12v Tools - or lack thereof

[jeh]

Not sure about many of you out there, but I'm afraid I've reached my end with this company.  I'll keep using my existing tools, but it's highly unlikely I'll purchase new ones.

Odd, they don't make ALL the tools you would like, so you ditch the entire company?

Nope.  I'm just a guy who actually sold Festool power tools for a few years and has a legitimate working knowledge of how reps are instructed by corporate when responding to inquiries.  So, there's that bit of background.

Aha, that's quite a bit more to form an opinion about a company than what you said before.

I've spoken to dealers here who quit being Festool dealers, and they were always happy to tell me how dissatisfied they were with Festool as a company, so you're not the only one. But that's a different reason than just the 12v tools.

I'll speculate that part of being disgruntled as a reseller is that Festool walked away from the early resellers after they had established themselves. The small guys had served their purpose and were now disposable or just plain in the way. Way easier to sell more tools to larger resellers who buy a lot more product and have less issues. At some point all retailers will be pushed out completely. There is absolutely no reason they can't do it as the infrastructure is there and they have done it before, although there still were small guys selling the tools as well. When you could buy direct you would pick your dealer (or a dealer) when you checked out and they would get some type of credit for being the selected company.

Compounding the issue is the need to sell more product to subsidize the development of the growing product line, which I think has gotten too big. Others have seen quality/repair issues, but l have not so I cannot comment on that. They make a lot of good products, but there are plenty of competing brands that can best them so long as you don't have color coordinate your drills with your saws and sanders.