Please share with us your experience with Allcraft - delivery
speed, order accuracy, customer service and overall satisfaction.
It will help others to make informed buying decisions!!!
Mostly, I buy from Allcraft at the annual SNAG conference, where
Tevel’s tables are often covered with a plethora of high quality and
often very hard to find tools. If Frei and Borel and Rio bring out
all the new glitzy stuff, Allcraft has all the old traditional stuff
you thought was no longer available, and perhaps didn’t even know
existed any more. And they do it at prices that are sometimes a third
less than those other companies. Pliers, Files, stakes, hammers, or
the latest fancy German polishing compound. you name it. Tevel will
have it with him or know where to get it.
Now, with that said, dealing with them takes a bit more initiative
than some of us are used to in this web site driven, instant
gratification, customer is always immediately not only right but
instantly served, world. Allcraft is somewhat old fashioned.
Likely, you need to call on the phone or write an actual letter.
And you might have to be willing to actually chat on the phone for a
bit, or wait a few extra days for shipment. In one case, at a
convention, I asked Tevel if he knew where I could still get some
esoteric little thing I’d wished to replace. He wasnt’ sure if it
was avialable or where, but said he’d look. Took him six months,
but sure enough, then an envelope arrived with my item, which he’d
finally managed, I don’t know how, to track down. No other dealer
I’d asked had even been willing to look. And all this for an item
he only charged me two dollars for. Super fast, super glitzy? Nope.
what passes for a catalog is years old, and just zeroxed, if they
even have any to send out. But he’s got the stuff you want, and
charges a very very fair price. Being orthodox, they don’t do
business on Saturday. (At least Tevel and his wife don’t. Not sure
about the main office, but i’d assume it’s the same) But during the
week, you couldn’t ask for a nicer or more honest fellow to supply
you with the tools you need and want. If you see him at a SNAG
convention, be very careful of his display, or you’ll spend four
times what you intended to spend without hardly realizing it.
Peter