Buying Automotive Tools On s - DONT BE A VICTIM

I would like to share some knowledge I have with my fellow okayers who shop for value on tools on okay. I see a lot of shady advertisment and double talk. I see a lot of people manipulation or outright lying about tools on okay and taking advantage of unexperienced buyers out here. If you look at my feedback, you will see that I have a lot of background in hand tools, diagnostic tools and metal fabrication equipment like welding and manufacturing equipment, both buying and selling.
For every un-knowledgeable person out there there are 3 very knowledgeable people on okay who are all too ready to play on your ignorance. Despite okay's best efforts to prevent keyword spamming, I still see plenty of people who play the name game with hand and power tools. Good examples of this are people who start a posting "Snap-On BluePoint" so that buyers get stuck having to sort through all the BluePoint bull$hit when looking for Snap-On tools. As you will read, BluePoint and a lot of other tools that are manufactured in plants owned by Snap-On corporate ARE SIMPLY NOT SNAP-ON QUALITY. As a matter of fact, they are not even close!
First of all, regarding hand tools:
BluePoint, New Holland, Bahco, and Harley Davidson tools ARE NOT the same as Snap on. Just because the same foundry that makes Snap On tools makes those others, thisdoes not mean they are the same. Snap on tools conform to a much higher Rockwell Hardness than that other garbage, even though they look similar and have a similar finish. Am I just saying this or do I know it for a fact? I KNOW IT FOR A FACT!!!!!!!!
Anyone with a pile of money can contract to have one of Snap-On's factories pump you out some tools with your name on them. If you wanted to make, Oh say, JOE BLOW TOOLS you could hire Snap-On to make them for you. You could even pick which factory you want them to be made in. Why is the location of the factory so important? If you want JOE BLOW TOOLS to be able to be sold in China, you had better have them manufactured in the Bahco plant because you cannot import American made products into China. Isnt it funny how China can dump billions of tons of Chinese made crap tools into the US but US gepaines have to go manufacture items in China to be able to sell them there? If your going to have your JOE BLOW TOOLS marketed to Australians, you would want them manufactured in the UK. Its just that simple! Harley Davidson, New Holland and lots of others contract Snap-On to make tools, but none of those tools, including BluePoint, get the same care and quality that real Snap-On tools get. As a matter of fact, all of these off branded, made by Snap-On fakes are not even on par with Craftsman tools which carry a warranty you can actually take advantage of. The one exception is BluePoint tools which are no where as good as real Snap-On tools, but at least most tool truck guys carry and can get them to replace them. Here is the real question you have to ask yourself, are you willing to battle constantly with your tool truck guy to replace your broken BluePoint tools all the time? As the economy gets worse and worse, Snap-On tool truck people, especially those who are independently owned, are simply refusing to warranty Snap-On's tools. This is the one real problem with Snap-On tools. Many of the tool truck guys are now fighting customers on tool replacements. Now if they are battling on exchanging Snap-On branded tools, how much luck are you going to get swapping out your BluePoint crap? As for those fake New Holland and Harley Davidson garbage, forget it! They wont even touch them! Like S K, Blackhawk, Proto and lots of other tools, no one carries them so you cant take advantage of the warranty they offer.
Check the hardness:
I teach metal working at a local college and have several Rockwell hardness testers at my disposal. Snap on tools are significantly harder than those imitation tools that some of these folks out here are trying to sell you. The jaws on a open ended wrench will "spring" on you and round a fastener so much easier than an authentic Snap On tool will it will astonish you! Consider the price for a minute. There is a reason that other garbage is so cheap. I have a set of wrenches in my shop from JC Penny that were made by the gepany that makes Snap On tools that are better than the junk for New Holland, Bacho and Harley Davidson. If your going to buy a tool at a value because Snap On is too expensive, buy Craftsman.At least when they break you can get them replaced with no problem. The New Holland stuff as well as the others offer no real warranty. Sure, they say they do, but who are you going to get new tools from? The guy who sold that crap to you? LOL!!! When I wrote this article last year, there had to be about 50 guys selling this crap! They were unloading it because no one out in the real world would buy it. They got it from clearing houses and dumped it onto unsuspecting okay people who thought they were getting Snap-On quality tools with a warranty. Where are those people now? Long gone with your money!
