Monday, November 9, 2009

TarpsOnline.com aka Tarps Direct

I have used Tarps Online aka Tarps Direct several times in the past six years and have always been quite pleased with their heavy duty silver tarps. I am pretty rough on the tarps and I get 2-3 years service out of each one. I know others that have been using their tarpsonline.com products for over 5 years and still going strong. So, needing a new tarp, I fully expected the new tarp to continue to impress me with its quality and longevity.

I ordered another 'heavy duty' silver tarp. Only time will tell but its not looking good.

This is a typical grommet. I mean typical in that they all look this bad. I didn't have to shop around for a provocative photo.



and another view



Sometimes the tarp makers had problems getting the grommets on the tarp.



The tarp is advertised as 'heavy duty' with grommets spaced 18 inches apart. Does this look like 18 inch spacing?



Can't read the numbers? How about now?



The spacing is highly irregular so tying two ends together is impossible since the grommets at each end don't line up at all.

I didn't have to wait long for my first tear. It came out of the package with a few holes already in the material.



Where the seams are glued together I can see lots of daylight. The seams look weak overall too.



Definitely no local craftsmanship here. I hope they made a good profit using overseas sweat shops, paying their slave wage earners a dollar a day. I hope they made a good profit because it is the very LAST profit they will ever see from me.



TarpsOnline.com / Tarps Direct is dead to me. You have been warned.

If I didn't have a schedule to keep I would have sent this piece of junk back. With winter weather fast approaching I don't have time to sort this out. I will happily spend twice as much for a REAL quality tarp the next time.

Okay, I feel slightly better now ;-)

2 comments:

Tim said...

Hamilton now sells silver tarps also. I am sure that all tarps come from overseas manufacturers anyway, but maybe their sweatshop is better than this one!

Lemma said...

I now use used billboard vinyl from http://www.billboardtarps.com/ -- I put in my own grommets.