How a Dumb Ass Like Me Saves Face-the Quad “F” Solution

To All the Enthusiastic Customers who Suffered though our Sale Yesterday:
 
I apologize for wasting your valuable time.
 
We literally have thousands of transactions to fix.  The multiple “submits” have basically killed the inventory, created multiple duplicate charges that need to be reversed…and it gets worse–
 
Our IT company that runs our shopping cart quit on us yesterday when we screamed for help.
 
Those are details however and they will all get fixed in the next few days. Orders will get shipped and for those of you who see multiple charges on your card for the exact same amount, they will all get reversed–despite the appealing notion of me disappearing to a tropical island with your money, particularly an island without an extradition treaty with the United States…  (We have one customer who hit submit 30 times and has 30 pending transactions–his name rhymes with Alex… Oh boy.)
 
The real issue is the huge public relations mess. Believe me, WE KNOW many of you are pissed.
 
So, last night I turned to somebody who handles public relation issues for a Fortune 5 company. This guy is in charge of all the New York City PR for AT&T, and those customers are perpetually torqued, or so it seems. And this guy just happens to be my son, Brian.
 
He talked. I listened–which has NEVER happened in reverse. So here is what we are going to do;
 
Next week I leave on my annual work retreat and will not be back in the office until the first week of February (somewhere in the lower 48 in case you are wondering…). The very first thing I am going to do is design a tool for ANYBODY who has placed orders from that “Clearance” page and we are going to build it, and send it to you folks for free.  I call it the Quad “F” solution.  We get a big “F” for how this all went down.  We get to “F”ix the mess and you get a “F”ree tool…the fourth “F” is coming…
 
Today, as we cancel the duplicate orders, items that appeared out of stock should reappear. Those items that we know are out of stock will be taken down. The “Clearance” section may disappear in interim spurts as we fix our inventory. It will come back. Furthermore, because this will take a couple of days to fix, our Quad “F” solution is live until I get back in “F”ebruary.
 
I don’t give a hoot how much this is going to cost us. I hope you accept my apology and I assure you the free tool will be cool. It is not like we have another option.
 
I also want to apologize to our staff–they are doing their best.
 
-John

69 comments on this post:

  1. John, thank you for your message and the commitment to all of us.

    Guys, as some of you know and some do not, I have no affiliation with BCTW other than I love their tools and I have become friends with John, Michael and so many of you. I am only saying this so that I will not be seen as a shill.

    I too was frustrated last night and at one point had two laptops, an iPad and my phone all attempting to make orders or even log in in a couple of cases. However, it did not take me too long to let go of my anger and frustration as I realized what had gone wrong.

    BCTW, has never had a sale like this and in fact because of their sales model the number of people ordering at any given time was extremely low. No one anticipated the volume nor could they have done so as they have had no track record of anything even close to this.

    Finally, at least too me, what John/BCTW is doing to make up for this is completely unprecedented. I have known many businesses that have had situations like this and just said sorry, we wish it had not happened and that was it.

    If this is the worst that happens to any of us, then I am a very happy camper. 😮 😮

    Fred

  2. john,
    i went into this sale knowing it was a first come first served basis. i also knew that there was a distinct possibility of not having some of my order fulfilled. i don’t know what you meant by not giving a hoot about how much this is going to cost you, but i do.

    i support you and your company because i think you care. your design is not only art, it’s functional.

    believe me when i say i know what it means to pay for your own mistakes but in this case you offered no more than you had and i for one do not expect you to create anything which was/is not available just “to make this right”.

    if there is any way you can figure out if anything i ordered is truly in the original stock which you made available for this sale, then i will take it.

    if not, then please consider my order cancelled (with no hard feelings).

    enjoy your retreat and your new relationship with brian.

    regards, dave

  3. I appreciate your messages and hard work.

    To prevent further confusion and overload it may help to take down the clearance page and replace it with a “we are working on it” message until you’ve worked through all the orders.

