Tool sharpening scam warning

[Chrispy]

Just a heads up on a tool sharpening scam that seems to be going on at the moment, I just spent the last hour reporting this to the police who don't appear to be doing any thing about it.

Anyway the scam, I just had a visit from a French/Swedish/German man who offers to harden and then sharpen tools drills saws chisels TCT tools as well planer blades etc.
guaranteed to last 10 times longer than before, give a quick demo of how hard the metal gets by chopping into a piece of steel with a chisel he has bought with him.

says he will take tools away harden them and bring them back in three hours as a sample, so intrigued I have given him a worn out TCT saw blade a chisel made from butter metal that won't take an edge and a burnt forsner bit to see what they can do to them.

Now when he went i google the service and find a string of posts about a group of French travelers going around the country working from the back of a lorry sharpening and over charging on returning the tools, sort of tar-mac the drive type scam.

So it's 2pm now lets see what happens in an hour!

 

[Aggrajag]

I wonder if you'll ever see him again?

 

[Rorschach]

Sounds like a pile of crap to me.

 

[nev]

Thanks for the heads up, but

Give something, and not just something but your livelihood tools, to a random bloke that knocks on your door and expect to see it again? :-k

#-o

 

[John Brown]

I had a haircut yesterday at the local barber shop. While I was there, a sales rep was also there, hawking expensive haircutting scissors(minimum around £150, max £who-knows). The woman cutting my remaining few hairs was trying a few different pairs, and mentioned that she'd once given a pair to a stranger who'd walked in off the street. Apparently he'd made a pig ears of sharpening them, and when she complained, he took them away to redo the job, and never came back.
I was astounded. I'd never give a cheap kitchen knife to a travelling sharpener, certainly not a pair of scissors, but a £100 plus pair of haircutting scissors? Some people are very trusting(to use the nice word).

 

[Chrispy]

To be honest I hope I don't see them again, cos if I do I now know that I 'll be in for the hard sell / high pressure to pay the inflated bill.

 

[RobinBHM]

Ive had these guys come in twice this year, one Belgian guy last week, some French guy earlier in the year.

When I first started out, I gave a mortice chisel and bit to some French guys who said they would make it super sharp. They did bring it back, all black as though it had been stuck in a bonfire! Needless to say it wouldnt cut at all, it was as blunt as anything. When I questioned the guys, they shrugged, shook their heads and said 'it is precision part' and left!! -they didnt try and con me for money

I think these guys just temper the blades which does make them hard but also useless......

 

[graduate_owner]

My usual response to any door-to-door person is a polite 'no thank you', what ever if is. I have bought door-to-door stuff in the past and have always regretted it.
Examples of things I did not buy:

A fire extinguisher, well known brand, nothing wrong with it and could save my life according to the very pleasant young lady salesperson. Only trouble was I could buy one from RS for just over half her price, inc. carriage ( and RS are not the cheapest peopls around ).

A generator - the man asked if I would like to by his remaining one to save him taking it back across the Irish Sea, so special deal. I hesitated ( big mistake - NEVER hesitate, just say No). Within less than a minute he had emptied his van on my drive, and was trying to sell me a brush cutter, welding gear, pressure washer etc. I went into the house, had a quick on-line check, and found I could get the same generator on-line cheaper, guarantee etc. So I made him a silly offer - all the cash I claimed I had, which he refused. Then he loaded his van and went away. It was all Chaiwanese stuff anyway, Marksman etc. So even my silly price would probably have been a mistake.

The best one was a guy offering to treat the walls of my house, guaranteed damp proof, 30 year guarantee, tested in Sweden etc etc. Special deal if I agree to have it done. How much? Ah well he couldn't tell me that until I had agreed to have it, but much cheaper than the regular price. So how much is the regular price? Ah well if I tell you that I can't offer you the special deal. ??? Do you honestly think I am going to agree to any of this? No thank you, bye bye.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks for the thumbs up.

K

 

[t8hants]

years ago we had some Turks came to the workshop offering the same service. The boss who was as tight as a DA smelt a saving and gave them a whole bunch of worn out Roto-bore cutters.
Off they went with promises they would be back in a week, we were all giggling that he would never see them again, but as they hadn't charged the boss said all he could loose was a bunch of worn out cutters.
As promised back they came a week later with the cutters sharpened and clearly heat treated in some way - beautiful!
The real laugh was they charged him by the circumference of the cutter, not by the diameter as he had assumed, (*** out of u and me time again), but we never did wear those things out again, the company closed first.

 

[Chrispy]

Well he came back ( with his mate) and as you said every thing is black as hell the chisel does seem to be a bit harder but time will tell on that one, the drill he said had been treated and sharpened well you can still file it with a saw file so can't be very hard and the sharpening doesn't look impressive and it still leaves a burnt hole in mahogany, the saw blade that has an average 1.2mm of TCT left they insisted i try out by cutting through a block of wood with 10 or so nails in that I provided and as far as I can see has done no damage the the remaining teeth but again the sharpening is very poor and uneven.

Now he wants to take more away to bring back 9am tomorrow. no I want to test this first over time, no good we wont be back for 6 months, OK leave it at that then, OK just pay for what we've done have you a tape, why? £2.85 per centimeter- in circumference! that's not what you said earlier you said about £10 for the saw £2.50 for the drill & chisel, no £2.50 per centimeter, no £2.50 flat.
well just give us £50 and we'll go, no way, I would have paid you what you said but not now, you had better leave, so he asked for his card back and they did, rather quickly.
Just hope that that's the last I see or hear of them.

BTW I don't think they have heat treated any thing, it looks and smells like liberon patinating fluid.

 

[MattRoberts]

Did he see your workshop & tools? Hope not...

 

[Chrispy]

I'm hoping that they know to stay on the right side of the law, as iI've been told they haven't committed a crime yet, over charging is a civil matter. Hence the police don't want to know .

 

[Hitch]

We had them in last year, offering to regind press tooling, shear blades, drill, broaches, the lot.

To be fair, the hardening process must have been pretty good, one of his demos was taking chunks out of bits of steel angle with a hatchet :lol:

 

[clk230]

I'm surprised the police didn't charge you with wasting their time .

 

[bugbear]

To be fair, the hardening process must have been pretty good, one of his demos was taking chunks out of bits of steel angle with a hatchet :lol:

I wonder if an over-hard axe with a very obtuse bevel would do that trick?

If they genuinely knew a "better" hardening process, they could make a fortune, and wouldn't be wandering door to door.

BugBear

 

[DTR]

I'm curious to know how they targeted you. Were they trying their luck door-to-door (commercial premises?) or did they already know you were a woodworker?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Maybe they saw his work somewhere and thought hell, here's a man with blunt tools? :lol:

 

[Chrispy]

I'm curious to know how they targeted you. Were they trying their luck door-to-door (commercial premises?) or did they already know you were a woodworker?

They appear to be going round any businesses that may use cutting tools, country wide. just google sharpening scam and you see all.

 

[Chrispy]

Maybe they saw his work somewhere and thought hell, here's a man with blunt tools? :lol:

I admit it, there may a few that do need a bit of a tickle up.

 

[Jonzjob]

We get loads of forigners, mainly French, some Spanish, here. Almost all of them want to clean our house

I usually send them away.