Well I tried, and the manager said "it's been done before" and he called their purchasing dept.. They said no, that they weren't going to do that anymore because it involves lotsa paper work and takes lotsa time. So any other Canadians thinking of trying that route can forget it. Muncy, PA here I come.
Warren.
gotta love it when a company goes that extra mile for ya... Oh wait...
I'm wondering why you're fixed on Grizzly. Have you looked at General? They sell locally.
Mike
sell locally.
I've never needed to call General about my table saw. The manual / parts list, etc... is pretty straightforward and self-explanatory.
Installing the fence, however, required some thought.
General has been around forever, and has an excellent reputation. The real reason to look at Grizzly is that they're far cheaper than General, and even cheaper than General International.
Heck, they're cheaper than King Industrial...
Chris
I wouldn't worry about parts too much. There are a lot of these chinese copies floating around. There are also plenty of examples of people using, for example, a grizzly riser block on a harbor freight band saw. The bearings, motors, pullies, and other parts are also generic enough that they could be replaced or upgraded from sources other than grizzly. Just look at how many people are able to replace bearings on 40 year old tools they find on ebay.
brian
Grizzly is cheaper than General, General International, and even King Industrial.
Here's an 8" jointer comparison:
GI 80-200M1: $1900CAD
3 knives 1.5HP shortest bed (but has roller extensions to make it longest) 4" fence height instead of 5"King KC-80FX: $1200CAD
3 knives 2.5 HPGrizzly G0490: $750USD = $862CAD
4 knives 3HP only one drive belt pedestal switch built-in mobile baseEven after duty, that's still a significant difference.
Chris
They sell locally.
As a couple of people have mentioned already, it is the cost of decent machinery up here. The G0490 8" Grizzly jointer will end up costing me $1130 CDN after PA tax, GST, PST, exchange and duties. The General 8" will cost a total of $2195. Double the money for less machine. The King Industrial will cost me $1385...still $250 more for less machine. Anyhow...I managed to use a friends cottage address to get myself on the backorder list at Grizzly so I am at least guaranteed to have one waiting for me when I drive down. Now for the eternity of waiting.....
Warren.
Bearings are not a good example of that. Most every bearing in the world comes from a relatively few manufacturers and there are strict internationally agreed upon standards. Been this way for a long, long time.
I hadn't looked at the prices and didn't realize the difference would be so great. If it was a few hundred, I'd buy local and avoid the hassle, transport etc. But at twice...
Mike
And what happens if you do need service or parts? Getting them up from the US is certainly going to be more time consuming and costly that getting them from a local supplier.
I've talked to General reps a woodworking shows up here in Canada and to a person, they all are prepared to put time and effort into satisfying a customer's needs.
I'm definately not worried about having to take the occasional trip down to pick up the odd part now and again. I only do this for fun, and if it's going to take a little longer for a part to get to me...oh well. As far as the General "customer service" you mention, my local wood supplier had a horror story about his experience with them which cost them a lot of down time and they lost a customer because of it. In fact...I believe this was a large industrial planer they had ordered and they had a couple of problems with it. They had given up on the General, ordered one from another company, received it, needed a part replaced which also showed up two days before the part they needed for the General showed up. Needless to say they sent back the General and won't do business with them again. Although this might be a one in a thousand incident, anything can happen and I really don't think any amount of customer service is worth paying double for the machine.
Please guys, I was only offering up some info regarding the problems with getting a Grizzly product up here and while I appreciate the points and advice being offered, I have done my research on what is available locally and the pros simply don't outweigh the cons.
Warren.
That's one of the downsides to being in business. It's physically impossible to completely satisfy all customers all the time. You can make the effort, but there's always going to be a few that are not going to be satisfied no matter what you do. Reminds me of the guy that developed a penchant for attacking Lee Valley Tools and their pricing differences between Canada and the US. And, I don't know of any company that provides better service than LV.
Last time I went down to Bellingham I asked why Canadians can't get products shipped to them and why they won't even ship a catalog to us Canucks. They have a non-compete clause in their contract with each other. Turns out that the owner of Grizzly is the brother of BBT's.
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