Grizzly Frustration

[julian abram]

I've been wanting to upgrade my planer & jointer so during Christmas I sold my 6" Jet and Dewalt 635 to a nice young fellow who is starting woodworking as a hobby. I had some extra Christmas money so I ordered a Grizzly G04543ZW 15" spiral planer and G0490x 8" spiral jointer. When I placed the order about 10 days ago, I was told the jointer is backordered and should ship around Feb 15th. Ok, I need to use it before then but I am willing to wait. Grizzly shipped the planer, it arrived today damaged. It looked like a forklift fork had pierced the upper portion of the crate and struck the planer. Not sure this was the right decision but I refused it without opening the crate, sent it back. I checked Grizzly's website and found that this planer model is now discontinued.
I'm thinking ok, I'll ask Grizzly to cancel both machines and purchase their 12" spiral jointer/planer combo. As I am looking on their website I see the 12" combo units are all backordered as well.
My gosh this is frustrating, what does a guy have to do buy one of their machines and have it delivered undamaged? I recall reading some other members stories about waiting 7 or 8 months on Grizzly backordered machines. Seems like you may need to plan a year in advance to be assured of receiving one of their machines.
This seriously has me thinking about cancelling the whole order and spending the extra money for a better grade of machine and service.

[Jacob Mac]

I ended up doing the same thing. I cancelled my jointer and planer order from Grizzly and got a combo machine from someone else. I’m not anti Grizzly, but I just didn’t want to keep waiting.

[Scott DelPorte]

Unless you plan to pick up your machine, you might end up with the same shipping company anyway. Were the customer service people at Grizzly helpful when you contacted them?

[Mike Ontko]

Keep in mind too that the reason for the back orders is that Grizzly is a popular source because of the quality they provide at the price point they sell to but especially because of their customer service and support record. And no, I'm not on the payroll but I do have a bit of the green in my own shop (plus, it also helps that I'm only 20 minutes away from their main Bellingham, WA office and warehouse ).

As a post script, if you do decide to reorder through them you might see if it's possible to make other arrangements for shipping.

[Ben Rivel]

This seriously has me thinking about cancelling the whole order and spending the extra money for a better grade of machine and service.

I would. After my experiences with Grizzly Im not at all impressed. They did solve the problems over the course of months, but yea, it took a while and a lot of time on my part. Save up a bit more and look at a Hammer A3-31 12" jointer/planer combo if youre going to consider a combo.

[Leo Graywacz]

I would. After my experiences with Grizzly Im not at all impressed. They did solve the problems over the course of months, but yea, it took a while and a lot of time on my part. Save up a bit more and look at a Hammer A3-31 12" jointer/planer combo if youre going to consider a combo.

I ordered a dovetail machine from them. It arrived on time and I picked it up at the FedEx station to get it to my shop a few days quicker.

It had a defective air cylinder. It was ground out of square and lifted the board when it clamped it down. I notified them and they sent me a refurbished one that arrived quickly and worked. I thought the service was pretty darn good. Plus they didn't ask for the defective one to be returned. So I have a spare (that needs repair) in case one of them breaks.

[Barry McFadden]

I ordered a dovetail machine from them. It arrived on time and I picked it up at the FedEx station to get it to my shop a few days quicker.

It had a defective air cylinder. It was ground out of square and lifted the board when it clamped it down. I notified them and they sent me a refurbished one that arrived quickly and worked. I thought the service was pretty darn good. Plus they didn't ask for the defective one to be returned. So I have a spare (that needs repair) in case one of them breaks.

So, you're happy with refurbished parts on a NEW machine???

[Leo Graywacz]

So, you're happy with refurbished parts on a NEW machine???

It works like new. It's just a clamp. I can't say 100% it's refurbished, it just didn't match perfectly what was on the machine. Looked to be an older style.

Yes, I'm happy enough. I'm not one of those people that have to have pretty tools. I make my living with the tools I buy and as long as they work, and work well, I'm a happy guy.

[glenn bradley]

A "back order" posture is one that any business would like to avoid. There are all sorts of formulas and science behind avoiding this time/cash suck scenario but, retailers are alas, subject to that most fickle of beasts . . . the consumer. I think any thinking being realizes that Grizzly has nothing to do with a shipper damaging goods en route. Any supplier using a shipper to reach you is subject to the same risk.

That being said, having to wait for months for an Asian clone is a pisser. The forums are certainly rife with stories of folks waiting months for their Euro-machines but, that is part of the business model. If you happen to want one of something in stock you can have it right away be it Asian clone or Euro-mainstay. If you want something popular or feature specific, the wait is part of the package.

