Thread: Lee Valley service

I've got to agree - LV service is great. I've bought a few things from them over the years & they are always very efficient.

I have not ordered anything this year so far, but I did hear that the Canadian postal service has significantly increased their prices. Hope this does not dent the value of buying from them too much. I have a few items I want & am waiting in hope that the oz dollar gets back to its earlier highs soon!

Couldn't agree more. I have bought from them twice and both times was thoroughly impressed.

I've purchased direct from them 2 or 3 times, and agree the service is second to none.

RossM - the freight charges are indeed a big factor, and coupled with our slightly weaker dollar at the moment the economics of buying direct are a bit marginal. I'm after a couple of planes plus some smaller items, and total price (with freight) comes out pretty much the same as local suppliers right now.

I'm guessing Carbatec would have bought in a lot of their current stock at a better exchange rate.....

I agree, they are great. I have ordered from them and from another (un-named) company the other side of the bay here in Melbourne. Same day, LV order went in last by a few hours. LV order arrived 4 days before the Melbourne order. Both items were in stock.

I keep asking Rob Lee to open a store here but he insists on using his local distributors. I often wonder if the locals realise they get resupplied by LV from Canada faster than the item they sold gets to their customer in Oz.

I will add my support to Lee Valley too. I have purchased gear from them on several occasions, and as you say delivery is incredibly fast. I also found that when the $AU was up over US$0.90, it was not only faster, but often cheaper than buying from the locals.

I suspect the reason LVdoes so well is that their business is geared to handle high volumes of mail order type work. Our local businesses are really retailers who do mail order more on an ad hoc basis, so it is understandable that they are not quite so quick.

Cheers,

Anthony

I thought I'd post the "Lee Valley is Great"... even though thats all you ever hear.

Its repetitive, isn't it... always great service... but 'credit due where credit earned'.

It says a lot of about LV that all you ever hear is "How great is this mob! "

Great tools, reasonably priced (debatable, but do the price comparisons), great service, great range... they tell you when their stock is rubbish, but they stock it for the cost/throwaway considerations, great communication.... the list goes on.

Much credit to a successful company, with great employees, and (what seems to be) great leadership and management.

Funny... here it is again!

I emailed the orders desk at LV last night around 9pm... addressed the 'blurb' to: "Rob Lee, family and team".

Explained how impressed I was and outlined the time frames and whatnot.

3 hours later an email from Rob Lee was in my intray, a "thanks for that" email with an assurance that he'd pass my thanks on to the staff involved in my transaction.

LV meets its 'standard' yet again.

Mr Brush - If you are after a couple of planes it might still be worthwhile. I need some cabinet hardware & when I do that I often take the opportunity to justify some new tools (you ALWAYS need some new tools, right? ) So, I am looking at the router plane & the spokeshave set. I ran the numbers based on an 82 cent exchange rate and I still come out $130 ahead. And that is aportioning freight completely to the tools. I agree that Carbatec have much better pricing then previously (I posted about this elsewhere a while back), but the difference seems to vary product to product. It seems that Carbatec may have heavily factored individual items weight in their pricing calculations. You are probably still better off getting smaller items direct from LV, but bigger things such as a jointer are marginal

Lie Nielsen is interesting.Their equivalent rates are flat across all products They seem to base their local pricing on 70 cent exchange rate (at which point we reach price parity with the US - no savings) At present rates there is a 15% saving in buying from US. If we ever get back to the 93 cent rate territory then the LN savings are about 25% (not taking shipping into account on these)

I've built a simple spreadsheet that calculates any savings at both individual & total potential order level, & it also takes into account the credit card exchange rate fee (usually 3% - ruddy leeches) which most people seem to omit when they look at the costs. You can waste hours plugging in the numbers for your tool drool & working out what items to include & at what rate you should wait for to place an order!

Send a PM with your email if anyone wants a copy - it needs Excel 2007 or better.

I'd like to add my endorsement to the Lee Valley service. I've bought from them 3 times and every time the service was excellent. On one occasion I bought a large, heavy order which took a while to arrive (I chose the slowest, cheapest delivery option) which was not a problem for me. Contact from Lee Valley at every stage of the process made the wait reassuring rather than nervous. They're always friendly and helpful and most importantly on the ball.

+1 to what everyone else has said - in addition to which, I'm very impressed with how reasonable their UPS rates are, especially compared to airmail. They really seem to have done their research on how to get the best prices and service from UPS. It's no longer a "wish I could afford the three day option" option...

So to Lee Valley.

I hear they make a couple of decent tools, too...

I'll sing the same song as all of the above.

Great gear, great company, easy to deal with and surprise surprise - would have to be almost unheard of today - they seem to care - I'm not their biggest customer by any stretch of the imagination - but they make me feel like I'm a valued customer - a pleasant change and what's more it feels good.

Ordered some Maxi-Cut bits on the 11th, they got here this morning.

Lee Valley get

Ordered a LV 62 1/2 LAJ and it was here in a week even alowing for NSW long weekend.