  4. As this is the first sale of its kind, we should have known that there were going to be problems ordering from the web page, as everybody was trying to process orders all at once. For what John is doing to make everybody happy by designing and building a tool and giving it away for free is above and beyond what customer service is all about. I was happy with my order; I didn’t get all I wanted, but I figured somebody with faster fingers than me scooped the knobs out from under me. Oh well. Maybe the knobs will be put up on the clearance page later on, I’ll check back later. I’m just sayin’ that I’m happy with my order, and if I get a free tool out of the deal, that’s icing on the cake. Can’t beat that customer service.

  5. John, Michael and Consuelo, thank you for your attention to all this. While I was one of those affected by the server’s indigestion, I viewed it with some detachment: you’d warned us that it was likely to happen, your tools are popular (especially when they’re on sale!), and your sale was unprecedented. The perfect storm. So when things didn’t work, and items became unavailable I figured it was just the luck of the draw: someone else got there first.

    I think your solution is extraordinarily generous, though I’m really looking forward to my new F-plane, due to ship in February. Thanks! 🙂

    I’d have loved to see the look on your son’s face when you asked him for advice. First time ever, you say? I bet his sister is jealous…

    Good luck with all this. And I know I don’t speak for everyone when I say, “No worries! Thanks for even having the sale!”

    — Peter

  6. John:
    Personally, I do not believe you need to apologize!

    Many of us were prepared to use the text list, (or in my case the huge pictures and text list which I downloaded to Word, reformatted and transferred to excel), to order from.
    You went an extra mile and tried to make it easy for us to push buttons to place orders. And believe me; once I discovered the clearance page was active, I pushed buttons, lots!

    You are willing to work with us, and I greatly appreciate that. I am not pissed; I was frustrated, but that was mostly because I thought I hadn’t successfully ordered anything. Bridge City Tool lust had a major hold on me last night and yes, I was trying to think of where I would use many of the parts, (hmm need to order some plane floats…). I did think my bank shut down my debit and credit card from too many authorizations in one day; but this morning I discovered the charges to my account(s) and I began to worry about over a thousand dollars of the same parts showing up and how that would work with my normally tolerant wife.

    I am just as guilty in helping cause the fiasco, as I assume most of us are, in that I kept trying to get an order submitted.

    I have never had an unpleasant experience with your staff. I feel very sorry for all of the work (tool order angst) we’ve caused them.

    Work with us and then go take a wonderful rest break, which I hope means some vacation for you and your staff.

  7. I tried to place an order but eventually abandoned it because the items that I really wanted were out of stock and the site was so slow.
    I didn’t expect the site to be so slow, but I could definitely understand why it was. Sucks being popular, doesn’t it? 😉
    Chris

  8. Hey John,

    Cheers and good on you! This puts you in good company with other visionary leaders- remember the first generation iPhone rebate?

    You stick by your customers and your customers will stick by you!

    Sorry for the plumbing problems, I feel that this is just as much our fault. I hope the damage control is not too painful for you and BCTW team.

    Thanks!

  9. Just a bit of humor; I am sure many of us would be willing to test your clearance page… 🙂 🙂 🙂

    Hopefully that won’t cause too much of a ruckus. Please guys, this was a jest post. While I’m sure many of us would be happy to test the page, we wouldn’t actually get to place orders during the testing phase.

    Your IT contractor quitting may be a good thing. Prima Donnas run from IT issues (That they’ve often helped cause) when real IT folks can’t sleep thill they’ve conquered the problem. I hope your next IT company has the talent and commitment you need.

  10. John,

    In the “learning from this mess department”,
    as far as future sales or unloading overstock – be it a spring or a japanese saw, here’s a thought,,,,,,
    Why try and reinvent the wheel?After you get beyond necessity of torture as a payoff. Why not just move the whole instant sale to the one place that does it to the level of the creativity of your tools?
    Ebay!
    You could enter al items under the “pay now option” with a note as to how many are available. The percentage that u would pay to Ebay would be far less than all the energy and cost you are incurring now. You could have a blog reference to the individual items so listed.
    You could be making a payoff thru Ebay as everyone else is that offers BCTW items there.
    That would leave you and Michael with the time to the thing you do best, The design and creation of awe-inspiring tools.

    cheers,
    roger

  11. can someone explain to me why my reply yesterday didn’t get posted ,I was just expressing my frustration just like everybody else .

