Harbor Freight
Reviews
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The
unofficial review forum for Harbor Freight™ tools.
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Frequently Asked (or at least pondered) Questions
Q: Do you work for Harbor Freight? You
keep writing complementary reviews
of their products and seem to have little negative to say about them.
A:
No, I (the primary writer) have a day job and we have other sources of
income. We like Harbor Freight and their products; that's why we
started this website reviewing their tools. We are aware that they sell
some inferior products (e.g., see our list of
The Junk),
but overall we are very pleased with the quality of their merchandise.
We try to help others sort out the good from the bad products with our
honest reviews. Occasionally, we add pointers on the use of a product
(e.g., see
The Poor Man's "Toad")
and
compile
tool lists for special applications (see
Special Products for RVers).
Q: You seem to have very few product
reviews compared with other websites. Why should I visit your website
and read your reviews?
A: We personally evaluate each product before writing our review. Some
products are tested extensively; some reviews are updated as we test
the products further. Our first-hand reviews are vetted in the sense
that we don't allow any one to post any comments they please about
these products. Our reputation is based on the honesty and quality of
OUR reviews, not on who submits what to our website. Visitors that read
our reviews and then compare their own experiences with a product will
develop a 'feel' for our evaluation and a better understand how they
relate to their own assessment. Profit-oriented tool-review websites
often have owners that assert little control on the contents; they
usually just set them up and let the money roll in from the work of
others. They often accept direct advertising and usually profit from
purchases made through their website (using their links). We too profit
from you 'clicking-on' our advertisers links, but they are not
solicited by us and therefore have no influence on our reviews or other
website content. Our small revenue from advertising is for Internet
traffic not
purchases. The distinction may seem subtle but it's very important.
Q: Does Harbor Freight give you
products to test?
A: No, I wish they did. That would cut-down considerably on our costs
and allow us to test more products more quickly. We would have no
problem ethically accepting products to test directly from Harbor
Freight because it would not influence our evaluation in any way -- our
integrity is our most important asset. I suppose
if we generated a lot of negative evaluations they might stop sending
products, but we are fortunate that we do not depend on our work at
Harbor Freight Reviews to 'eat;' we
have decent-paying 'day' jobs and investment income.
(part two of a long answer)
We buy products at our local Harbor Freight outlets (we have two nearby
and a third 40 miles away -- lucky us), occasionally
online, and at auction from returns facility liquidator. When we buy
from Harbor
Freight we usually purchase the product when it's on sale and use any
and all available coupons to get the lowest possible price (Where do
you think our "target prices" come from?) Occasionally, like yourself,
we have an immediate need that demands paying the full retail price for
an item,
but we try to avoid that situation whenever possible. We purchase a lot
of items from a returns facility that auctions open-box and returned
merchandise from Harbor Freight's product lines. We are often (but not
always) able to save a lot of money by buying these items at a
significant discount off even the sale prices at Harbor Freight.
However, we never write negative evaluations based on such merchandise
-- all
unfavorable product reviews are from normal retail products purchased
directly from Harbor Freight. On-the-other-hand, products that test
favorably that were open-box or even items returned by a dissatisfied
customer attest to the quality of these products. In some cases they
have been used extensively and even suffered minor damage, but if they
still perform well then it's "zoom, zoom, zoom" (translation: they're
even
better than expected).
Short version: we buy lot of the
pricier items from a returns facility. If they test out well, we write
favorable evaluations; if they test out poorly, we 'shelve' the
evaluation (and the item) until we have the opportunity to test the
regular retail product. By watching and buying from a returns
liquidator we are also able to see what products are frequently sold
through this channel and therefore which are likely to have an
unusually high number of returns or other problems. So we win in a
couple of ways -- saving money, having pre-used (broken-in) items to
test, and observing
the return patterns for Harbor Freight products.
Q: How long do you test an item before
writing your evaluation?
A: Generally from 5 days to3 years. It varies greatly with the item. We
have gone back and written reviews for items we have owned for several
years, long before we ever imagined that we would be writing reviews of
these products. Some other hot products are purchased and tested much
quicker. We can't wait for a year or two before writing our reviews.
