ear3
Member
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2014
- Messages
- 4,341
A few months back I picked up a 1/4" down cut flush trim spiral bit. It sat in my router bit case for a couple of months, however, since most of the trimming work I did in the interim ended up being run with a 1/2" spiral bit. But the other week I broke it out to do some trimming on a nice piece of walnut. I wasn't halfway through the board when all of a sudden the bit started biting deep into the material, well past the edge on which the bearing was riding. I stopped the machine, looked at the bit, and saw that the nut or screw keeping the bearings locked in had gone missing (along with the bearings themselves). I eventually found the bearings, but despite fishing around through the sawdust piles on the floor I couldn't locate the nut/screw.
I was able to finish up the job -- after making the board a 1/4" narrower -- with another bit, and I put on my to do list getting a replacement nut/screw for the broken bit (none of the extra router bit screws I had on hand were small enough to fit). My initial attempts in the Home Depot small screw drawers were unsuccessful -- the hole was too big to accommodate an M2 screw, and the M2.5 screws, which seemed about the right size, didn't bite the threading inside the hole.
Baffled, I took the bit along on my next trip to Tools For Working Wood, which has a full stock of Whiteside bits, to see if I could at least confirm the part I would need to get. Looking at the 1/4" spiral they had on display, I saw that the nut was actually fixed into the bit, and could not be back-threaded out like a traditional screw. So I decided to call Whiteside directly to see what could be done.
I'm generally affable with customer service people, to the point where I've sometimes felt I have gotten dead-ended by folks who let their own or their company's inertia get in the way of consumer satisfaction, so I decided I would be more assertive and gruff to make sure they understood how much I had been put out by the bit malfunctioning (I overstated a little how much damage had been done by their bit breaking while routing my really nice Walnut board). Without even prompting, the tech guy I had been transferred to offered to send me a new bit free of charge. And he was genuinely distressed by the failure of his company's product, and asked me to send it back in the same package in order to see whether and how it might be defective.
Feeling self-satisfied for my assertiveness having been rewarded, I thanked him for standing behind their products and gave him my shipping info.
Got the replacement bit three days later, and sent back the broken one.
Yesterday my phone rings and it's the customer service person from Whiteside to whom I had first spoken (and who had transferred me to the tech guy after I had made sure she understood how frustrated I was with my broken bit). I said "Thanks again for your help the other week -- I got the replacement bit just a few days after we had talked." She replied, "Right...We got your broken unit back Mr. Reno, and it's actually an Amana bit." Me: "Oh."
I apologized profusely, explaining that I had so many Whiteside bits I just automatically assumed it was one of theirs (this is half-true), and of course offered my credit card info to pay for the bit. She was so nice that she just charged me the unit cost, and set aside the freight charges -- not just the back and forth freight but also the third round for her shipping my broken Amana bit back to me. So yeah, egg on my face. But I do have a new spiral bit. And I will be buying some more Whiteside bits in the future to make up for the shipping.
If you were to ask me why I didn't simply read the shaft of the bit to discover that it was an Amana, I have no answer. I do realize now that the place I originally bought it from only stocks Amana and CMT bits -- but I had forgotten that. I think what happened was that after I couldn't fit any standard screws, and I went to Tools for Working Wood and saw that the Whiteside spirals had a proprietary nut for securing the bearings, my mind just fixated on the fact that I had a Whiteside bit.
There has to be a moral to this story beyond just "Read the shaft", but I'm not sure what it is.
I was able to finish up the job -- after making the board a 1/4" narrower -- with another bit, and I put on my to do list getting a replacement nut/screw for the broken bit (none of the extra router bit screws I had on hand were small enough to fit). My initial attempts in the Home Depot small screw drawers were unsuccessful -- the hole was too big to accommodate an M2 screw, and the M2.5 screws, which seemed about the right size, didn't bite the threading inside the hole.
Baffled, I took the bit along on my next trip to Tools For Working Wood, which has a full stock of Whiteside bits, to see if I could at least confirm the part I would need to get. Looking at the 1/4" spiral they had on display, I saw that the nut was actually fixed into the bit, and could not be back-threaded out like a traditional screw. So I decided to call Whiteside directly to see what could be done.
I'm generally affable with customer service people, to the point where I've sometimes felt I have gotten dead-ended by folks who let their own or their company's inertia get in the way of consumer satisfaction, so I decided I would be more assertive and gruff to make sure they understood how much I had been put out by the bit malfunctioning (I overstated a little how much damage had been done by their bit breaking while routing my really nice Walnut board). Without even prompting, the tech guy I had been transferred to offered to send me a new bit free of charge. And he was genuinely distressed by the failure of his company's product, and asked me to send it back in the same package in order to see whether and how it might be defective.
Feeling self-satisfied for my assertiveness having been rewarded, I thanked him for standing behind their products and gave him my shipping info.
Got the replacement bit three days later, and sent back the broken one.
Yesterday my phone rings and it's the customer service person from Whiteside to whom I had first spoken (and who had transferred me to the tech guy after I had made sure she understood how frustrated I was with my broken bit). I said "Thanks again for your help the other week -- I got the replacement bit just a few days after we had talked." She replied, "Right...We got your broken unit back Mr. Reno, and it's actually an Amana bit." Me: "Oh."
I apologized profusely, explaining that I had so many Whiteside bits I just automatically assumed it was one of theirs (this is half-true), and of course offered my credit card info to pay for the bit. She was so nice that she just charged me the unit cost, and set aside the freight charges -- not just the back and forth freight but also the third round for her shipping my broken Amana bit back to me. So yeah, egg on my face. But I do have a new spiral bit. And I will be buying some more Whiteside bits in the future to make up for the shipping.
If you were to ask me why I didn't simply read the shaft of the bit to discover that it was an Amana, I have no answer. I do realize now that the place I originally bought it from only stocks Amana and CMT bits -- but I had forgotten that. I think what happened was that after I couldn't fit any standard screws, and I went to Tools for Working Wood and saw that the Whiteside spirals had a proprietary nut for securing the bearings, my mind just fixated on the fact that I had a Whiteside bit.
There has to be a moral to this story beyond just "Read the shaft", but I'm not sure what it is.
