Lee Valley Customer Service, in praise of

I don't often write about woodworking — partly because I've been too busy to do much of it — but I do think I should praise a particular company: Lee Valley Tools. I've been buying stuff from them for a long time, but I'd rarely needed to say anything about their customer service: I'd rarely needed to return anything or ask for any support . . . they carry good products.

Given the number of bookcases I'm slowly building, I decided to invest in a shelf-hole drilling jig. This one in particular. It includes drill bushings for several sizes, but curiously didn't include the one I'd expected to find: the 7mm size for which Lee Valley has a custom sleeve-setting tool. I'd used this size of sleeve on the last two cases I'd built, and found it worked very well, so I was planning on using the same size for all the library bookcases.

I wrote to ask about this, and I got a very prompt reply from Rob Lee, the company president:

Hi Nicholas -
The Veritas 32 system was designed to work with standard 32mm system components - and that's pretty much bushings for 5mm, 8mm, and 10mm holes. We do add in a "soft" bushing, as a "make your own" option.

One of the difficulties with deciding which components to include, is that the more we include - the higher the price becomes for everyone. And, should we switch suppliers on hardware, we're left with odd sizes in a kit, which would reduces the value for most...

You'll note that the Veritas Shelf Drilling jig, a variant of the 32mm system jig marketed as jig specifically for drilling for shelf supports, includes all bushings but the 10mm... to cover the largest range ....

The punch is the same story - included with the function specific drilling kit, but not with the generalist Veritas 32 kit.

For us - it's a no-win...and we'll always err on the side of the decision which cost the customer the least amount.

Hope that clarifies things!

Cheers -
Rob Lee

Now that is customer service . . . I sent the email at 8:00 last night, and had a response, from the head of the firm, before I got back to the office the next morning.