  12. Roger-

    Thanks for your thoughts. “Torture as a payoff…” that is spot on.

    What we are going to do in the future is no more sales. When we want to liquidate something, we are just going to put it on the X#$%$E#^ Clearance Page. No announcements, just park it there. We know it will eventually move. Maybe I will mention some things on the blog, but otherwise, this is never happening again. Just like I know our toll-free number now…

    We are working on some auction ideas but now have to find new programmers.

    We thought this would be fun, but nobody is laughing.

    –John

  13. @John: A few thoughts.

    (1) Will you now cop to being stewpid as well as dumb? ;-P

    (2) I’m reminded of the old videos of people jostling over Cabbage Patch dolls (I hear every year brings a new set of cell phone and surveillance videos of Black Friday depravity). If missing out on a deal on Wednesday that someone had no idea would exist on Monday gives him more than a moment’s regret…well, they’re nuts.

    (3) I was ordering on my cellphone during bowling–my best night ever–601 in three games!–and knew “first come first served” and “limited quantities” meant not everything I wanted would be ordered and not everything I ordered would be fulfilled. The thing with the “not available in quantities” message at the very end *was* the most obnoxious thing that happened.

    (4) This “‘F’ the cost” response is a nice gesture to salve some hurt feelings, but as a regular, I expect that I will be paying for it one way or another.

    Whatever. Hopefully it’s a bit warmer in Portland than it is in Harrisburg.

  14. John, thanks for all your efforts; I know this has to be more frustrating for you than a wine-soaked guy who pushed “Submit Order” 14 times into the night. (Was that me?)

    If it is any help, my card company’s fraud department called me and said transactions were being approved and then refunded a few seconds later. The only Bridge City charge on my account today is the pre-order for the honing guide I made a few days ago.

    Kansas is one of the few states that still allows the sale of 190 proof grain alcohol for human consumption. Let me know how much it is going to take…..

  15. Roger did beat me to it with the suggestion for ebay. I’ll bet that if you had put up sole kit, hone & spare iron packages there for $100, they’d be gone in a flash!

  16. After a few tries of fiddling around at 2:30 in the morning, my thought was If only people made software tools like you guys make woodworking tools…

    There are a number of ways you could moderate demand when you want to clear out stuff in a quick, orderly way. Too bad your software provider bailed on you. Wussies.

    I appreciate the Q-4 idea, but I would not want you to lose money on account of bad software and too many bargain hunters.

  17. Michael, if you ship me all 30 orders, I promise to put the duplicates on ebay. I might finally have Fred beat! This would eliminate most of your surplus inventory. It’s okay to ship on a pallet; I have a forklift.

  18. And Michael, as for the other 16 clicks – it had to be my tech-savy cat, Louie. Yeah, that’s it! It was Louie! (It had nothing to do with the empty wine bottles by the computer.) In the past, he changed channels on the TV and once even thought Donna’s “sleep number” was zero at 3:00 a.m.

  19. Don’t know if I’m stupid _or_ dumb, but imagine my surprise a few minutes ago when I checked my credit card account and saw that all those apparently FAILED attempts to place an order last night which seemed to abort with an item not available message actually succeeded in placing a charge, but not leavinf a record on the “My Orders” page. Whew!! Until I saw that, I didn’t realize the level of the mess you’ve got to sort out. (I REALLY don’t need all those duplicate hones!!!)

    Good luck,
    John

  20. Either my credit card company is slow or none of my orders went through. I tried it twice after I thought it didn’t work the first time.

    While frustrated, I also think that’s just the way it is. I don’t want to see you lose money over this.We all still love you.

  21. I appreciate your efforts and think some of the website issues are just a testament to our interest in your products. I wasn’t surprised to see the website operating slowly as I’d already expected that. Yes there were some issues, but I don’t think most website shopping carts are designed to deal with a sale of this magnitude. As usual your customer service and concern for you customers amazes me.

