Firstly I am not a dealer nor do I hold any franchises.
However I have seen a lot of potentially dangerous sold on Amazon & Evil Bay
Things like a stack of blades that were plain carbon steel and wore out in no time flat.
Even more dangerous some that were high carbon steel ( lke cheap taps & dies ) that shattered when they hit a tree root and is one case a blade that was not centered.
And then there were the blades that were 1/16" shorter so after a single season left a Mowhalk between the blades.
Carbs that had no main jet, carbs where the venturi tube was not drilled out.
Then belts everything from pollymere belts in a kevlar sleeve belts at the wrong angle , belts wrapped in toilet paper thin covers , wrong angles and wrong lengths .
As for bearings anyone who buys bearings from Amazon or ebay deserves what they get which is usually a bearing that has at least 1 less ball than a proper one, made from substandard materials & even machined rather than being ground & polished
#4
StarTech
Bingo...Exactly why I very seldom order anything from either source especially RipBay and have to very careful getting anything off Amazon. Even when claim the product is OEM sometime they are not. I rather buy from one regular distributors.
Even with my normal after market heat treated blade sometime I get a particular blade that is 1/16" shorter than OEM that causes problems. In those case it is my first blade trial of a particular blade so I don't get rip to bad.
When it come to belts now that I got a belt length measuring I also found that after market belt are the wrong spec'd length along with other problems. With mmy distributer providing MTD, Husqvarna and with a few other OEMs I have they are just about the same cost so why stock after market which are the wrong lengths.
Since I buy bearings in lots of ten I just order from a regular US based bearing distributor which is all they sale. I can buy either the Chinese Spinco brand (their in-house brand) or higher quality Japanese bearings. Even these usually get re-packed with EP2 as grease used appears of low quality on the Chinese bearings. I do this because of my personal experience with the Chinese drying out in less than a year on my mower.
Don't you know the old saying "you get what you pay for"....is true. If you don't believe this to be true, keep buying the cheap aftermarket stuff.....you will soon find out!
I fit mostly after market parts .
However mine come from my wholesaler complete with a 12 month warranty
The stuff they reject end up on Amazon & Ebay
Some is good some is OK & lot is crap
My problem is if I get a crap one & fit it, have to fix it again when the crap part fails
For home owners who have all the time in the world but are on the poverty line saving those few dollars once every 5 years is obviously a critical part of their financial stragedy.
#7
StarTech
Well the after market supplier that I was buying V belts from also had an one year warranty. But i still constantly got belts that were one to two inches short. I was having so many problems with them that I finally spent a couple hundred dollars for a v-belt measuring tool. Then I went through my complete inventory of belts and threw away nearly a $1000 in belts that were over a year old. The supplier actually got very mad at me for returning so many belts as they were having to pay the return shipping.
After I quit they called promising they have resolved the length problems so I gave them a couple tries this Spring. Low and behold the problem is still there. It is a waste of time for me to order, wait two days, return them, wait another two days just the wrong belts again, and finally order the OEM belts.
I even had problems with the expensive Stens belts being the wrong lengths. So do I trust after market v-belts anymore? The answer is NO WAY as my time and business rep is more important.
