Buying blind...

Pete Howlett

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Fedup with waiting for my pearl squares to arrive from DePaul Luthier Supply I made my own. On the left of the photo you see my accurately machined 3.5mm (nominal, actual- 3.4mm) and the '3.5mm' ones supplied by said company. A voice kept telling me wait for them to come before you spend ll that time programming your CNC machine or make them yourself. So lesson learned. I have 120 square dots (and after shipping and because of the exchange rate, they were expensive) which I will never use...
 

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So as per the calipers show, the ones you bought are actually 0.39mm bigger? even though they were sold as 3.5mm nominal?

Is it a PITA to shave/file them down to the size you need? If not, maybe it's not a total loss for the ones you bought?
 
I would not modify them I'll put them up for sale in my Facebook page Ukulele Tonewoods... And I'll cut the ones I need from now on. That's the beauty of CNC - you just have to do the preparation once.
 
So thisis what they said:

Perhaps you didn’t see that all our products are hand cut, not CNC.
A slight variation of 0.35mm we consider to be quite acceptable.

If this is not okay for you there are two ways to deal with this;
.1. You could make a small jig to hold the squares while you file of a tad bit of the material.
.2. You can return them for a refund on the price of the materials.

Even CNC cut diamonds have some variation as well as horrid wide slots with round bottoms to the cuts.

My diamnods do not meet the description here. I use a cutter that is 0.025" wide. You cannot see the radius o fthe cutter it is so small.
 
I can see where the supplier is coming from and also how you expected something different, in a way you’re both right but the product still isn’t what was wanted. A communications failure and/or a mismatch in expectations?

The squares requested fit with something else and I wonder whether it is possible and easy enough to modify the something else to have a matched fit? If not then good luck with the re-sale and, as you seem to be doing already, put the upset done to experience. The good thing that’s come out of all of this is making then yourself: it saves money, secures quality and avoids potential delay.
 
I was really disappointed with the very defensive stance taken - these are 4mm squares... They just can't admit they packed the wrong ones!
 
I was really disappointed with the very defensive stance taken - these are 4mm squares... They just can't admit they packed the wrong ones!

Hard to disagree with you there. I find that loads of folk don’t do a good job or let me down in some way, and I’m sure that I’m far from alone in that experience. Still, in the bigger picture, it could have been worse by being something much more important - upsetting when you’re let down by anything though.
 
I just want to chime in and say I really like DePaul supply and have never had anything but the best experiences with them. Ever. I've talked with them on the phone with some problems and they are good people and made things right no problem. I will say Pete that I'm a bit disappointed with you. If you have a problem with a supplier, do not bad mouth them by name on the forum. It just ain't cool dude. Ain't aloha. If you got a beef, just say, "a major supplier of shell disappointed me".
 
I just want to chime in and say I really like DePaul supply and have never had anything but the best experiences with them. Ever. I've talked with them on the phone with some problems and they are good people and made things right no problem. I will say Pete that I'm a bit disappointed with you. If you have a problem with a supplier, do not bad mouth them by name on the forum. It just ain't cool dude. Ain't aloha. If you got a beef, just say, "a major supplier of shell disappointed me".

Why? They appear to have already abdicated their responsibility.
 
Well balancing the argument is good. However I am not bad-mouthing them. I have quoted their response to my query. It's disingenuos. We're all adults here and we can make our own decisions can't we? Unlike most people I speak my mind and I stand by what I say. They did not give good customer service on this occassion and were comoletely unwilling to akcnowledge their mistake. It's not acceptable to have a tolerence of + or - 0.39mm. It is obvious, because I use the same clearance parameters that these are their 4mm squares...
 
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