I used to be a fan of Craftsman products. With the lifetime warranty and good products it was a good bridge between cheap tools and Snap-on. Now, it seems their tools and other products have just gone cheap in the last few years. I've found their newer ratchets to basically be junk, they slip all the time on me and can even switch directions. Their easy to read sockets were a good idea and their standard wrenches are about as easy but their ratcheting wrenches (one of my favorite tools) plain suck too. They loose their bite and slip all the time too. My dad buys a "nice" Craftsman 4 stroke weed trimmer about 9 months ago. It won't hardly run all of a sudden, and always had a flat spot in the carb since it was new. Then since Sears says it will take two weeks to fix the stupid thing...which isn't covered under warranty....my dad buys another freakin' Craftsman weed trimmer. This time a cheaper 2 stroker as a back up. It's not much better, has a flat spot in the carb and runs better on half choke than no choke. I'm dissapointed in Craftsman's quality lately.....I'm pretty much done with their products. I'll be buying Husquavarna and STHL garden products from now on and some of the Pittsburg hand tools at Harbor Freight are the same quality as the Craftsman tools with a warranty and half the price...
The craftsman teardrop ratchets are junk. I got tired of returning them. I bought a set of stanly ratchets at wal mart and they are working great. I still use craftsman wrenches because they almost never break and when they do...freebie! I do not go for any of the new fancy ratcheting wrenches and quick lock pliers, bob vila can keep those. Craftsman power tools are junk also. I buy dewalt, expesive but worth it. For the cemetery we use homelite 31cc 2 stroke trimmers. They're basically the best we have found for the price.
