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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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I bought a brand new DeWalt thickness planer from Amazon. I open the thing up, and it's already got sawdust in it. "Huh, was it...tested for some reason?" Wasn't much sawdust; like it looked like it had planed maybe one board. I set it up to do a test run on a 2x4, it feeds about 5 inches and stops HARD. The board hit the back roller and just STOPPED. Nothing I could do to get this thing to feed a board through, what I had was a $700 snipe machine.
Okay, planer's defective. This happens sometimes. Called DeWalt first, they could service it but probably the fastest way to get a working planer in my hands was to return it to Amazon for an exchange. Call up Amazon; their phone tree is slightly computarded but I get an actual operator who arranges a pickup of the old unit and a dropoff of a new one.
Here's the problem: That sawdust that was already in the machine. Not much, just a little bit. Almost as if someone had already bought this planer, hooked it up, started it, found it wouldn't feed a board, and returned it to Amazon.
And instead of being sent back to DeWalt or a service center for repair to be sold at a 15% discount as a refurbished unit, instead it was sold to me as-is at full price. I'm guessing it's going to bounce back and forth between customers until they find someone who will just eat the cost.
Mind you, this was labeled as "sold and shipped from Amazon."
I've had a similar experience with some monitor backlights. I was sent a "new" product that, when I opened it, I found it had been cut up (which breaks it), adhesive backing removed, parts removed from packaging, etc. Clearly used, returned, and sold back to me unchecked as new.
Almost as frustrating would be the third party sellers who intentionally send me something other than what I order, claim a mistake and that stock is out on the original order, and then try to convince me to keep it with a discount (price less than what I paid but equal to what I ended up getting), like some sort of shipping shell game. This has happened to me multiple times, from clothing to computer parts.