Festool parts.

I've recently ordered some Belt Sander parts for my BaE1075, a Holz-Her manufactured sander produced and licenced to Metabo prior to Festool's takeover of Reich.

Nothing rare or esoteric, just some "consumables": a new base, bag & extraction adapter. Using Festool's parts service usually makes sense, at least in this case. Since the takeover, Festool jealously guards their purchase, and don't licence their product to rivals any more, hence the Metabo is now a superseded design, while Festool's BS75E is still current.

However, I was surprised and disappointed to see that my "new" base, the heavier duty spring steel and cork version, was in fact a "remanufactured" item with a new cork liner glued to an extremely well worn and deeply scored steel plate! I'm guessing that approx. 50% of the expected life of said base has already been eroded away.

If I hadn't desperately needed the parts I would've and probably should've returned it, unused, with a terse missive stating that said "new" part should be inserted in the responsible person's anatomy where the sun doesn't shine.

Instead, I've fitted it to sand my floor edges as planned this weekend. To return the item would have added at least another week to a fortnight's delay. With winter approaching, and colder temperatures affecting the curing of the 7008 lacquer, any further delay would be a disaster.

But I still feel like a mug. Why does this company repeatedly charge premium prices for sub-standard product? Most of their product is excellent, and their parts service is usually reliable. Given the poor performance of a couple of my Festool purchases, however, I think it's time the company lifted their game.

Has anybody else had similar problems?

Hello Ratbag

I am disappointed to read about your spare part experience, to us at TTS a spare part purchase is as important as a new tool purchase

The steel plate and cork supplied under part number 490824 should not glued together, interested in this I detoured passed the BS 75 base location while in our warehouse this morning, inspection found everything to be ok

Is it possible that you can personal mail me details about your purchase, I am very interested in looking into this for you

Regards

Brett

Hi Ratbag,

to sell a used refurbished spare part without specifying this, would be odd for any brand. I have never experienced that with any spare part i ever ordered, regardless of the brand and the country of manufacture. If this isn't a prank by some employee (finding this item not to be in stock, finding a used one and tinkering it up to pocket some money), it can only be hoped that this practice doesn't originate from the factory itself or from its own logistics system. It's no coincidence that there is a reaction from an official dealer; this practice would be detrimental for a brand that is already overpriced as it is.

The only example of dollied-up goods from a factory itself that i know of, are some tools from Bosch, but reasons for that are honest and bonafide. Bosch Europe used to have a tool exchange program for customers (both blue and green line), comparable with the system of borrowed cars you get from a garage. They still have this program, but on a more limited scale. At Bosch Service Stations, you could hand in a Bosch tool in need of repair and you could borrow a similar tool to use until your own tool was ready for pickup. This service (for which you paid a small fee) prevented tradies from having production and revenue loss. When these borrowed tools were handed in again, Bosch cleaned them and took them apart if necessary, to have them ready and back on the shelf for the next customer. During refurbishment, Bosch didn't care about the colour of housing parts and the source of replaced parts, these tools only needed to function properly and reliably and were not meant for purchase anyway. The tools from this exchange program were often spraypainted to have them look nice again. Bosch even spraypainted the nylon housing (i've been looking for decades for a paint formula that doesn't peel off from nylon but i doubt that they'll tell me what they use !), so it was possible with these tools that there were blue housing parts underneath an overall green coat of paint, or vice versa.
All this was perfectly above board for Bosch to do, because these tools bore a red decal, stating clearly that they were part of the borrow-exchange program. Once in a while, such a tool ended up (and occasionally still does so today) in Ebay. I bought a blue line long-neck grinder on Ebay a few years back, which had been part of this program. The seller had peeled off the decal (for which Bosch can hardly be held accountable), but to me the new coat of hammerite grey and blue were a giveaway of the tool's source. From the inside it was a perfectly maintained tool and its parts showed that it had seen only a few hours of use. External scratching and other housing damage by borrowers had apparently made a cosmetic touchup necessary.

So, this is an example of a factory circulating refurbished goods, but for a perfectly good reason and telling so to its customers in a clear and honest way. If there is any need to flog used goods through official channels, this -in my book- is the only decent way to do so.

greetings

gerhard

HI Gerhard,
I'm interested to hear your views on why you think Festool are overpriced.
I'm a Festool user myself and I agree they are expensive but do get a lot of pleasure using them.
Also I feel they are well made and almost never let me down.
Surely it follows if something is so overpriced the company would go out of business given there are so many other good tool brands on the market.
Do you feel Festool users are being conned?

I actually feel Mafell tools are overpriced but like I said would be interested in your informed opinion.

Festool parts are sometime dearer than other brands but it usually comes down to where the part is made, Germany would never come close to what the parts from China come in at...its like a Mercedes part being compared to a Hyundai or even worse Great Automobile.

For the amount of repairs we see coming thru our service depatment I would say that 90% of them are from Chinese brands like Makita. We would get under 1% of our turnover of Festool Tools come back in warranty period, if the parts were from China you would probably see this ratio up between the 5-15% mark