Harbor Freight Tools

The customer service is greatly improved. Elizabeth was friendly and helpful. This is a fun store to visit. You can always find something new. We like it even more now that the employees seem happy to be there.

You will die in line to buy their chinese junk, I asked the lady at the register if she was aware of the long lines down the isles and that they needed to open more registers, It was aparent she wasnt aware nor did she care I tossed my tools on the ground and walked out ill never go to harbor freight in montclair

Store manager is a very unhelpful person. I asked him if they had drywall screws and he just gave me the isle number. Obviously I’m asking because I can’t seem to find them. His exact response was «re-​check» isle 8. Like if I’m blind or something. I’ll definitely take my business to Home Depot or tools r us across the street.

Fuckin love this place it is the shit and very good pricing, CHOW

I love how people expect to come to harbor freight and pay very little and complain about quality. U get what you pay for. You want better call snap on or mac and have them come to your home. They will gladly sell you a ³⁄₈ ratchet for $ 100. Haha fools wakeup and do a little research !

Cashier took FOREVER. there was a long line waiting on a Thursday night. hurry up people!!!

Love the «free» gifts when you buy something, like I got a free 6 piece screw driver set upon buying something so make sure you bring the coupons you get in the mail.
I don’t think I would come here without coupons though. The level of service and knowledge is comparable to a self check out stand, if you want to know to ask a question about a product or how to use something, you may be better off asking another customer than an employee.

I don’t know what folks are talking about, the employees were helpful and nice w me. Young man knew exactly where the tool I was looking for was. You got to know what this place is about. Value first quality second. Not that there isn’t quality, you just have to understand what you’re getting. You can pay more for nicer stuff elsewhere but you can accomplish your job on a budget with the stuff they sell here. Enough for my home projects.

I went to buy a Generator and two Tools.
First off they do have good prices with coupons and all.
But… Service is bad.
I mean first when I went to check out. they didn’t bother to ask if I wanted help taking it out to my Car. I mean I know I’m a big guy and all. but how do they know If I could take it on my own? And boy I feel bad for Ladies or The Elderly who can’t lift things up. Bad service guys. At least Lowes or Home depot offers help if you want or need it.
And… their Employees need to know their coupons.
Ok so here I am giving them the coupon. And the cashier had the nerve to tell me it was expired. Ad it didn’t until 11/29.2014. So I said you sure? and they look again and they notice it aint. I know we make mistakes but no apology was said to me.
I’m not coming back I’ll try a Different location.

Not the greatest tools in the world but a lot of them have lifetime warranty, and at affordable prices; I’ll take my chance for now. The customer service is good here. There isn’t many workers but they help the best they can. I love how they have so many affordable tools here, I don’t expect them them to last long and that’s ok. I have craftsman and snap on tools at home but with harbors lifetime warranty on Pittsburg tools too, I’m willing to try them out too. Never had a problem here and shop was always nice and organized. Will be coming here again.

I drove all the way there after calling and getting a price okayed but when I got there they said the price was expired. Even though there was no expiration date. Another time, I needed help finding something and asked 3 employees and everyone gave me a different answer. I never found it. I really like the place but the service is atrocious!

Employees here are confused and misinformed regarding coupons. Retail me not doesn’t make coupons on their site. The retailer must create them. At all other harbor freight stores they accept the coupons. I was trying to use the 20 percent off coupon. The manager said she has a letter not to accept the coupon from corporate, I said show it to me and she said come back tomorrow in the morning and I will show you then as I’m too busy right now, I will call corporate office myself and see why this store is so ignorant.

Cheap low quality tools. Why would someone buy their tools? It is a shame that I had return the same tool twice because I bent it when I tried to remove a crank bolt. Even the large crescent wrench claws I used were useless. The claws simply chipped away like head of a rusted bolt. It is hard to describe what happened. Simply the worse hand tools you can buy not unless you buy tools from dollar tree. At least, I had an easy no question ask exchange. They are not the same quality when I visited the Pasadena store around 15 years ago.

