What Is Harbor Freight's Inside Track Club Membership? And Is It Actually Worth It?
Chain store Harbor Freight Tools is mainly known for one thing: A wide selection of low-priced tools sold under a variety of private label brand names at very attractive prices. Being that the stores strictly carry house brands that aren't available anywhere else, finding the best deal often requires looking up reviews and stress tests online to determine which Harbor Freight products are every bit as good as the retailer says they are. An educated consumer can get some awfully good deals there, particularly since in-depth reviews have shown some Harbor Freight products to be equal to or better than competing tools from much more expensive brands like Snap-on.
Those deals are amplified by various promotions that Harbor Freight runs, one of which is offering specific discounts to members of its Inside Track Club, which costs $29.99 per year. This kind of "club" at retail chains is nothing new, with GameStop probably being the most famous example. But whether or not the membership is worth the cost is customer-dependent. How do you figure out if it's right for you?
What is the Inside Track Club in the first place?
Going by news database searches, Harbor Freight's Inside Track Club has been around since at least late 1999 or early 2000. According to the landing page for the club on Harbor Freight's website, these are the basics: $29.99 for a year gets you over 200 "exclusive member deals" daily, both online and in-store, "early access" to Harbor Freight's "biggest sales," and the chain's "best deals" period. As of this writing, the featured deals include, for example, $80 off a 12,000-pound truck/SUV winch and $100 off a 34-inch by 23-inch six-drawer service cart.
Taking a look at the full slate of active members-only deals as of this writing gives a better picture of the range of discounts available. It starts with smaller, cheaper items like individual non-mechanical hand tools and packages of cable ties for 20% to 40% off the everyday price and goes all the way up to deals like $30 off of a $199.99 car battery jump starter.
But is the Inside Track Club actually worth the price?
As with every paid membership-based chain store "club" of its kind, the value of a Harbor Freight Inside Track Club membership depends on how often you use show at the chain and what you're buying there.
With Harbor Freight, this is complicated by how many of the assessments of the Inside Track Club that can be found online note that its usefulness is mitigated by the chain's ever-present 20% off anything coupons, which couldn't be combined with club membership. However, it looks like Harbor Freight has largely eliminated the 20% off coupons, which changes the calculus on club memberships more than a little bit. (This isn't to say Harbor Freight doesn't have coupons anymore. It does. But they're item-specific deals that rotate monthly.)
With the blanket 20% off coupons gone and nothing similar replacing them, whether or not Inside Track Club membership is worth the price comes down to what you're buying and how much of it you're buying. If you're a regular customer and can see yourself saving at least the vast majority of the annual membership cost on your first purchase, and the non-member coupons can't help you get comparable deals, then it's probably worth a shot. If not? It's best to wait and see.