Harbor Fright Down Grades Quality Again

I've got a couple Harbor Fright Drill press. One is a floor model. Its not
wonderful, but its atleast 15 years old and it works. Once you learn a few
tricks you can drill decent holes. The other is a 12 speed bench model. In
some ways its better than the floor model. I keep a tapping head in that
one. I tap a lot of 10-32 holes in aluminum with it. It was the smallest
least expensive drill press I could find that had a regular MT2 taper, and
it works great for what I use it for. Tapping holes.

A buddy from another newsgroup gave me a good deal on another tapping head a
little bigger than the one I had. I figured I would set it up, and just
leave a 1/4-20 machine tap in it since that's the second most common hole I
tap. I was thinking another one of those Harbor Fright 12 speed bench
toppers would do the trick, so I started hunting for a coupon or a sale.
Finally I found an outfit that would "sell" me a coupon for it for $5.
Since it would save me $40 if it wasn't bogus I figured it was worth a shot.
I printed my coupon and checked on-line to make sure the coupon code was
good. Off to Harbor Fright to buy my drill press. There were none on
display, but there was one below in a box. I opened up the box to make sure
everything was there, and noticed the head didn't look right. I checked
further and found it doesn't have an MT2 taper anymore. Its got that stupid
fixed BT16 spindle taper instead. The one that is on the smaller cheaper
drill presses. Just to be double sure I looked at the manual. Yep. They
downgraded the unit a LOT and didn't lower the price.

I left the coupon on the box for the next guy.