Southbend 5

[Hawkeye]

Re: Southbend 5"x6" Horizontal/Veritcal Bandsaw FAIL

What? No warranty?

 

[jgedde]

What ever happened to the days of manufacturing tools that you could pass down to your great-grandchildren?

Gone forever I'm afraid. Tools like that are still available to a limited extent, but us HSMs cant afford them. At work we just bought two Hardinge HLV lathes with all the trimmings. They ARE built to last and are AMAZING machines (although not powerful). But, they cost us $57,000 EACH!

Also gone forever, are overbuilt machines built like a brick you know what.

John

 

[george wilson]

Re: Southbend 5"x6" Horizontal/Veritcal Bandsaw FAIL

Last time I checked,Hardinge HLVH lathes were about $65,000,I think. I have a 1964 one.

Very,very few people have been disappointed with Grizzly customer service. Looks like you are caught in some kind of parts vacuum. My friend Jon had to order some parts for his Grizzly 12 X 36" lathe,and they,indeed,also had to come by slow boat from China. Most of the time,customers have been happy,though.

I have an old 4" X 6" Dayton cutoff bandsaw that I bought USED in the early 70's. It still is working. Not sure if it was made in USA or not. I hadn't heard of Taiwan made machinery back then.

 

[hq308]

Re: Southbend 5"x6" Horizontal/Veritcal Bandsaw FAIL

I don't know how your consumer laws work in the US but here in Australia if something fails during the warranty period the consumer gets the option of the "three R's" Refund, Replacement or Repair. In a situation like yours an Australian consumer would have the option of refund or replacement considering they can't repair it because they don't have parts.

Do you have a government consumer agency you could contact for advice? You may legally have other option available that you're not aware of.

 

[ScrapMetal]

Re: Southbend 5"x6" Horizontal/Veritcal Bandsaw FAIL

Nice looking machine by the way. ;D Your situation with the machine sucks but, (this is a "but" from a business owner so take it for what it's worth) I don't see where Grizzly is at huge fault here. Okay, okay, it sounds like their customer communications (a legitimate gripe as far as I'm concerned) weren't real hot but other than that they did ship you out the parts that you ordered. I know there were maybe some flaws with the parts drawings but if the bushing is part of the wheel, it is not a separate "part" and wouldn't have a number separate from the wheel. Most likely Grizzly got the "parts" diagram from the manufacturer and is in the same boat as you in using it.

As for the length of time it takes to get these parts, well, it just sucks as well. I don't know why as I don't deal with importation of machinery that is manufactured in a foreign country. I do know that every time I've had to get parts in similar situations the time factor is about the same. I can only think that it is a matter of communication through an extended and muli-country/language grapevine to try and grab a particular part off the production line before it gets used in another machine. There just doesn't seem to be a procedure for this on lower-end (sub thousands of dollar machines) on parts not generally expected to fail within the warranty period. With Grizzly as the distributor they are probably at the mercy of the manufacturer/importer/whatever as well.

I don't like it any more than you but that's kind of the way it is.

-Ron

 

[Tony Wells]

Re: Southbend 5"x6" Horizontal/Veritcal Bandsaw FAIL

Please don't take this as an insult, but why didn't you just make a new bushing yourself?

 

[Highpower]

After many emails back and forth to the dealer (Southbend would not respond to my emails) expressing my displeasure with their methods of support and parts availability, I finally told them to just send me the damn part as quickly as they can and to remove me from their mailing lists as my dog-earred catalog was going in the trash and I would order all products from Enco from now on. One phone conversation with them had yielded the promise of some form of compensation, a gift card or something, but a phone call a few days later said they were not going to honor that promise as it was just backordered parts.
Needless to say, I feel that the customer service from this dealer totally sucks and I will not do any business with them ever again.

I totally understand your frustration having been there - done that. Not with Grizzly, but with Enco. The fact is you will run into these types of problems with any company at some point or another. None of them are immune from issues like this.

