First off, I want to be clear that the reason for this post is not to bash or push people away from buying from Fireball Tool. On the contrary, I think they have a lot of innovative and quality tools / products to offer (some are expensive but the quality does justify it and there are others that are priced competitively while still maintaining quality). I respect the company that @Fireball_Jason has built out and how he approaches it. I want Jason to continue to succeed, and if this was my company I would want to know if there are issues that need addressed, to that end. That is the reason for this long post.
As a first time buyer, the first issue was that the advertised 5% discount for subscribing your email list didn’t work on anything I put in the cart. I inquired with customer support about this and they said it couldn’t be used on everything. I didn’t notice any mention of that when signing up (end of this paragraph gives further info) or in the email that gave the code. That was disappointing, especially given that nothing in my multiple thousand dollar order was going to get the advertised 5% off. I still thought there may be something that I ultimately need anyway that I could get the discount on. I asked what types of items does it apply to and they didn’t know. They said I’d just have to add things to the cart and find out. I randomly put a handful of things in my cart just to see but none of them got the discount. I don’t have time to run through everything on the site so that was a miss on getting me to buy additional items, which is part of the point of those discounts. Going back, I see now that in the fine print it says, “Discount Excludes Tables and Hardtail Vise” (didn’t see it the first time so not sure if I just missed it or if it was added since). I did order 2 dragon wagons so that makes sense. However, I also ordered some fixture kits that according to that should not have been excluded (and other items that weren’t tables or vises didn’t work).
My situation is that I’m on about step 30 of probably 500 to accomplish what I’m trying to do under a deadline so unexpected delays will build up and is a big issue for me for certain things. After the advertised wait (no issue there), I received my tables. The next issue was that, like others, I was missing the fasteners to attach the legs to my tables. I contacted support that Thurs night and I ended up getting them on that next Monday (though the tracking number wasn’t received until Monday). Great! that was quick. However, they were the wrong fasteners. So that night I contact them again asking for the quickest way to get the right fasteners. The next day she apologized that she grabbed the wrong ones, offered a discount on my next order (which was nice and was seemed well intentioned), and said the tracking number was soon to follow.
I didn’t see the tracking number on Wed so I asked if it had been shipped out. By Thurs, I hadn’t heard anything. I saw where someone ordered them from Amazon and they credited the cost back to them. So I emailed to confirm the right fasteners and asked if it was just easier if I did that. She got back to me and said I could do that or she got approval to overnight them so I’d get them Friday. No confirmation on fastener specs so I said I was good with them sending them out as long as it was overnighted. I got the tracking number of Fri. but it wasn’t overnighted so I wouldn’t get them until Mon. After these multiple missteps / delays over nearly a week and a half, I didn’t have time to wait another weekend so I took a chance and ordered them from Amazon. I let her know and that I want to have the amount credited back from my purchase. I’m fine with sending both fastener sets back if given a shipping label. I did get the right bolts Sat from Amazon and got the tables set up so I can use them now.
At this point though, I have not heard anything since last Thurs evening. Again, my hope is that this will highlight my experience to help improve the process and prevent these missteps from happening in the future. Assuming I get this fully resolved for me and this doesn’t continue to be an issue, I’m sure I will continue to buy from Fireball Tools as I mentioned their tools are great.
It’s not a great look for Fireball Tool that the fasteners for the legs have been an issue for a number of months at this point. @Fireball_Eli I’d take notice and get this resolved, or you’re going to continue to get people on here talking about how a fairly basic thing like inventory control and knowing the specs of your own product aren’t something customers can rely on you (as a company/CS dept) to have a handle on.
I appreciate that you try to resolve the issue when people post here or contact CS, but that this specific thing is still a problem this far down the road on some of the most expensive products the company sells isn’t good, and is the kind of weird detail that can tank companies if they don’t get it sorted out when they’re selling products at the higher end of the market (which Fireball is doing for the hobby and small shop, AND larger shops with the range of quality tables you have). @Fireball_Jason Rapid growth isn’t an excuse someone dropping thousands of dollars on your product is going to accept when it happens enough times to enough people, even when it’s an excuse that may be technically true. I know you’re probably putting out fires all day every day running a successful business, but I’d devote a little time to finding a resolution for this problem.
