Vent: Ordered specialty rebar chairs and they sent me the wrong size by accident

Last Tuesday I ordered a box of 2-inch rebar chairs for a slab pour we had scheduled. The delivery came in on Thursday and the box said the right part number on it. But when I opened it up, they were actually 1.5 inch chairs. I didn't check them until we were setting up the rebar and my foreman started yelling about how everything was sitting too low. We had to stop the whole crew and find a supply house that had the correct size in stock. Cost us about 3 hours of labor and I looked like a total idiot in front of the GC. Has anyone else dealt with a vendor sending wrong parts even when the paperwork matches?

4 comments

4 Comments

nguyen.angela16d ago

That thing about the box saying the right part number really hits home, I had a similar thing happen with some anchor bolts last year. The label said "3/4 inch" clear as day and I even compared the part number to my PO, but when I went to thread them into the base plates they were like 5/8 or something just slightly off. I spent an hour trying to torque one down before realizing it was just not grabbing right. Ended up having to send a guy to a big box store 40 minutes away to grab the right ones, whole pour got pushed back to Saturday.

hayden_craig9516d ago

Wait, hold on. "Spent an hour trying to torque one down?" That part just blew my mind. Like, you mean you actually had a socket on it and were cranking for a full sixty minutes before you figured out it wasn't right? I would have felt that wrong thread engagement in like the first two turns, for real. The fact that you got that far is almost impressive, but man, what a way to burn a whole hour of your life.

shane_hayes16d ago

Gotta disagree with you there, sometimes that wrong thread engagement can feel almost right if the parts are close enough in size. A little wobble or tightness can be written off as rust or a tight tolerance when you're already in a groove and not thinking straight. Plus, once you've got a few turns on it and the box says the right number, the brain just refuses to admit it's wrong for way longer than it should.

logan56113d ago

Used to think I'd catch a cross-thread right away no matter what, but this thread is making me second guess that pretty hard. The part number thing is especially sneaky, you see the right numbers on the box and your brain just fills in the gaps from there. Kinda scary how easy it is to override your own senses when you're in a hurry.