The difference is in how they handle the situation for the customer. I am somewhat surprised though, because I have usually heard in the past that Grizzly had good customer service. I've never dealt with them myself. I had a couple of issues with the new 7x12 bandsaw I bought from Enco when it arrived. I had to make several phone calls to different departments and talk (sometimes to the point of screaming) to multiple people before I got one of them to admit that the problem was on their end, and do something to rectify the problem. In the end, they gave me a couple extra dollars back for "my time and inconvience". They still were not able to supply me with one of the parts I needed that was damaged, but I found one at McMaster that worked just fine.

Was I aggravated at Enco at the time? Yes. Will I stop buying from them? No.
If you do that in every case, you will quickly run out of suppliers.
In the future any purchases they can't supply parts under warranty they will get the entire machine back for a replacement or refund. End of.

 

[Grandtools]

Desmocrat,

As I recall... some time ago the owner of Grizzly wrote some posts on PM (that other forum) about South Bend. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this but all he did was to basically buy the South Bend name (rights to the trademark and logo and so on.) His basic intention was to slap said logo on to a bunch of machines and sell them at inflated prices.

The only machine they seem to sell which in any way resembles a South Bend is their SB10K (SB1002) which costs $4,754 delivered and doesn't even come with the stand. Compared to their G4003G "Gunsmith Lathe" which has twice the HP and comes with a stand, larger swing etc... etc... for only $3,450 delivered.

All the rest of the "South Bend" (appropriately in quotes) are the same cheap stuff but with a different logo, paint scheme, and price tag. Somehow I doubt that the name tags are even made here.

In any case... the intention of the Grizzly owner and management (by their own admission) was to use the "South Bend" name to sell the same imported machines at a premium price. The only thing the buyer gets out of the deal is the opportunity to get the warm fuzzies by having a once great brand name stuck on their purchase for a lot of extra $$$.

I would hazard a guess that the Grizzly G9742 horizontal bandsaw has the exact same wheel, bushing, and shaft parts.

Kinda late in the day to say it but anyone feeling any sort of market/brand name loyalty for the "South Bend" name, or feeling that there might just be a little extra quality and service due to a sticker needs to understand that they are quite possibly deluding themselves.

Grizzly needs to serve their customers properly or lose them regardless of where they import their machines from or what they charge for them.

[/just my opinions]

-DU-

Well even worse than what you stated above is the most recent posts on P-M by Mr Grizzly.... After saying he will no longer advertise on P-M due to the negative comments his pseudo- South Bends have received. He even threw in the word "racist" somewhere, but I really saw no evidence of racism anywhere. He also added that he was going to have his legal department deal with copyright infringement by members of P-M who I guess were selling some reproduction feed charts for the lathes. Although Mr Grizz is obviously a very clever and successful businessman, I think it was a totally foolish move to post as he did there. Even though it's highly doubtful anyone from that site would ever be buying a new South Bend from him,, I'm sure a lot who lurk there might be Grizzly customers and I'm sure he'll be losing quite a few of them now.

 

[Grandtools]

grandtools,

I missed that exchange... but then I don't often go to the SB section of the forum. I DO remember that there was a lot of positive (even "warm") speculation amongst the SBers about the announcement back in 2010. Even though I am not an SB owner and can honestly say that, though I have never used one, I can understand the devotion that SBers might have for the brand... I can see why they might get soured by PapaGrizzly getting all huffy.

While PapaGrizzly may now own the trademark he does not own the customer loyalty. That has to be earned... and it appears he is squandering that "warmth" by not coddling his potential user (customer) base.

Perhaps "coddling" is not the right word but in this case it would make good business sense to at least be responsive to his customer base.

I will look up the thread.

-DU-

Check that site.

 

[Tony Wells]

Re: Southbend 5"x6" Horizontal/Veritcal Bandsaw FAIL

Let's be careful not to drag too much angst over here from that site. We all agreed to leave controversy out of this forum, and I realize that at this point, it's all peaceful, but still, the problems on display at the PM forum should be discussed privately instead of on a public thread. It's too tempting to start bashing people.

Thanks, guys.