If you’ve ever been to a Harbor Freight, you pretty much know what to expect. For the uninitiated, I hope my comments provide some help for navigating the waters.
The store itself:
This is one of the worse stores for customer service in general, and the Montclair location seems to been particularly bad even compared to other Harbor Freights. Don’t go with the idea that an employee will be able to answer questions about their products, or make suggestions on this vs. that. The employees seem to barely know where something is in the store in general, let alone have any working knowledge of the product they are selling. They are all pretty much just stockers and/​or checkers.
Products:
If you’ve ever bought anything from Harbor Freight, you probably know what to expect in terms of quality. This isn’t Snap On, it’s not even Black and Decker, but there are some gems that make it worth shopping here.
In general, the rule for most tool purchases here is: If it’s a tool I’m going to use maybe twice in a year and the cost is less than renting said tool for a day, instabuy. If it’s something you will use a few times every month, don’t do it. If you are a tradesman and your tools are how you earn your living, there are very few things here that are worth your time.
An exception to the above rule is: air tools. I have used the Chicago Pneumatic air tools for years, and have never had a tool break on me. An air motor is a very simple mechanism that is easy to produce and keep running well. Just make sure to oil them and they will last a long time. Most of the air tools are either exact rip offs of the name brand products, or just Chicago labeled items from the same factory making the name brand version. Don’t buy a compressor here though.
The other exception is casters. They have great prices on casters, and the quality is as good as anywhere else. I have several shop tables on heavy duty casters and on average I’ve paid ½ for the Habor Freight casters. On top of it, the selection can’t be beat by any other B&M store. They have pneumatic casters, soft rubber, hard rubber, steel, and a wide variety of sizes. Their dollies are also very low priced and of good quality, especially when it’s not a continuous use type of item. Sometimes it’s even cheaper to buy a dolly (depending on the sale) and remove the casters than to buy the casters individually.
Other than that, I go with the infrequent use rule. Harbor Freight isn’t the worst thing in the world. Use their site and read the reviews before you go to the store, and use your own common sense when you are checking something out in person. If it will see frequent use, and feels like a cheap piece of junk, don’t waste your money. I also generally stay away from their consumables (sand paper, etc) and find the lacking quality not worth the savings.

Service sucks and the employees do look upset all the time. I have seen several thugs inside steal items and walk right out, either they don’t care or its against their policy. Either way the thugs know that they can steal whatever they need and no one will say anything to them. I don’t like taking my kids there

They need to have a line just for returning items. Waited in line FOREVER behind 2 people that were just returning things.

Denise is a rude night manager. Get rid of her and you’d get 5 stars.

Wow! Workers look unhappy here.
Maybe it could be because of what Mr. X said in his review!
GOOD: A lotta decent products… tools of all kinds.
Tool boxes… well you know the rest from
other Unilocalers.
Cons: –Don’t get the garden lights (LED). flimsy.
–The shop light 45 watt is very weak. I turned it on
in my garage and it barely lit the wall 10 feet away.
Overall.the place has some deals.
But I came all the way over here… just to find out that
they are opening one up in my hood…

This place sucks unless you like low quality Chinese imported tools, or don’t care, because that’s all they sell. You will buy tools that break when you put them under load/​stress. What I mean is when you’re in the toughest spot and have to put 200 ft-​lbs of break torque on a suspension part, your socket might snap at the most inopportune moment and just slam your knuckles into pavement or raw metal. So when you buy things here, just expect them to fail, and you can only be happy if they don’t.
On the other hand, HF has a few decent products where it might not matter if it breaks or if you just need something once. For instance, they sell a vibrating tumbler for cleaning parts for something like $ 50 on sale, and you can buy the tumbling media there, too. Or, if you need to paint a fence, you can get a spray gun for $ 15 that is virtually disposable. It’s not going to work like a Binks, but for a fence, who cares?
What I’ve noticed about their prices is that they increased with the success of driving US manufacturers and retailers that sell US-​made products into failure. HF is still cheaper than Sears Craftsman, Husky, Milwaukee and other big brands that moved overseas, and they are essentially identical quality product for a lower price. The only reason I can think of buying HF is to not blow wads of cash on the same item with a funky designer label on it. So there is a good use case for this store: Instead of buying one Chinese Milwaukee drill you can buy three for the same price and have a disposable drill, instead.
Whatever, the tools here are mainly for inexperienced workers, cheapskates or people who don’t give a hoot about the quality of their work product.
Now I’ve got to go increase my rating on Tools-​R-​Us across the street because I cannot believe this place scores higher when TRU actually carries many quality, domestic products.

Value. They may not sell the absolute best quality, or have the variety of, hardware and tools, but quite frankly for most of us non-​pros we don’t need that stuff anyway. So Harbor Freight is there to supply us plebeians with the tools we like to play with to make ourselves feel cool. Their everyday prices are low, but their sales are awesome. $ 10 for a heat gun? I’ll take two! Plus 99c for 2 screwdrivers and $ 89 for a gasoline generator? It’s just plain awesome. Staffers are nice too.