Check Out These Defective Eye Screws

I’m having what seems to be an especially terrible month with respect to online shopping.

Today’s setback – defective eye screws.

I ordered some stainless steel USA-made eye screws from McMaster Carr, and this is what they look like. Where are the threads?

Here’s another one. They’re all like this!

Something went wrong – it happens.

I bought a smaller size of eye screws too, and apparently they’re defective too. This one is the best of the bunch.

All of two boxes of different sized eye screws are completely useless with zero holding power.

This is what the eye screws are supposed to look like.

Here’s a same-size Everbilt zinc-plated eye screw from Home Depot’s website. Eye screws usually have flatter threads than typical wood screws, but not even the best fasteners in either box looked anything like this.

McMaster responded to my email inquiry in record time, which I always appreciate. This isn’t their fault, but their supplier’s.

I’ve seen one-off random defects, such as machine nuts without any threads, or a washer missing a nibble from an edge, but this kind of defect is new to me. Hopefully the manufacturer sorts things out.

I wonder what happened – perhaps machinery malfunctioned and a couple of batches of hardware went out before being caught by quality checks?