I shopped at Chads Toolbox for what I believe is the first time in a whopping 14 years.
I had mixed experiences in the past, and their lower prices finally enticed me to give them another shot.
This time around, I ordered 2 tools – the Knipex plastic wire duct cutter shown above, and a Wera screwdriver that isn’t shown here.
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The Wera screwdriver was wrapped in brown paper and taped, and the Knipex tool was in its box.
I’m pretty annoyed that the ~$150 Knipex tool was bent out of shaped due to poor packaging.
The thin box is meant for warehouse stacking, shelf placement, or shipping within a larger box.
Chads Tool box wrapped it with thin plastic and sent it off via USPS.
I bent the fence back into shape with pliers. It’s not at all square, but I don’t think it’s worth the hassle of a return and rebuy.
Frankly, I’m really annoyed. While the Wera screwdriver was wrapped with a little more attention, everything was packaging inside a thin plastic bag.
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I ordered from Chads Toolbox instead of Amazon because I wanted to avoid haphazard shipping.
Both Amazon and KC Tool – my go-to for Knipex ever since Amazon shipped me used and damage pliers as new – have it for more. I could have gotten it for less from overseas Amazon storefronts, but I didn’t want to risk having to deal with tariffs and customers now that de minimis exclusions have been removed.
I might need to bend the fence back into shape a little bit more.
I know it’s not a big deal, but I don’t think this reintroduction went very well.
Where do you get your Knipex tools from?
Clay
Woot has them sometimes (which is basically Amazon) and I have bought from them.
Locally, i have bought Knipex from Menards.
CA
Harry Epstein has always packaged their stuff with care and their shipping charges are fair.
CA
Of course I do understand they don’t offer as wide of range of Knipex products that KC Tool does.
Stuart
Harry Epstein Co are good people.
Gestione Sportiva
I’ve purchased almost 90 % of all my Knipex from Chads Tool Box. I keep going back to them due to their lower than average prices and so long as I purchase over $100 at a time, no shipping cost and always no tax. At times they have been lower than amazon.de
Their packaging has always been as you described. They don’t really take much effort in packaging and majority of the time it’s just wrapped in brown paper, taped and just dropped in a bubble packaged USPS envelope. Thankfully I haven’t had to get anything delicate so they’ve arrived undamaged.
Stuart
This wasn’t even a bubble mailer!
TomD
Something changed in the last five years – USPS would have rejected “crap in a bag” but I think pressure from Amazon and friends mean they now accept it.
Bubble mailers and boxes are “somewhat” expensive at scale so bargain places are obviously skimping.
https://www.uline.com/BL_2417/Uline-Economy-White-Poly-Bubble-Mailers
Maybe fifty cents or so per mailing, adds up.
Though that damage would probably have happened through a bubble mailers; looks like something heavy was on top of it in the wrong place.
I’d return and get a replacement – the ONLY way they’ll ever change is if shipping damage replacements are eating into their profits.
Bonnie
The timeline connects with Louis DeJoy taking over USPS and doing a bunch of “modernization”.
Gestione Sportiva
Now that’s tacky and lazy!!
KMR
The problem with free shipping from smaller and even some large companies is that it entices them to cut corners to try and preserve as much profit margin as possible. This often results in inadequate and poor packaging, and very often inventory/stock boxes end up serving double duty as inappropriate shipping boxes.
Proper shipping boxes cost significantly more than mailer bags, and the price of cardboard boxes has increased considerably in recent years.
Labor time costs money. The more complex the packaging method, the more time it takes, the more labor expense is put into each shipment. Not to mention training the employees on how to prepare items, which is often not done and I often believe the employees just don’t care because it is such a low wage job. You can’t tell me the packer for Target doesn’t know that putting two jars of Rao’s pasta sauce in a box with just airbags as fill will result in a mess. I’ve had this happen multiple times.
With regard to product packaging that is meant just for inventory/stock use, well, I’ve got a story to tell you there. Two years ago a local tire shop damaged the wheel of my wife’s new $100k Italian SUV. They agree to pay for a new wheel, but US dealers want $4400 for a new wheel (very high end wheel, forged by Fuchs in Germany). So I found that the OE wheel was 1/3 of the price in Europe. Ordered one… it arrives in a large heat sealed black bag over the very thin inventory/stock box the wheel was already in. Of course the wheel’s paint didn’t survive the transatlantic trip intact, and I paid a reasonable amount for shipping! So it isn’t just US companies that do half-assed packing. Another annoyance is that the majority of European cardboard is almost all 100% recycled previously, little virgin coarse paper pulp, so European cardboard is very soft and weak.
