Halfords rip off .

[grumpy]

Now i know most of are familiar with Halfruads being a bit pricy for everything , plus not being particulary usefull to older car owners aprt from the basics . But today i picked up a new , cheap welder and i thought i would just get a small disposable argon cylinder to try it with , before getting a full sized cylinder .
So i grab one and pay for it , £15 !!!! I'm glad I'm only buying one !!
Later i have to make a non-planed trip to machine mart with my brother , so while I'm there i look at there gas , same size but £12 , but i look how much it contains , 110 litres . Getting home i see that the SIP halfrauds only contains 60 litres !!! What a rip off !!

[pseudonymous]

Caveat emptor.

[optima21]

best to look online for stuff like that before you go and buy things....and thats why I got a disposable cylinder of argon from Machinemart instead of halfords..... the 110L sizes should be £15.59 from machinemart,its 60L size thats £12 from them. The 60L bottles are also available from toolstation shops for just under £13.00.

[slammage]

be honest youre miles better of buying a proper bottle from adams gas ( £90 inc deposit ) and a set of gauges- I cant fault ine just make sure you get good quality gauges though I say . those disposable bottles are a false economy if you are planning to do a lot of welding. my welder and bottle have paid itself back 8 fold in the last 2 years!

[slammage]

although lets look at it fro another perspective the halfrods trade card has saved my skin a few times and Is worth it for tools and oils etc

[steveo3002]

halfords is emergency only purchases for me

how many litres does a pub bottle hold btw?

[optima21]

yup, better off to use full sized bottles. I use CO2 gas for steel and that costs me £20 for a full sized cylinder exchange,and that lasts for hours of welding. I'm needing to try and mig weld some aluminium, thats why I needed some argon gas (as a one off). I did was using a clarke Pro Mig 90 welder, and wasnt sucessful with the aluminium(not sure if its my welding technique or my welder wasn't powerful enough)....so I bought a Clarke 151TE welder to try again, my garage has just been rewired with a 16amp socket to use the higher power settings.......so disposable gas cylinders are expensive, they've caused me to buy another welder and have my garage rewired.

[BenzBoy]

Halfords mainmarket isn't old car owners. Yet they stock a few useful things and remain open until 7 or 8pm when everyone else has closed. For that you pay a premium. I don't see the problem really.

[grumpy]

I am getting a full size bottle as i said , the disposible was just to get the thing going with , I'm aware they are a rip off for waht they are , but i didnt expect the double rip off a cylinder costing more than twice as much as a similar but with nearly %50 less contents .

[Robinxr4i]

I might be wrong, but check what gas the cylinder actually contains. The SIP cylinder might contain pure argon which (iirc) can't be compressed as much as CO2 if the Machine Mart cylinder was CO2 with 5% Argon of course it would contain as again (iirc) CO2 can be compressed more easily.

Just sayin'


*awaits someone telling me I'm wrong

[adam73bgt]

If you know Halfords are a bit pricey (which for some stuff they are) why buy stuff from there?... I think some people just expect too much from Halfords, its not a specialist store so I guess they have to charge more for items like welding gas as they don't sell a huge amount of it.

As slammage did mention though, a trade card (if you're eligible for one) makes stuff there quite cheap, £1.80 or so for an oil filter for my MGB was good enough for me

[grumpy]

What I'm saying is i know that they are pricey , but looking at the amount of litres of gas it holds then buying it , then finding you could get twice as much cheaper is ridiculous .

[adam73bgt]

Just gotta shop around I guess, I won't pretend to know whether what Robinxr4i says about the gas types could be a factor or not as I don't weld but when I was at halfords I do remember there being Argon bottles as well as Argon and Co2 mix, I never looked to see if there was a capacity or price difference between the two though

[chairchild]

they stock both types of CO2 bottle (60L and 110L) most staff members couldn't even tell you that they're stocked, and are confused as to why one costs more than the other (to the extent, that they're just thrown onto the shelf mixed up)

Trade card makes little difference on certain items... but a staff card gets a fixed 25% discount

[grumpy]

That must be it , i have got pure argon but £15 for 60 litres is a rip off if you can get 110 litres for £12 . I should have looked i suppose .I will be pore prepared in the future so i don't have to go there again .

[MK2VR6]

So lets get this straight. You don't like Halfords prices? Why go there?

Meanwhile, back on Retro Rides...

[EmDee]

Who would start a whinge-bin bound thread like this in the general board? Must be someone who has never read the RR MO before - a total newbie, probably not their fault.

*Looks at OP*

Oh. Nevermind.


Have a cool old car and then post some penance. People come here to escape this sort of bitchery.

[grumpy]

I'm just pointing out something thats extremely overpriced . I didnt think it would be long before someone comes along to start slagging me off , which is its self against the RR MO EMMDEE. S houldnt your comment come under the if its not constructive to the thread don't bother ' curse word.

[Mercdan68]

Stop moaning and don't go to halfords again,,. I don't

[adam73bgt]

As pennance for my slightly negative replies, some insider knowledge as I used to work there, if buying headlight bulbs, don't go for the cheapy ones or the ultra brilliance ones as they had the highest rate of returns after blowing within weeks or months in some cases

Also random trivia, if you see a big cardboard cutout of a bloke with his arms crossed and a big grin in a halfords, its me