When was the last time a store or tool company refunded your money for a bad product, before you know it was a bad product? That’s what happened to me today.

Back in January I pre-order a new product that Lee Valley Tools was just releasing, their Thread I.D. ™ (Nut & Bolt Identifier). I finally received it last week complete with its little wooden storage box. I looked it over. It looked well made and I was satisfied that I would be able to use it to sort out that box of miscellaneous screws and nuts that I have sitting on the shelf. Satisfied, I set the Thread I.D. aside for when I have time for that project.

Today, I received a letter from Lee Valley telling me that there had been a manufacturing error, that the marking on the Thread I.D. were not permanent and they enclose a couple of reference cards so that when the marking wore off I would still be able to identify which thread was which. They also said that they were giving me a FULL refund on my credit card for the price of the item and the shipping. I check my credit card statement online and, sure enough, they did.

How great is that, a company that stands squarely behind their products? No company is perfect and I suspect that at sometime in the future I will have some other problem with a product from Lee Valley. It’s good to know that they truly care about customer satisfaction.
 

Background

My current table saw, a Delta contractor saw, is my second.  The first one was a Ryobi portable table saw.  The user manuals from both manufactures suggested aligning the blade to the miter slot by pounding on the trunnion with a hammer or board or by prying on it with a board.  I tried these methods because I was a newbie and didn’t know of a better way.  While these methods produced barely adequate results, I was never really satisfied with it being close but not quite precisely aligned so I purchased a Contractor Saw Precision Alignment & Locking System (PALS™) almost two years ago.

Although I was not fully satisfied with the blade alignment on my table saw, I shied away from the task of installing the PALS™ kit because I thought it would be tedious and time consuming.  After all, my saw wasn’t way out of alignment. It was close enough to make reasonably accurate cuts.

However, those extra blade marks on the sides of my rip cuts were annoying and time consuming to clean up so before starting to build my materials cart, I decided to fix the problem and install the PALS™ kit.  I went on to do a proper alignment of my saw.

Product Details

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