However, we can and do revise our reviews from time-to-time and even
change our opinion about a product. The primary writer here is a
scientist and one of the basic tenets of science is to be open to
change and to revising your hypothesis (AKA opinion). There are a
number of other features that being a scientist brings uniquely to
product testing, but we won't bore you with the details at the present.
Bottom line: items are
usually owned between 6 months and 2 years before we write the reviews,
but
most items are used only occasionally. Poor quality tools often break
very fast, while items such as birdbaths and solar lights take much
long to truly evaluate.
Q: Where's my flash? You seem to have
a very 'plain-Jane' website without the scrolling banners and flash
seen on most modern websites. Where's yours?
A: We don't have any and we like it that way! (No offense intended to
Adobe.) We're a plain-and-simple,
to the point kind of website. We started this website using a template
with a 'make your own website' type of interface provided by our
Internet hosting service. We don't like it and
are now beta testing our traditional straightforward approach to
developing a website (see our www.AddictionScience.net website for an
example). You're
there now -- in our beta testing area. We're content oriented,
de-emphasizing the window dressing which often distracts from quality
content or disguishes poor quality content.
Our intended audience is people who want honest, first-hand reviews of
products sold by Harbor Freight. We wish to appeal to everyone but we
are especially sensitive to users who are not as sophisticated as most
young people at using the Internet. You can find the pretty pictures
(and
websites) elsewhere.
Q: What's your "target price"?
A: Our "target price" is basically what we would expect to pay for the
item. It takes in to consideration the item's basic value and the
frequent sale/coupon prices we've seen for that item. We are often
willing to pay more than the target price we set for the item if we
have an immediate need and would
usually buy the item when it hits our target price in anticipation of a
future need.
Q: What's your "frequent sale price"?
A: The price of the item that we have seen it sell for frequently and
that we would expect to see again in the near future.
Q: What your "best price"?
A: The lowest price we've seen the item sell for within the past year
but not necessarily
one we would expect to see repeated soon.
Q: Why do you sometimes state that the
price is "with coupon"? Who cares?
A: There are two reasons we specify "with coupon" -- first, you need to
go to the store armed with the appropriate coupon or else you'll pay a
higher price (sometimes a sale price, sometimes the normal retail
price, sometimes you might have a coupon for a higher price) and
second, don't expect to use your 20%-off coupon with an item
for which you're already using a coupon to reduce its price. Harbor
Freight honors the 20%-off (and other discount coupons) on their sale
prices, but they don't allow you to use more than one coupon on an item
(i.e., stack your coupons so that you receive an additional 20% off an
item already being purchased with another coupon). Generally, Harbor
Freight does not provide coupons in the store; don't expect them to
whip one out from behind the counter, although you might walk around in
the store and find one or two coupons left by a considerate customer.
Q: You seem to be adding almost
everything to your Hot Buys
list. What's the list good for if everything is on it?
A: Our
Hot Buys list is
composed of items we feel are a good deal when purchased at our target
price. And that is almost everything we review. A few things make our
list of
The Junk and we
recommend not purchasing these items. And still others (very few) are
somewhere in between, in the gray soon we call "everything else." Think
about it: we started this website because we like the tools we can buy
inexpensively from Harbor Freight. We shop for the best price on the
good items they sell and try to avoid the junk at any price. So
naturally, almost everything in the store (at
the right price) is a "hot buy" for us.
Q: I hate Harbor Freight and want to
say bad things about them and the junk they sell. Where do I post these
comments?
A. Start your own website. We will consider publishing complaints about
products and store policies that we feel may serve as legitimate
warnings to others, but this is not a grumble about Harbor Freight
website. We are pro-Harbor Freight, not because they pay us but because
we like most of their products and think they treat us fairly (usually
but not always, see
Harbor Freight Strikes Out this Month).
Q: How do you make your money?
A:
We don't make (much) money from this tool review forum; we do it for
the fun of it! We make our main source of income from our 'day jobs'
and from investments unrelated to Harbor Freight. Our parent company,
Beaux Arts USA, underwrites expenses incurred with this review forum
such as website hosting.
Q: What's your real name, "Professor"?
A. That's a secret but it's not hard to find out.