Vita New England Arbors Aussie Augers, 4"

I included a much better product photo from a different seller. When this arrived, two of the black plastic biscuits were already pinned to the augers. The pin is stuck on one of the augers and I can't get that biscuit off. I think that auger could stIll be screwed into the ground though, because the hole that the twisting bar goes through, still shows through the top. All of the bolts, screws, washers and wing-nuts we're tossed loosely into the box. One of the wing-nuts has been used, threaded wrong, and will not fit any of the bolts. So this product has obviously been used, returned and not inspected. It's not right that I should have paid full price for something messed up and used! And not only that...I think there are some design issues in this product. The washers are too big for the wing-nuts. The wing-nut can fall partly into the washer hole. And there's no lock washers. So if a wing-nut loosens, we'd never know it, because it's inside the post. Maybe that's not a big deal, but we want nut ends, rather than wing nuts, and lock-washers to hold the nut secure. The biscuits have a hard plastic outer cover, that's only about an 1/8 of an inch thick. There's the same thickness of plastic tight around the auger. The inside of the biscuit is mostly open air, not at all solid or thick plastic. I imagined it much thicker. They included small diameter, 1.5 inch long philips head screws. (You can barely see the little pile of screws in the attached photo.) Those little screws go through the arbor post, then through the first 1/8" wall of plastic, but barely touch the plastic wall that's next to the metal auger. The tip of the screw could move inside the hollow plastic biscuit if the arbor wiggles in the wind. I got to thinking about the weakest link in this product. What is actually holding the arbor onto the auger? Those 2 small screws, through 1/8 inch plastic! That auger could go 20 ft down....and if the 2 little screws, or if the outer layer of the plastic biscuit breaks, the whole thing is a bust! We're running late on this project, so doing a return will slow us down too much. We could probably get new bolt ends, new lock-washers and longer screws....bla bla bla. It's only more of our time and more of our money! I can't find any info on how to contact the actual company that makes this product. Maybe I'm missing somthing. Update, we did install the augers....after ditching the wing-nuts and buying nut ends and lock washers, We ditched the 8 (2 per post) 1.5" philips head self tapping screws and replacing them with 16 (4 per post) 2" self tapping screws with bolt shaped heads, for ratcheting. My husband hammered a long section of rebar 18" deep into the rocky ground, to pre-tap the rocky soil, so the auger would go all the way in. Big hard job! He's strong! Love him! He pre tapped small holes through the arbor and all the way through both sections of plastic and into the metal auger. Four, 2" screws, are much more secure by being set all the way inside the metal auger. Overall...we're satisfiied with the end results. I would like a partial refund due to this product being used and needing much better hardware.

Good product and does what it supposed to. Purchased a set of these for a New England Arbors Fairfield Deluxe. I had to return this item because the box it was in from the manufacturer is very flimsy and these things are sharp and heavy. Upon receipt, the augers had broken through the manufacturers box as well as Amazon's and some pieces were missing. I've noticed a trend with Amazon shipping in that they often do not put enough packing material inside the boxes with heavy items which causes items to move around too much during shipping causing damage to the shipping boxes from within. If they spent a little extra time and inserted ample packing material, I bet they'd have a lot less returns, especially on heavy items.

My New England Arbor fell over in the wind.... Bought the Aussie Augers and my Arbor is now nice and solid even in high winds!

PERFECT made the job of installing my arbor much easier. High recommend the Aussie Auger.