Sometimes, Local is the ONLY Choice to Make

 

I recently wrote about how Big Boxes and Amazon might save the day in certain circumstances. 

Not always, and before you say "ah, the nut is contradicting himself" let's recall Emerson's dictum that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  I may be foolish, granted, but I know a bargain when I see one.

Consider a Line-O-Tronics 315 lift I inherited when we bought this house from the estate of my wife's parents. The lift is a serious piece of equipment, a model found decades ago in professional auto shops. It will lift any vehicle we own, for prosaic oil-changes and serious work on the suspension.

My editors at Hemmings Motor News get poetic in their many articles about lifts. I aspire to write for the old-car hobby, and a lift makes one a contender rather than just a dabbler. So I was delighted to have it. 

Then, a few years back, it broke.

I'd made do with another lift nearby and a grease-pit, but the time came when the other lift in our old shop was tied up, long-term, with a car being restored. I needed to fix my own darned lift. We had the hydraulic cylinder that lifts a vehicle repaired, with new seals installed, to the tune of $300. My patient brother-in-law, who will get usage rights, wrestled it into place. We got the amperage correct for running the motor, upgrading our breaker servicing the lift.

Still, the unit's pump and motor needed servicing. The arms of the lift would not rise, even without a car on them. Being addled by the ease of Amazon, I decided "let's buy a new one!" It sounds expensive to the non-gearhead, but $400 for a motor and pump is not a big deal as replacing a lift would cost many thousands for something comparable to the old unit.

Then the shortcomings of algorithms, trans-Pacific supply chains, and infinite marketplaces reared their heads. Amazon features dozens of motors and hydraulic pumps, almost all Chinese built, but some of them do not note the dimensions of the units. That won't fly, as I've only a few spare inches of clearance when installing a new motor and fluid tank. 

Incidentally, the installation is no harder than many simple jobs, but the unit is heavy. So I asked Amazon's seller to tell me the specs for the unit I was ready to buy.

Crickets. I asked a public question and got an automated response in 48 hours saying, more or less, "no one has answered your question and that means it probably won't ever be answered."

To hell with Amazon. I started thinking that the old unit might be repairable.

I found Hesco, a local hydraulics firm, calling them about the repair. I got a live and friendly human on the phone, and I got assured they'd fix the thing if they could. I might be out $90 if it could not be repaired.

I hauled the motor and pump to them yesterday. Today I got a call: fully repaired for $106. 

Now I ask you this: should Amazon still be our first choice for every serious purchase?  

Jeff Bezos does not like to hear things like that, but maybe we should start saying such things more often. If Bezos can send William Shatner to the verge of space, he can set up a system that makes a seller give us the dimensions of an item we are to purchase.