Sunday, May 27, 2012

FN's.... deal or not-so-great deal? that is the question

So, yesterday we had someone deliver us two used FN's with bass pans.  They even took $50 off the price, because they said some screws were stripped.  No big deal, I said.  So $200 for two FN 142s, with bass pans, seems like a good deal, right? 

Well, in taking a quick look at them yesterday, I realized there were no casters.  No big deal, I can buy casters.  That's an extra $$ but for the used price, not so bad.  And all the pans were the full pans, no cut-outs.  No big deal, I can just purchase cut-out pans if I want them (which I will, but it's good to have some non-cut-out so if I need to change the cage into two cages, I have the right pans, so no big deal).

So today, I go down to take a closer look at them.... now, the people did say the screws were stripped.  But I surely thought the FN's would still COME with screws.  Um, wrong.  In the bag of "hardware" that I didn't actually look at yesterday, there was one screw.  Really?  And the screw is all rusted to hell, which I will never understand, because in all the time we've had cages that go together with screws, none of our screws have ever rusted.  Makes me wonder what people do to these cages.

Anyway, so I go to Home Depot (my hardware store of choice) and pick up some casters and some screws.  Cost about $30 for the casters and screws, not horrible, they did take $50 off the cage price, so I suppose that's why. 

So I go back down to look at the FN's, and I want to check if the casters I bought are going to fit.  So I look at the one leg, and yup, it'll fit.  Then I realize, only that one leg has this little plastic piece that holds the caster in place.  The rest of the legs are missing that piece.

Moving on, just looking through the pieces, I notice there's only four grates.  Now, there should be four per cage.  There should be one on the very bottom for the shelf, one under the bottom pan, one under the top pan, and one at the very top of the cage.  And all I have... is four.  I should have 8.  Ugh.

So... forget the little plastic pieces, if those were lost, oh well, I can order from Midwest... but I emailed the people who brought the cages asking if they're sure they brought all the pieces, and I told them how there should be eight grates, and all I have is four. 

Now, I'm sure all of this can be purchased with one call to Midwest.  But shit, at the point I go about doing that these have turned into a-lot-more-costly-cages than the $200 at the get-go.  The plastic things, probably pretty cheap, if I could even get the last one off (which, of course, it doesn't want to come off), I might be able to find it locally somewhere.  But those grates will definitely have to be ordered from Midwest if the people don't have the others, and four grates are likely going to cost a pretty penny + shipping. 

There's days like this when I hate buying stuff used...  

Now, I'm going to go back down there and check if I'm missing anything else, while I'm at it.  The day I put the cages together will be the day that really shows if we're missing any of the smaller pieces that wouldn't be so obviously missing from the get-go.

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