  22. John,

    Upstanding as always, I don’t feel as I deserve a free tool, but I’ll take it! Maybe you can name it FN-1, so I can say,”can you hand me my FN tool?” When I have visitors in the shop.

    I managed to get a couple orders through at 3:00 a.m. thanks to drinking lots of water before going to bed. Everything I ordered I want, but if there is anything in my order that you need to satisfy the order of a disappointment customer, please do so.

    Thanks for all the long hours and hard work that everyone at BCTW is doing,
    Rutager

  23. I tried for over an hour last night to build an order, when I finally got everything in the basket and went to check out, I logged in to my FoundersClub (yes I know why didn’t I do it earlier) and everything from the cart disappeared. Set the alarm early this morning to try again but everything I wanted was out of stock (I think I understand now why). Sorry this was such a mess for you. Maybe I’ll still get a chance at some of the items to add to my HP6 and a couple of knobs?

  24. Really appreciate the understanding. YES, once we clear all the duplicates, inventory numbers will change. All I can say is that when we re-open the “Clearance” page again, we will have a real grasp on what we have.

    Also, we have about 80 customers who were charged but there is no order for the charge–some more than once. We are going to contact those folks and have them email us their list–we will try and fill the orders. But first we have to undue the charges.

    Rutager, your tool naming strategy is perfect. We will send out a FN-Tool to all the participants in this mess.

    –John

  25. FN-Tool is brilliant! Once again, success born from failure.

    John – I am sure many of us feel the same about this episode. It isn’t the problems that you are judged on, it is the way you deal with them. And all of you at BCT are doing great. Thank you again, and I look forward to finding out what I ended up buying.

  26. BCT Team,
    Isn’t it fun to have a challenge? I’ll bet Consuelo never imagined this when she signed on (or then again perhaps she did!) Good luck with getting thinks back on track. I’m with Rutager all the way: 1.) the tool offer is above the call of duty
    2.) it is really appreciated
    3.) it is always tempting to get another tool
    4.) the name is perfect as a commemorative tool of the “great sell off of 2013”.

    There HAS to be a marketing lesson in this somewhere…

    Dennis

  27. First, the customer service at BCTW has always been fantastic, and I appreciate you doing all you can. The popularity is because of the fantastic tools you sell.

    Second, in defense of those of us with multiple charges when an error message comes up ending in “Try again later”, you have no order confirmation and your Shopping Cart is still full the obvious thing to do is to try again and assume it is currently overloaded. Sounds bad but I am glad to see from your last post I was not alone.

    Wonderful offer of the free tool.

    I appreciate all the effort.

  28. I want to get this tool made fast so I can include it the chapter of my book “Fatal Mistakes that Don’t Kill” At least I am over the overwhelming urge to gulp Xanax. Truthfully, the past 24 hours have been almost as fun as pre-chewed food.

    -John

  29. Thank you John, I’ve always been impressed with BCT attention to detail and mastery of CNC workflow. I’m even more impressed with the efforts to work through the incredible mountain that the sale must have generated.

    I had a good time, I knew going into it that bandwidth was going to be tight and the whole thing might crash. Enjoy your retreat, I’ve been trying to talk my employer into incremental retirement, where you take a year off every decade to recharge and get out of the daily. It hasn’t gone over yet.

  30. John,

    Thanks for making all of this cool hardware available to your customers. Your character and dedication to your customers really shows in times like this. I’ve worked in I.T. for 30 years now and can assure you that every company that runs on a computer has had a software event that turned the company upside down for a few days. I’m hoping to see what everyone builds with the unique well engineered hardware when they get it in their shops and the creative wheels start turning. I’m sure going to do my best to build something worthy of all the work you and your staff have gone through to make this sale happen.

    Thanks!

  31. John
    As a sporadic rather than regular customer (dictated by finances!) I wanted to echo comments above that you should not beat yourself up about this. knew it was going to be a zoo and feel guilty for adding to your woes (as a double submitter, although a pretty confused one). We do not want you to damage the company because of the ordering glitches (ie – don’t go with the ‘F’ the cost” impulse). I would be pleased to receive a custom designed tool but think you should give us the option of paying for it! I for one, will pay.

