Well, my minor gloat turned into a major one today. I took the DeWalt scrollsaw back to Timberline (so I could
show the problem rather than just talk about it over the phone). The first clerk I talked to was pretty helpful, but noted that the just-assembled-today demo saw in the store had some "wiggle" in the table as well. Even so, he was willing to exchange the saw.
Before we got to that point I was "handed off" to Richard, one of the managers and a guy I've seen there for years. After some more talking, he said it would be no problem at all to swap saws. He went in the back and came out with a box
still in the shrink wrap and walked it to my car.
It wasn't until he saw the stuff that came with my first saw that he realized what must have happened. (It turned out that the extra sets of blades
weren't from Timberline; they appeared to have Woodcraft-style price labels on them.) He said it was unacceptable that I had received what appeared to be a returned saw. His guess was that someone returned it, it got placed on top of a stack somewhere, and when I came along and paid for one, the returned saw was just pulled from the top of the stack.
When it came out that I had done some demo-ing in the store (with our local woodturning club) during their recent annual sale, he asked if I had been compensated in any way.
"Well, they gave me a couple bucks off the work light."
"No," he said, "we usually offer something like $50 of store credit. A lot of the demonstrators won't accept it and that makes us mad."
"$50? That's not necessary. I'll just take those extra saw blades, if you don't mind."
"Sure, no problem. But no, really, what's your name?"
I told him.
"Here you go," he said, handing me a form with $100 CREDIT written on it.
"Holy Moley!" says I. "You must have done really well with the sale."
"We always do this for our demonstrators," he says.
I'm thinking that maybe the "extra" $50 might have had something to do with the saw fiasco, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. As I thank him and head out the door, he reminds me that they'll be supplying some good door prizes for our turning club's Christmas party next month.
Need I say that they have customer for life?
I set up the brand new saw tonight, and sure enough -- the table does wiggle a little bit. But only about half as bad as the first one, and now I
know that it's not due to handling by a previous owner.
[Nancy, don't let it bother you that I effectively got the DeWalt for $250.
That won't really be true until I cash in my $100 credit for something that I would have bought from the store anyway, right?
]
PS - The blower tube came
pre-attached on the new saw. Whew!