Not sure why the discounts weren’t working for you, but that is something that CS should have been/be able to resolve too.
At this point we have our tables inspected and labeled so we can include the correct fasteners, but our warehouse team still sent the wrong ones, which is as dumb as it sounds. Our CS team should have drop shipped some fasteners to you instead of trying to get some shipped to us, then re-shipped to you.
@mRhAnKbOt the leg fastener issue, we went back and identified the tables with the different fasteners, sometimes I think maybe we should have just included both sets with every table, but there’s still a chance someone would have sent two of the same packs and we’d still be here having this conversation
we order our inventory months ahead of time, so the entire leg fastener issue is already solved in theory. I hope it doesn’t, but there’s always the off chance the factory has an early production sample in the corner they decide to send us one day, and we’re no longer doing a 100% inspection on the threads.
I’m also assuming I don’t make any more dumb errors. I’m very comfortable with metric to inch conversions, but the whole coarse vs fine thread being reversed in UNC vs metric gets me every time, since it’s going from threads per inch to thread pitch.
Like 1/4-20 being coarse and 1/4-28 being fine, but M12x 1.5 is fine, vs M12x1.75 is coarse.
I have had this happen from other Vendors (not fFreball tool) also.
Seems weird you have to work so hard, to give someone your money.
Seems like the videos and such would die off for now and everyone would work on problem solving!
What helps is if the company works hard to make it right!
@Knick we have different teams focusing on different aspects of the operations, for the most part the content such as video is completely separate from warehouse operations.
Engineering and production have more overlap, but not always
I agree on the hardware but they did respond quickly to this post. It is also good to understand why it would still be occurring. However to your point, it is a core issue that can have a significant impact.
As for the discounts, I was told they did get it fixed on the website. With the quick response here, I did make another order that I had been mulling over and I had a code that worked as expected.
I never went into the details of my issues with the leg bolts. I was very thankful Jason posted a response detailing the two different sizes to expect and which size went to which table. I honestly think it was a mistake to use metric versus inch threads. Then the bolt issue would be a simple run to ANY store with hardware. The metric made it a trip to my local Ace as they have “ok” metric choices. Now I realize metric is the rest of the world, however what is the target market for the tables at the moment?
I can share one even worse… I have a vertical mill that has 1/2"-12 not 1/2"-13, yup british threads for the feet!!! talk about inability to change the feet to wheels, etc.
So the issue is really strange manufacturing practices on the other side of the world, mistakes are made and we live with the results…
Sounds like this event should be an isolated one from here on out. In the future, designing around a common fastener, like how all the squares are tapped the same, would be the easiest way to eliminate possible problems like what you guys have had to go through with the legs.
In the continued interesting of improving your processes, when the first set of fasteners were sent out, I made sure to call out that I bought 2 dragon wagons so I’d need 2 sets. Though they were M10 instead of M12, they did send 2 sets the first time around. However, I just checked the second set of fasteners that I received on Mon, and while they are the correct M12 fasteners, they only sent 1 set. Now I’m not impacted by that since I am already all set from my Amazon order but I thought you may want to know that. It may be good to get a QC check process in place for any kind of replacement shipments to run what is being sent out up against the original order. Or, I don’t know if you are using any kind of ERP or order management software, but if so, it may be possible to have it flag any replacement orders that don’t match up to the original order.
One other minor suggestion is to have website checkout not just show “FedEx” as the shipping method but be more specific as to whether it is ground, 2-day, or overnight. This may help manage expectations around when orders will be received. I didn’t know my latest order was FedEx ground until the tracking was updated. Ground was fine for this order but if it was something I needed sooner then I’d want to know before I complete the order (and maybe have the option to pay more for faster shipping).
