Are Ideal Tools Under Warranty?

We’ve already looked at the warranty offered by toolmakers Klein and Wiha, both of which are pretty comprehensive, but another company that makes great tools and has a good warranty is Ideal Tools. While Ideal Tools makes some really good tools, when they break we unfortunately may have to take them up on their warranty. Especially if the breakage is due to materials or workmanship. At that point, most reputable manufacturers will stand behind their product and they’ll want to know how to keep it from happening again.

Unfortunately there’s not a really clear cut warranty on Ideal’s website the way Klein and Wiha have posted, but this is mostly due to the fact that each product and product type essentially has its own warranty. When contacted, Ideal mentioned that the bulk of their warranty information is in their catalogs. They also mentioned, and you can see in the catalogs, that a lot of their testers have a two (2) year warranty. Ideal’s benders have a couple of options, aluminum benders have a five (5) year warranty while their iron benders have a lifetime warranty. Consumable goods like T-strippers and hole saws have a 90 day warranty that protects against defects only, since they're consumable you should buy a new one after a reasonable amount of use.

As far as other tools go, it’s not 100% clear what Ideal’s warranty policy is, though it seems to be safe that this policy is generic enough to apply universally. The reason it’s unclear is that the warranty information we’ve found it seems to come from Lowe’s Hardware’s website. You would have to check up on it to be sure, but for hand tools, Ideal guarantees the tool to be free from defects in material and workmanship for as long as you own the tool. Pretty standard given what we’ve seen thus far. Their warranty on wire termination covers a lot of products, but only for a limited 12 month period. Again, although this was posted by Lowe’s it doesn’t look like anything would nullify it for any other distributor.

Should you discover that your tool is truly defective due to materials or workmanship, you have a couple of options to get a replacement. You can call Ideal at 1-800-435-0705 and they will help you do the exchange that way, or you can go work it out with the distributor you bought it from. If you bought it at Haus of Tools, we’ll work with you to facilitate that exchange. If you bought it elsewhere…

It’s not surprising that Ideal’s warranty is not really generically posted online, their tools are pretty high quality. The ones that I’ve seen have all felt really solid, the wire strippers had a smooth action and the tools felt like they’d last a long time. Buying Ideal is an investment in high quality tools and it’s one you won’t regret, especially if you need to use it every day for your job.