  32. Nope. Free it is. That makes it fun for ME! And if it is fun for me, it will be fun for you. I never design anything I would not want myself…

    Now remember, I have been teaching creative thinking courses for over 35 years…

    A “free tool” has a lot of latitude…

    Should be really fun, and memorable. And of course free.

    I won’t let you down. 🙂

    -John

  33. The thing I’m really enjoying about this is how many new people we’re seeing posting on John’s blog! Where are all you wonderful people the rest of the time?!? You all have such interesting things to say; why not come here (or the forum) and say them more regularly? What a great community, brought together by a love of amazing tools.

    Tools. Those FN tools.

    — Peter

  34. What could a person say that hasn’t already been mentioned above. Kudos to John and his staff for trying to mend something that was beyond their dreams. I apologize if I was one of those mutilple orders, if I was it certainly wasn’t intentional. Bless you and the entire staff at BCTW.

  35. John, Like everyone else said, I expected it to be busy and just thought the system was being overloaded and continued to retry submitting. By the confirmation email I count 23 orders. I work in IT and all deployments have some sort of glitch.Please don’t beat yourself up for something your IT company did and then quit when it they really had to do some real work. Only a couple of the orders hit my credit card. While I can only see a couple of the orders, can you go to the first order and fill that one with the items that are availabe? Appreciate your honesty and candor. I too would gladly pay for the FN tool.

  36. John, I have worked majority of my career in the marketing and ecommerce technology space. Even large global enterprises have even worse hiccups in their online shopping channels quite often. They show that they care for their customers by not saying anything or just decide to not respond to customer’s complaints.

    I have to thank you for how you are handling this and really showing those other companies what it means to be truly connected to your customers and in turn make them even more of a fan.

    Thank you for being open with all of us.

    -MP

  37. John, as someone who learned late in life that the “genius” is in the mistakes I was thrilled when I noticed the bogged down ordering process. It means that you have a huge, loyal and really cheapskate following. 😉 That being said you owe is nothing. I encourage you to take this all in stride, you apologized for something you could not possibly foresee being as humble as you are. That is more then most business owners would do. Enjoy the popularity, fixing all this will be work but look at what you have already learned and rejoice in that. Your loyal followers, your magnificent employees and your humble heart. Knowing these things will make you glad you have chosen the path you are on. I am very envious!
    Greg Z

  38. WOW!!! You guys are SMOKIN HOT! I just checked my credit card site and ALL but one charge has been removed! I ditto all of the positives that have been sent in on this site. Thank you for the FN tool but it is totally not needed. BCTW has always been most helpful and caring. Take a deep breath and enjoy your retreat.

  39. BCT is the best. I pretty much try to buy once and cry once so all my tools and toys are hopefully made in the USA or Canada, and if offshore – usually Germany or the UK. John and Michael are top notch (as well as any support crew I’ve spoken with) and Michael even took the time to answer my emails on the day of the big sale. I’m just writing to express the same sentiments as above that we all love the BCT crew and don’t ever want to see them leave the interweb. Good luck to the team in cleaning up and I’m sure everyone will be super stoked with the goodies we get.

  40. A message to John and BCTW staff. Although I wasn’t able to order anything due to the technical snafu, I wanted to pause today and give credit to John AND his staff.
    Firstly to John, your “street cred” is well known in the industry, established over many years, and while I haven’t yet personally accumulated all the BCT I covet to own, it’s obvious from those I do that quality is a high priority in all you do, and I want to thank you for that. I think the quality of your tools must originate in your high personal standard of excellence
    Secondly, your staff at BCTW. Anytime I have communicated with them, they have been pleasant and most helpful. No doubt, being concientous people, they must have “jumped to the pump” to do whatever they could to mitigate the problems as well as put errors right again. So, kudos to everyone at BCTW working behind the scenes.
    Thirdly, to those posters who have chosen to vent their spleen and pour out angst and frustration in a most negative way, it disturbs me that there are such people in an otherwise fabulous community of creative people. Methinks such people are close to the tipping point when they are cut off in traffic or have to stand in a bank lineup. Chill dudes, take a breath and make it your goal to improve things instead of dumping on people that obviously feel bad about situations they did not cause. Thanks for reading.

