Follow-up to Lie-Nielsen post
Kelby
>I wanted to let everyone know a couple things as a follow-up to my post a couple days ago about rust pits on a Lie-Nielsen plane. I was a little frustrated (understandably, I think), but LN does not deserve any criticism for what happened. If anything, my experience speaks well for them. So here are some follow-up thoughts to make sure there's no ambiguity in the record.
First, it appears that the pits did, in fact, develop while in the dealer's storage. The plane was made in April, and shipped to me in September by the dealer. The pits probably developed during that time. So in all likelihood this has nothing to do with LN quality control.
Second (and this probably comes as no surprise) LN saw the thread here on Woodcentral and Tom LN himself sent me an e-mail Monday morning to get the problem taken care of, offering to send me a new plane right away and I could send the old one back when I get to it. This was particularly impressive given that I bought the plane from a dealer, so LN did not even have the transaction in its records. As I have thought about it over the past couple of days, the most remarkable thing about LN's customer service on this problem has been that it's not surprising --- this is the high level of customer service we have all come to expect from LN.
I was certainly frustrated at first that there was a problem, but I don't think LN has any fault for it, and LN has been extremely good about taking care of the problem. At most, LN may want to find a way to ensure that dealers take better care of the inventory or to guard against dealer storage problems. I have bought several tools from them in the past, and I will continue to do so in the future.