Positive Koken warranty experience (flaking chrome)

[General Geoff]

I went to use my 72 tooth 3/8" flex head (3726Z-280-72T) last week and felt a rough edge on it. Upon closer inspection the chrome was flaking off. I looked around and found multiple areas where the chrome had begun to peel and flake, so there must have been a batch that received poor chroming from the factory. I've only had the ratchet for a year.





So I emailed Palmac with these photos of the flaking chrome and my order # from last January, asking if this peeling chrome would be covered under warranty. They responded promptly in the affirmative, and sent out a replacement two days later. They did not request that the old one be shipped back. This is not meant to be a guarantee that they won't ask for a returned defective tool during someone else's warranty claim, it's just my personal experience with their customer/warranty service.



For anyone curious, the ratchet with peeling chrome has a date code of 20J which I believe corresponds to November of 2020, probably a very early production version of the 72T ratchet. The new one they sent has a 216 date code which is much more recent. I'm confident the chrome on that one will hold up. I have several Koken socket and extension sets, and none of them have exhibited any chroming issues over the past decade. First time for everything!

I could not ask for a better warranty experience, so my hat's off to Palmac & Koken USA.

 

[Mr_B]

I had some flaking chrome issues on koken sockets some years back and got them swapped out under warranty .
They fine if it obvious defect likely issues but when stuff plain broke or looks like it seen 10 decades daily use they not going give you snapon style experience .

 

[General Geoff]

Yeah outright broken stuff is harder to prove that it's a manufacturing defect. I do have half a mind to donate the ratchet with flaking chrome to one of the torque test channels just to see how it stands up to the domestic and Taiwanese ratchets in overall strength though