  41. To all the fine folks who are supportive of our 1,000 plus fraudulent credit card charges…

    We are getting there–or I should say Consuelo is getting there. Michael decided this is a good time for a mini-vacation… just kidding.

    The negative posts are important to me–mainly because I don’t pay much attention to praise. Your support of our products is all the praise one could ask for.

    I do believe in the “iceberg theory”… where one complaint on the surface is sitting on top of the majority of complaints below the surface. None of the comments we have received are vituperative, so we listen.

    We are getting there! Lastly, if you placed an order and nothing happened other than your card was charged anywhere from one to 30 times, please send Consuelo your order and we will try and fill them. No promises.

    Thanks again folks for your patience and understanding.

    -John

  42. John,

    Do you have a tally of how many of us rabid bargain hunters logged in right at the start of the sale?

    -Rutager

  43. You have to take into account the fact that Fred was logged in from three different computers. And the phone. So it might have only been, like, 10 people. And they’ve all posted here…

    But seriously, 1000 people trying to buy BCTW tools on sale?!? That’s great! I’d like to meet more of them. Clearly we share an affinity for high-quality tools and toolmakers with character.

    But that’s a lot of FN tools…

    — Peter

  44. The people noting how a silver lining of all this is the demonstrated demand for discounted BCTW stuff. Might that demand (and the success of the last big inventory reduction sale) also signal potential interest from the bottom end of the BCTW market for stuff at a lower price point? It looks like the brass-and-rosewood era has passed for good for you guys, but I’d love to see some more simple, handsome anodized aluminum stuff.

    Waiting to see if any brass and rosewood comes his way out of the scrum,

    Dave

  45. Guys,

    Can anyone verify that Fred may have also tried to log into an old “Speak and Spell” that was lying around?

    -Rutager

  46. John:
    Take the praise. Healing is needed.

    I am away from home and so limited in time, but I went to bed after reading the blog here and Consuela’s help with my multiple charges.

    I woke up thinking about GAAP; generally accepted accounting principles and how they’re used in coding.

    Whoever was running your cart did not follow accounting rules. Period! The complete absence of any real attempt to follow financial proceures might make them fiscally accountable.

    Perhaps, if you don’t want to get mired in legal issues; you could announce here who your IT company was. Then when someone who follows them can check the actual process, publish the errors here. No lies, no fabrications; but word of mouth about A) incompetent, B) irresponsible IT work can not only reflect poorly on them, but it might save one or more of your customers similar angst. Before publishing the truth in a more public place, check with your lawyers…

    Inventory cart practice:
    Verify Customer account, encourage registering,
    Verify information
    Verify inventory
    receive credit information;
    —-verify address, customer info, card #
    —-verify against bad cards

    WHEN the customer SUBMITS the order:
    Verify inventory, Hold inventory (remove from inventory list),
    Verify Card for transaction purposes, log trans number and any pertinent information.
    Lock the temporarily hold inventory as sold,
    Notify customer if any items were sold out.
    Send to shipping department.

    That little hold inventory during the time it takes to finalize the sale prevents the same inventory from being sold again. It is only held until the whole process is finished. Do not notify the customer of out of stock WHILE processing the purchase. If they weren’t notified then, notifying while finalizing a purchase is not advisable.

    The only reason the held stock part is performed is to allow you and the system to tally up the bill, finalize the sale and then to finalize afterwards. That way, the card company is not notified of a sale transaction before a final total is reached.

    There is far more to this process and it is supposed to be taught rigorously in various computer language classes. Testing of code, especially code meant to go live is also taught.

    I mentioned in an earlier post that I thought the IT company was responsible for most of the problems. After getting multiple charges that have no corresponding BCTW order, I am positive that the IT company is at fault. Seriously at fault.