Our free shipping threshold is $400 on the ecommerce site for my business. This insures that the order already had adequate margin that we can accept the expense of providing free shipping, while insuring we do a quality job packaging the customer’s order. I have trained my shipping staff well, they’re paid well above minimum wage, and I stress to them that I would rather they spend a few extra minutes to pack an item properly than have an upset customer call and need us to send out the same shipment a second time to rectify damage.
fred
I had mixed experiences with Chads too. My past issues were more about delays in shipping (hard to tell what was in stock versus what was on long-lead-time back order). Perhaps their website is now more informative.
As for others – I’ve been pleased with handling/shipping from Acme, HJ Epstein and KCTool. Amazon has been hit and miss – but returns (usually at a nearby Whole Foods) are easy. I recently ordered a 3-meter Makita track saw rail (194367-7) from Amazon as a gift. At nearly 10 feet long I had more than a little trepidation about its free shipping. While several reviews on Amazon complained about it arriving bent and unusable – the price $234.99 (after a promotion coupon) with free shipping was compelling. Acme sells it for $324.99 but adds $399 for handling. Anyway, the recipient received it inside Makita’s plywood and Masonite crate in perfect condition. He called to say that a big Ryder truck had pulled in his driveway on a Saturday to make the delivery. My take on this is that our package delivery system can be hit or miss – even with competent packaging. Some customer pictures on Amazon show what looks like the same wood crate that my nephew described – broken open with the guide rail bent so far as to be worthless.
Stuart
That was a concern here too. The screwdriver was in stock and the specialty tool didn’t have any info. But luckily it arrived relatively quickly without my having to nag them for an ETA.
I ordered new model NWS pliers for one of my earlier orders and received the older version.
Those and some other reasons are why it took me so long to give them another try.
Bonnie
Acme has shipped me tools in their retail boxes, but they were the heavier duty display boxes that some tool companies use rather than the thin stocking boxes. So no harm no foul there and I’m happy to have less needless cardboard to dispose of.
Amazon has zero consistency in basically anything they do these days. They’ll use their own in-house delivery, USPS, UPS/FedEx/DHL, and gig drivers in clapped out civics all seemingly at random (it does actually make sense in their backend dispatch system I’m sure, but isn’t evident from a consumer perspective).
I’ll add McFeeley’s to the list of good packaging, always well tessellated and wrapped up inside a solid box. Conversely I’ll put PlumbersStock.com on the list of crappy shippers (13 fittings on my order had either fallen out of the empty box everything was rattling around in or were forgotten at the packing stage).
It’s not practical for a lot of businesses, but when I had a little e-commerce store I made quaility packaging and shipping one of my advertising/selling points, and it seemed to resonate with a niche customer base and got a surprising number of reviews.
Nathan
Being in the shopping industry adjacent I’ll just say that you didn’t pay for shipping so they didn’t care. Free shipping deals and other low price shipping is never marked for careful handling or packaged well. From that I can see
Stuart
A few years ago I read the terms of service at a specific online store. If you opt for free shipping and a package is lost, stolen, or tremendously damaged, they’ll deal with it. If you pay for upgraded shipping, you’re on the hook for dealing with it.
I’ve seen terrible packaging from a lot of companies whether shipping was included or paid for.
Unless you know for certain that Chads Toolbox would have packed my order more carefully if I paid for expedited shipping, you can’t say this is what to expect with the free shipping option.
KMR
We deal with the “responsible party” issue for shipping damage by allowing the customer to purchase optional shipping insurance during our checkout.
$1.33 per $100 of order value, which is reasonably close to the the actual cost of shipping insurance.
In reality, we almost never have to deal with damaged shipments. As I stated in my earlier comment, we have taken a stance not to skimp on quality packaging and shipping standards.
Stuart
I’ve seen some independent shops tack on 3rd party insurance, and I hate it.
Prometheus Lights, for example, charged $12.32 shipping on my $192.75 order and “route protection” was a separate line item at $4.75.
Some stores make it very difficult to remove “route protection” and there are stories about problems if you decline it.