The G0490's, G0453's and G0454's are very popular for Grizzly and with good reason. This popularity and frequency of purchase certainly does make them more visible when issues occur. Rather than changing your direction after long consideration I would order what you want and try to find something to take up the time until they arrive. It is hard to wait but, at least you won't find yourself saying "I should have just bought what I originally wanted". Hang in there ;-)

[Keith Outten]

In 2008 when the economy took a nose dive almost every American business had plenty of inventory. When the brakes were slammed on money that was available companies were stuck with large inventories and very few orders. Everyone had to adjust including customers, getting used to long waiting periods after inventories were exhausted became the norm. Manufacturers also took a big hit with factories going flat out they were stuck with large numbers of products and no storage facilities to keep them.

Today its pretty standard for companies to keep minimum inventory levels and you can't blame them. End users now have to plan ahead and schedule more carefully than in the past. I have had to make major changes concerning availability of materials for my business and I currently keep a larger inventory than I ever did in the past because I have to these days. For several years we had a terrible time ordering pastics, the waiting list was very long and it really hurt our ability to respond to requests for quotes as the prices climbed at the same time availability declined. As small as my company is it was not uncommon for me to place an order and purchase a suppliers complete stock of certain items and still be short for the job I was working.

FWIW we lost every one of our advertisers here at SawMill Creek in 2008 in a matter of a few months. We were forced to change our advertising strategy in order to get the costs down and convince advertisers to return.

Plan ahead or get used to waiting, this is now the norm and its not going to change.

[Shiraz Balolia]

First, I can completely understand the frustration caused by back orders specially when one wants a new machine. Here are some things that are affecting the popular machines:

1) Jointers and planers - we have the lowest prices with very good quality and the end result is we sell more than probably all other companies combined in USA. Therein lies the rub. While it is easy for us to place orders (we forecast orders based on running demand), it is not easy for the factory to keep up with the manufacturing process.

2) The main factory making these for us actually quadrupled in size into a new facility, but that actually slowed things down for a few months. In the meantime orders keep piling up and the back orders keep increasing. Its one of those things where things get worse before they start getting better.

3) Last year the Chinese government decided to crack down heavily on casting factories (similar to an EPA thing). Numerous foundries were shut down due to environmental issues. This caused a shortage and delay from the factories that remained open. Affected many machines - not just the popular ones.

4) We hate this situation as we keep losing sales from customers who cannot wait and end up buying an alternate unit. We have hundreds of containers ordered, but can only get a fraction of that a month of planers and jointers. There is no shortage of us placing orders. Making machines properly is quite complex and requires many, many different parts and castings from different suppliers. The factory is adding new German made CNC machines as fast as they can, but one cannot just add a few CNC machines and expect shipments to double right away.

The bottom line is that we are on top of the situation from our end, have no shortage of the ability to purchase and hold inventory and hate back-orders as much if not more than customers. These are not excuses, just facts and we are sorry it is happening. By the way, some customers cancel their orders and then re-order at a later date. This is a mistake as they go to the back of the line once they cancel. We are shipping everything that comes in right away. One might say this it is a good problem to have, but it really isn't. The goal of Grizzly has always been to ship all orders received within 24 hours and we have built warehouses to accommodate the cubic requirements. We have almost a million square feet actively in use and it frustrates us to have some unhappy customers. This is absolutely not an issue of keeping just in time inventory - we do not do that.

Thank you for your business.

[glenn bradley]

I am always pleased to see that Shiraz takes the time to comment here. Nothing like getting it from the horses mouth.

[Chris Hachet]

I am always pleased to see that Shiraz takes the time to comment here. Nothing like getting it from the horses mouth.

I have a shop full of OWWM but I want at least one Grizzly machine before it is all over.

[J.R. Rutter]

3) Last year the Chinese government decided to crack down heavily on casting factories (similar to an EPA thing). Numerous foundries were shut down due to environmental issues. This caused a shortage and delay from the factories that remained open. Affected many machines - not just the popular ones.

This is unfortunate for supply in the short term, but welcome for the long term worker health and the health of China as a whole. Instead of ignoring the environmental cost of things like metals and batteries so that we can have cheap products in the west, these costs will become part of the product, just like they are for western made items.

[Rod Sheridan]

This is unfortunate for supply in the short term, but welcome for the long term worker health and the health of China as a whole. Instead of ignoring the environmental cost of things like metals and batteries so that we can have cheap products in the west, these costs will become part of the product, just like they are for western made items.

Absolutely J.R.

It's a positive step...........Happy New Year..........Regards, Rod.