    I may not be up to the latest java and script apps; but I ca personally vouch that every language I’ve been involved with over the years is or can be completely GAAP compliant. Yeah, most of the code running in my head may be COBOL, CICS, BAL Assembler, C++ and a few others, but the point is there is no reason your cart should have been so discobombulated. Slow, sure. Sticky, definitely. But those are processor/server/bandwidth issues.

    There are a number of software products out there though that are NOT multi-thread capable. When more than X people use the database, view your system, submit orders the software product itself may not work or not work well at all.

    Keep your chin up! Swallow the compliments that are pouring in!

    Surely, it is far better to hear these compliments now than for others to hear them during your eulogy at some very distant (we hope) time?

  47. “pfranks Says:
    January 11th, 2013 at 5:59 PM
    You have to take into account the fact that Fred was logged in from three different computers. And the phone. So it might have only been, like, 10 people. And they’ve all posted here…

    But seriously, 1000 people trying to buy BCTW tools on sale?!? That’s great! I’d like to meet more of them. Clearly we share an affinity for high-quality tools and toolmakers with character.

    But that’s a lot of FN tools…

    – Peter

    54.dmarkowi Says:
    January 11th, 2013 at 8:01 PM
    The people noting how a silver lining of all this is the demonstrated demand for discounted BCTW stuff. Might that demand (and the success of the last big inventory reduction sale) also signal potential interest from the bottom end of the BCTW market for stuff at a lower price point? It looks like the brass-and-rosewood era has passed for good for you guys, but I’d love to see some more simple, handsome anodized aluminum stuff.

    Waiting to see if any brass and rosewood comes his way out of the scrum,

    Dave”

    Perhaps the blog could have some user subdomains, maybe even managed by users; where we could locate each other.

    I normally lurk by habit and before John’s bad experience, I don’t think I’ve ever posted. Still discussions can be good.

    I second Dave’s suggestion.

    I am a user! Collecting supremely high end tools may be nice and love lsuting after them, but handling them is not in my finances. I’d buy more of the little goodies if they were available again; not withstanding the stocked inventory problems.

    Yeah, collectors feel betrayed when new products are released that duplicate a previous one; so? Part of the risk of collecting!

    I’ve gone through several junky hand drills, have a number of mega weight battery ones and the last BCTW handdrill I bid on went for over $700. Collectors be D__ned, I need a quality hand drill! They’re composed of very few parts, yet every currently made one is coarsely made or just plain junk. Just because I want to drill a small hole, I still want a round hole and my bits unbroken…

    Yes, we want John to be happy and free to design better tools plus we want him to prosper, er, we need him to prosper…

  48. You know Rutager, I had not heard that but it is possible! I did hear that Masood was able to get everything that he wanted though. After the first few trys he just called some buddies at the pentagon and…..well that might be why the band width for every one else got so Narrow….

    DJ

  49. Notta a problem. I must have check this page 500 time in the last few days LOL BTw I thought you where on a walk about!

  50. Take it back down man, I can’t stop ordering- I need help.

    Of course if you can find other deviants to engage in the same problem, your own doesn’t seem so bad. To that end, I emailed Masood about the clearance page.

    -Rutager

  51. Yeah, Rutager, I’m with you. I just had to get some of that nifty hardware. At first I thought I ordered a Semi load, but Consuelo called me to assure me that I hadn’t, because that load is going to your house.

  52. Oh, solid ground again.
    Still a bit dizzy.
    Just getting my sea legs again after riding the
    HRC yet another time this weekend.
    .

    (Hardware Roller Coaster)

  53. Roger-

    I hate to tell you this, but you could have saved a lot of money if you would have just bought the entire company…

    -John

  54. Your killing me John!
    Any hints on the “Quad F” tool for all the serial “submit” hitters 😉
    Thanks for letting me bug ya!
    Cheers,
    Charlie

  55. Charlie,

    No hints. But it will soon show up. All that is left to do is put in the magnets.

    Crap! Was that a hint?

    – John

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