CLEAR THE AIR, Power tools are not created equally, Or ARE they?
Most of Snap On's air tools are manufactured by Souix.Back in the early 90's Snap-On bought Souix and moved them into a factory right down the street from them. Thank God, they are still American made! If youhave been in the business for a few years, you know that Souix has built high end industrialpower tools for a long long time!Now if you are the type of person who likes to use cordless power tools, I am here to tell you that Snap-On makes a great line of tools! For those of you who like air tools, you can do real well for a lot less money with Ingersoll Rand. Snap-On's air tools last a long time because they lack serious power! I defy Snap-On/Souix to provide an air tool that stacks up against a IR Titanium geposite impact. The best part, the IR products cost a fraction of what Snap-On costs and the BEST PART IS that if you ever need to repair or rebuild your own air tool, you can get parts for IR air tools in minutes anywhere on the web. Most of us have the brains to be able to rebuild a car engine, I think we can handle rebuilding a damn air ratchet or impact gun. Problem with Snap-On air tools are that you simply cant get parts for a lot of them and the ones you still can get parts for are just way too costly.
Now if you are hell bent on having Snap-On air tools, keep in mind that like their cordless tools, they only carry a two year warranty and only 6 months on the battery. After 6 months, good luck getting Snap-On to warranty battery problems! Also, you can buy Souix branded tools for a lot less and they are absolutely IDENTICAL to Snap-On power tools other than some minor cosmetic differences, carry the same warranty, and are made in exactly the same place with the same quality parts.
NOW LETS TALK geMON SENSE FOLKS, DONT GET SUCKED INTO THE THRILL OF THE KILL!
First of all, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, go on Snap-On, Mac, Matco, or even Sears's web site and CHECK THE PRICE OF BRAND NEW TOOLS! Before you go on a bidding frenzie for stuff you could get brand new for about the same price, dont waste your time and money buying someone elses junk for what you could buy new tools for. If you cant save AT LEAST 35% on a hand tool on okay, keep on looking! Let the suckers get into a bidding war! Factor in the price of shipping as most of these folks keep the prices of the tools low so they can jack up the price of shipping and not have to pay as much gemission money to okay. This is how people cheat okay out of their cut and make good money selling on okay. They simply post items at very low prices and than hammer people on the cost of shipping. Dont get me wrong, I am no fan of throwing money at okay, but as a seller of tools, it forces others like me to have to follow suit to be gepetitive. If its a bidding game your playing, the cost of shipping greatly affects the final price of tools. If you buy from Sears, MAC, MATCO or even Snap-On, your not going to pay for shipping. If your buying from okay, you will so factor it in!
To add to this, now that okay has masked the identity or bidders and prevents people from looking at the feedback of the other bidders, you have no idea if someone is bidding up thier own stuff with another screen name! Lots of people do this so make sure you hit "ADVANCED SEARCH" on the search tab and plug in your sellers screen name. If you see people with a very low feedback score bidding in small increments over and over on an item, that item is very likely being bid on by its seller. Think about it, what kind of moron bids up an item a buck or two at a time, only after someone else has bid on it, and than keeps raising the value little by little? Its the oldest trick in the book! okay wont do a thing about it because the final value fee will be greater for them if you buy for more! Investigate feedback and other auctions the sellers are conducting to see if the same bidder(s) driving up the prices of the perspective sellers items. If you, for instance, do an advanced search on a seller, find that he is selling items that he is not getting feedback on, chances are that he/she is a shill bidder. Most sellers will not post feedback for themselves with their fraudulent screen name because people who actually do their homework would see the same people buying several items from them. Of course, some others, on the other hand, will run up their feedback score by posting feedback for themselves on items they shill bid on and ended up winning, which brings me to my final point on this issue. If you see a lot of bid cancelations or withdrawals, chances are, your dealing with a shill bidder. Look at a sellers other items he has sold and see if you notice the same people bidding on the items or if there are a lot of retractions. Normal auctions have very few retractions so you should not be seeing them often for one seller. If something looks fishie, report them to okay and its easy for them to see of the IP address for bidders and sellers are the same. If your involved in a bidding war with a sellers alter ego in the form of another screen name, your going to get suckered!
