many other retailers.

[101mpg]

I use Ryobi One+ 18V tools. Have a chainsaw, pole pruner (sawzall on a stick!), impact driver (cabinet installation), laminate trimmer (mini router, also used for trimming Formica), jigsaw, weed wacker, skilsaw, cordless drill, and more. They also have a lanyard you can use in place of the battery to hold the tools on your storage solution!

I do want the cordless table saw (discontinued).

They are underpowered compared to most corded tools, but finesse use makes them invaluable in my projects.

[Ratman667]

Originally Posted by suspendedhatch

"Earthquake" 1/2 inch impact gun outlasted my Craftsman!

The "Earthquake" is actually an Ingersall-Rand "Street Legal Thundergun" in a Central Pneumatic housing. A few guys at work have the thunderguns and when the bearings start to wear, they go buy an Earthquake and just swap the internals.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

I wonder if their new push on the physical stores has led to a quality increase? I'd imagine return rates are higher when you don't have to ship it back.

[dkjones96]

I'm gonna buy a hot knife from them tomorrow... Here is to hoping I don't burn the complex to the ground.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

Mmmm...hot knife. Maxim jealous!

[dkjones96]

Maybe I can hop one up and make it toast bread as I slice it! haha I need to stop watching stupid movies.

[theholycow]

Using tools for food preparation, eh? My best friend and I cooked steaks using these:


We melted his gas grill in the process. We also used them to attempt to heat a pizza stone and homemade yard brick oven to 900 degrees (I think we got 700).





That pizza was really good.