Clarke International Reviews 43

I purchased a mig welder from clarke tools but before opening it I took seriously ill . When I eventually opened the sealed box the fixings to assemble the welder and consumables and assembly instructions were missing. Simple i thought , contact them and get the missing items sent. Had all the relevant receipts etc , got a reply back saying my request has been forwarded to relevant department. Time went by and nothing . Contacted again nothing . Company that supplied it also contacting them nothing . Moral of the story is dont buy clarke tools as there are zero customer services or after care.

This company haven't responded to my review left on their website (which they haven't published!!), so I'll leave it here too.

I've been looking forward to this arriving so that I can tidy up my workshop ( New Year's resolution) and today my Clarke CWC50 arrived. My "high performance cabinet for the home or tradesmen" was delivered complete with the guarantee of "proven reliable Clarke technology".
Yes, it arrived. Whoopee! you might think, as did I, as I opened the box and looked lovingly at the mass of metal parts, bag of screws, bolts etc and a collection of bars to hold all my tools securely behind the lockable doors.

Now I must point out that I have installed many kitchens in the past. I have assemble dozens of Ikea as well as other cabinets and I design and make furniture for a living, so I am not unused to building things. And this, after all, was from Clarke with their famous "proven Clarke technology"...what could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out, PLENTY!!

Firstly, I had mistakenly assumed that the cabinet " with 2 lockable doors" would have been made of steel?
I have opened tougher sardine tins that whatever this is made of! Tin foil maybe? Almost every single panel was either bent or deformed in some way, with numerous scratches and scuffs across many of the surfaces.

The instructions: these had been photocopied so many times, that they were almost totally illegible . Written by perhaps someone from Alpha Centauri, they were illiterate in the extreme with large chunks of the assembly process missing.

Quite apart from all the bent and damaged panels, I thought I actually proceed with the assembly as I really couldn't be arsed with the Amazon returns process, so I battled on. This cabinet is clearly not meant to be assemble by any human being...unless they had fingers the thickness of chop sticks with M5 sockets on the ends!

After a great deal of swearing, most of which was aimed at the ape who designed this cabinet, I finally had the thing put together and was ready to attach the doors ...lockable doors to protect my expensive tools. The first door actually creased as I attempted to locate the door pivot pins...it CREASED like a piece of particularly thin cardboard!!
Being as there were already so many wangs and dings in the "metal" work when it arrived, I managed to sort out the crease with a block of wood and a mallet.

Finally, I was ready to attach the inner shelves. This was why I had bought a "steel cabinet" in the first place....to secure my tools.
How do I attach the shelves to the sides of the cabinet, I asked myself? There seemed no way that I could see?
I returned to the "assembly instruction manual" for the answer. It said....and I quote;
" 12. The shelves are placed on the brackets integral to the ..............." the next part was missing, so poor was the photo copied instructions supplied.

There are no spare brackets...integral or not, so I may never know how to attach the shelves. Anyway, the doors are so flimsy and pathetic, that it would hardly be worth anyone's time placing valuable tools inside. Any healthy 8 year old could no doubt bend the door open!

In short, I bought this because of the name Clarke. I have bought several things with the Clarke name over the years and they have always been good quality. There were much cheaper metal cabinets on other sites, but the reviews were very bad......most of them complaining about similar things to this Clarke cabinet.

My advice: DON'T BUY THIS IF YOU'RE EXPECTING QUALITY! IT'S EXPENSIVE RUBBISH, AND CLARKE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES FOR SELLING SUCH TAT!!