I’d rather stores bake insurance into the shipping fees.
KMR
So your total shipping expense on that Prometheus Light order was still less than 10% of the product value. The base shipping was likely very reasonable, if not provided near actual shipping cost for the business.
Like most consumers, I think you need to re-evaluate your expectations for shipping.
On rebuilt items we sell, customers have 45 days to return their core (the old part we need back). Customers can purchase a shipping label from us, or they can do their own shipping. We even tell them they can go to a discount shipping service reseller, like PirateShip.
You should input the shipping details for that Prometheus order into something like PirateShip and really see what it costs just for the shipping service, outside of packaging, outside of packaging labor.
Stuart
It annoys me when 3rd party “route protection” is practically a compulsory upsell, or when I pay $25 in shipping fees only for a box to be snail-mailed with a $5 price on the USPS box.
It’s been a slow process to move from “woo free shipping on everything!!!” to “okay, that’s reasonable,” over the years. I know how much it costs to ship things, although weirdly I often get better public/retail rates at UPS than my discounted account.
Does free shipping justify skimping on packaging? Reasonable care should be taken to avoid preventable damage, whether shipping is extra or baked into the price.
In this case, with Chad’s, I’m annoyed but trying to be understanding.
I’ve had a lot of issues with shipping damage this past year because too many companies moved to thin plastic-wrapped packaging. Product boxes (snacks, LEGO sets) arrive smashed. Tools arrive dented or scraped up. Items arrived broken. And that’s whether shipping is free/included or paid for separately.
KMR
Route Protection is proprietary 3d party service.
https://route.com/
As you noted, it is designed as basically a forced upsell. This is the business’ choice to use this method, but also likely because it is one of the easier shipping insurance integrations into their ecommerce platform. With most ecommerce sites moving to 3rd party closed systems, businesses have less flexibility in customizing the shopping experience. Use a browser plugin like “wappalyzer” to see how many sites now use Shopify as their platform.
I’ve refused to do this. The shipping insurance example I gave for our ecommerce site, $1.33 per $100 order value is a simple opt-out check box during checkout. This required required a bit of custom written code to accomplish with the ecommerce software use on our own servers.
fred
I guess that we all know (or should know) that there is no real thing as free shipping. Amazon builds the shipping cost into their prices. Their volumes and charges for Prime membership certainly help offset the overall cost that we pay for any single item. I’m sure that they have algorithms that calculate the amount that they need to build into the price of each item they sell for shipping. They don’t charge more to ship to a remote farm in Wyoming than to a home that’s across the street from one of their distribution centers. So, we all have some median or average shipping cost built into our price.
But if you want to buy in bulk, on many items the Amazon “free shipping” model costs you more – as the shipping cost for 1 item is just multiplied across the bulk order. This can be particularly apparent when you buy things like insert bits. We used to buy them in bulk (hundreds of various types at a time). The MRO supplier we used would stuff about as many as would fit into a USPS Priority mail flat rate box – use yards of clear tape to prevent the box from splitting open and just add the USPS price to the invoice. This model worked well for insert bits because of their good packing factor and very low probability for damage in transport.
Chris
I’ll vouch for Zoro here. Nothing but good service from them. Love the coupons, love the reasonable delivery time. (Usually 2-3 days after ordering)
MM
My oldest Knipex tool is a CoBolt cutter I bought as a walk-customer in a hardware store in Denmark in the 1990’s. I bought it to cut hardened steel pushrods for R/C models. I haven’t touched an R/C model in twenty years but I still use those CoBolts often. They are an original ‘epiphany tool’.
More recently I’ve bought Knipex from HJE, Amazon, KC Tool, McMaster-Carr, and Allied Electronics.
Matt_T
Most of my Knipex is from Zoro. Looks like Home Depot also carry some online. They’re a couple options that pack properly and ship quickly IME.
Whilst this is definitely a failure on Chads part Knipex are also partly responsible IMO. Using barely adequate for warehousing packaging on something fragile which is pretty much always shipped to the end user is ridiculous.
Adam
I couldn’t remember if I had CTB still bookmarked, but I knew the name sounded familiar. I guess I never loved the layout, however with pricing lately, I’ll be comparison shopping them.
I do see they have a scratch & dent area of the site. Perhaps the Knipex should have been listed there