Anyone have similar experiences with Harbor Freight?

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ATTENTION, Pollies! The below post is not a claim that "This proves Y2K is secretly eating away at our infrastructure."

ATTENTION, Doomers! The below post is not a claim that "This proves Y2K is secretly eating away at our infrastructure."

Believe it or not, the motive is a search for similar findings, that MAY show a generalized pattern, raising the index of suspicion.

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Over the last 3 years I've done a lot of business with Harbor Freight in CA -- buying a lot of Y2K prep equipment from them. Generally I've had good results to report -- until 3 months ago. Since than I've noted the following, on repeated transactions (maybe 6 total):

1) Whenever I called I offered my Customer Number --- the order clerk always said, "No, we don't need it."

2) Then she'd proceed to take all my ID info afresh: full name, full address, fone #, & credit card # -- as if her computer had never heard of me.

3) I had to return two items during the period for replacement.

4) Not receiving the replacements in a timely fashion I called Cust. Svc. to inquire. I was told one of the replacements had been shipped to my old Tennessee address (obsolete since January '99) and the other to my old Alabama address (obsolete since April '99.) (Significant is that I had notified Harbor Freight with a written change-of-address card shortly after both my address changes.)

5) In the ensuing multiple calls to Cust. Svc., trying to get the merchandize routed properly to my present address (which finally happened many weeks later) -- each time I called I asked the clerk what address of mine they had recorded in their records. Each time they read off one or both of the old ones. And each time I gave them the correction by phone. Didn't matter -- then next time I'd call with the same question they read off my obsolete addresses (and obsolete phone number in one case.)

6) During those last two months of '99 I received five DIFFERENT seasonal catalogs.

7) Since the last 2 weeks of '99 and this 1st week of '00 I've received none. (Maybe this was related to a pre-Holiday marketing push?)

--- Anybody have similar results with Harbor Freight?

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), January 07, 2000

Answers

Dr. Schenker, I've long dealt with Harbor Freight, but ceased ordering anything 2 months prior to the rollover because of disruption concerns, so I'm not in a postion to offer current observations regarding customer service. Like yourself though, I have been getting a highly unusual number of catalogue mailings from them. A possibly related anamoly occurred with a very large, mail order gun dealer recently. I ordered a scope and mount set from them 6 or 7 months ago (paid by check)and the merchandise arrived in a timely fashion. At the time I noticed that their invoices still contained a two digit year datefield. Just before the CDC, they sent me another, identical package with the same merchandise, for no apparent reason. Again, the invoice still contained the two digit datefield. It is indeed interesting to keep tabs on how many -- possibly -- date related mistakes we'll be seeing in coming months.

Best regards

Doc

-- T.H. "Doc" Toups (ttoups@aol.com), January 07, 2000.


I ordered a 1/2 horsepower electric motor in November from HF and got it in a week. I've received one catalog from them since. Nothing unusual.

Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), January 07, 2000.


Ordered an item via their web site on 12/23. Never received an email confirmation from them, so sent them an email inquiry for confirmation of my order. I also asked them to confirm that they had sent my free offer attache case, since there was no mention of it in their online order form.

When there was no response, I sent them the same request again and again, almost daily until I finally got a response from them a couple days ago.

Actually, I got two email responses, from two different people at HF. One reply confirmed that my item had been shipped on 12/28. The other reply said my item was about to ship by 1/10.

Tell me, have they given me a reason to order from them again?

-- Scarecrow (Somewhere@over.rainbow), January 08, 2000.


Dr. WJS:

I ordered a handcart and some manual siphon pumps several months ago. The pumps were backordered but finally received. Meanwhile, they've been mailing me scads of catalogs!

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), January 09, 2000.


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