KEEP IN MIND THAT okay COULD NOT CARE LESS HOW MUCH MONEY YOU SAVE! THEY DONT CARE IF BUYERS ARE BIDDING UP THEIR OWN STUFF, EITHER WAY THEY GET PAID! DONT BE A VICTIM OF BUYERS WHO SHILL BID THEIR OWN STUFF! KNOW THE SIGNS AND DO THE INVESTIGATIONS BEFORE BIDDING ON THINGS. The best thing to do is bidon items at the very end to prevent sellers from throwing out shill bids to keep you bidding.
BAIT AND SWITCH
There are a lot of items that are bought by Snap On and sold at inflated prices. I have seen a lot of OTC and Lisle tools repackaged by Snap On. Watch your step and if it looks like someone elses stuff, it probably is! I will say this however, often times Snap-On will use someone elses design, but make it out of their materials which are FAR superior to others.
Keep in mind that even original Snap-On tools are not always what your looking for! A good example is Snap-On ratcheting boxed end wrenches. A few years ago, they had a lot of failures with the Snap-On branded units and very quietly dispatched their salespeople to offer a generous trade in allowance to buyers to return and exchange for the newer, corrected, better wrenches. Now lots of people are taking those old recalled units that are no longer being traded in and selling them on okay. Also, know that there are often several types of the same tool. A good example again is Snap-On wrenches. They have a standard wrench, a Flank Drive and a Flank Drive Plus. The cost difference from standard to Flank Drive Plus is as high as 25%. Today, I saw 5 bidders battling over 5 gebination wrenches a seller had posted (standard length 20-24 mm gebination wrench set) and the auction ended with the wrenches going for 152 bucks. Brand new, those wrenches would be about 165 bucks! The poor moron who won, after paying 12 bucks for shipping actually paid MORE for used stuff than new!
SEEK AND FIND
Remember that not all tools are listed in okay Motors! Take a look in home and garden too! Lots of home owners, gilted EX wives, ignorant people and just plain old folk list high end tools in the less visible sections of okay. You can find huge values on okay by expanding your search to ALL of okay, not just okay Motors. I once found a set of Snap-On 3/8 drive Torx bits for 15 bucks and bought them. I didnt need them, I just turned around and put them on okay Motors and sold the same set for $157.00. Lots of other folks are doing this too! Dont miss out on some great deals by expanding your search to also include okay Canada as well. There are lot of Canadians with nice tools for sale and shipping to the US from Canada is a snap!
I LOVE CHINESE FOOD BUT THEIR TOOLS SUCK!!!!!!
Also, look out for those guys selling Chinese garbage like sockets and putting them on Snap on tool rails and advertising them as Snap On tools. I see this all the time and see people fall for it quite often. Read the small print and if it looks too good to be true, IT LIKELY IS too good to be true! My favorite on this is the guy who says something like "1/2 Impact sockets on Snap-On Rail"
Finally, If your shopping for Snap On tools always ALWAYS check the Snap On web site first before bidding on okay. Every day I see people spending more on okay that it costs to buy directly from Snap On. Dont get carried away bidding when you can get an item for the same money or less right from Snap On. If you are trying to replace old tools with the old school lettering, thats a different story but if your just trying to replace lost tools, take a look at the Snap On web site before you pay too much to someone selling second hand tools on okay.
Best of luck to you all and be careful out there!