Tool Companies Not Laid-off Worker Friendly

We have been purchasing our tools from a certain company for a few years now. Recently, with the lay-off, we are no longer able to afford a "loan" from this company. Snapon. Allow me to give you a little background.

We were in search of a home loan, the loan was to help us replace our mobile home and build a stick house. Because our home is a mobile home, we were not qualified to get a home equity loan, and land in this county doesn't seem to qualify for such a loan. We are cash people, never carried a credit card in our life, unfortunately this will go against you when you are in need of a loan. To create some revolving credit to help us establish a base for our home loan, we turned to a company that we have dealt with in the past. A tool company that many mechanics use. We secured $7,700 in revolving credit, more than what the bank want from us, but enough for us to handle without issue, and made our credit look better. Thus far we have paid in $5,000 of that line.

A year and a half ago my husband was laid off. We struggled through payments, attempting to keep things going as well as we could. Recently however things have gotten worse, and we decided that we needed to get rid of this contract and eliminate this one payment, it really didn't matter if it messed up our credit, it had been blown within a year of the lay-off. My husband talked with the S-O rep and he said he would find out what we could do. Instead, an account specialist with the company called my husband at work and told him, that if he was to return the products, that they would only give him 60% of the original price and we would still have to pay the remaining $2000 within 30 days.

Needless to say, that this made my husband livid, but he kept calm and told the account specialist the circumstances of why we would have to give the products back. And why would he think that we could come up with the $2000 remaining on the account within 30 days, if we were unable to keep up with the weekly payments. The specialist proceeded to tell him to go to family and friends. This of course caused my husband to laugh, most of our family and friends have already been laid-off or facing lay-offs at this time. The specialist proceeded to tell my husband that he needed to get a second job then. My husband works over 40 hours a week at a shop that is a 40 minute drive from home, we have clients that bring bikes to our home and we run a small farm. When exactly would he be able to fit in another job? Where would he find another job at this point? Aircraft is laying off like crazy, and this is causing a ripple effect in our community. The specialist was also unaware of which client he was conversing with. He did not have our contract at his finger tips so was unable to tell us the basic run down of what all this contract entails. I would rate this as very poor customer service.

What all this boils down to is company greed. I like many companies that we have dealt with in the past, they insure the happiness of their clientele as well as fixing situations that are beneficial to all parties. With this company however, we will lose the products we purchased, they are also claiming that many of the small hand tools that have been paid off for years, will revert to their possession, we will lose the $5,000 we have paid into these products, and still owe them money. If we are unable to come up with the money in their 30 day deadline, we will incur court costs and whatever else money they can sue us for.

With 60% of their purchasers in default in one community,one would think that they would refinance or figure out another way of dealing with laid-off workers. In the long run they will end up losing more money by dealing with people in this manner, once these laid-off workers have to file for bankruptcy, then they would by eliminating or reducing their interest rates.

This of course is only one family's issue with this company that is being put out to the public, but at this time, it isn't the only family that is in this predicament. Be sure to look over your tool contracts very well, a lawyer to read it if you can afford one, be sure there is a way to efficiently and inexpensively retreat from an over burdening contract if something should happen in your life that reduces the amount of income or takes away your income.