Review of "Gardner Bender EFT-21PN Cable Snake Steel Fish Tape, 25 ft. x ¼ in. Flat Tape"

I bought this despite some of the bad reviews and after having used the fish tape, honestly can not even guess at how they had a problem with this simple tool...

I bought this to run flat Ethernet cable (Cat 6 Ethernet Cable 25 ft White - Jadaol Flat Ethernet Patch Cable Short- Internet Cable with Snagless Rj45 Connectors "“ 25 feet White) under carpet across a room that wasn't easily accessible any other way.

The very first tug to extract the fish tape made me think, 'oh boy, they were right.' I used a pair of pliers to grab the tip and pull it out a couple inches. Once it came out of the body of the reel, the tape itself unwound easily. NOT with the crank as the directions clearly say, you hold the reel with one hand and pull out the tape with the other. I'm 71 with arthritis in my fingers, this was NOT a challenge!!

Due to the thickness of the tape, I was able to push it across ~15 feet of carpet between the pad and the carpet and it followed a perfect line to the far side. Honestly, I've been stalling on doing this job because I assumed that it would be a huge hassle, but with this fish tape it was absolutely easy.

When I had the cable pulled across, I removed it from the fish tape and used the crank to wind it back up.

If anybody cares about this part, once I got that flat Ethernet cable through to both sides, I gently pulled it all the way to one side and then the other to work out any twists that might have been introduced in pulling it through.

I want to give this a worse review but won't, just in case its user error. Bought one of these, love the price and size. However it is strangely overly hard to use and not really a time saver by any means. The reason being is, even tho it appears to have simple instructions, its very odd to pull the tape out to the proper length with out constantly fiddling around with it and or having the mechanism constantly snap back. Gave one to a professional and it was broke in two hours. Not because it's made bad but because its so frustrating to use that he snapped it back and snapped the head off and it sucked itself into itself and then you have to take it apart...Bla bla bla. So to be fair I bought another one, just thinking it must be lemon and this time I personally tried to take my time with it, SAME PROBLEMS...S***TY SPRING MECHANISM..IME better off going with the old school ones, even they are more, figure one man hour spent over a month fiddling with goofy tools will cost you ten times that tool...

This was so useful for running the cords of our wall-mounted television through the wall. Once I got the hang of it, it worked like a charm. I'm not sure if I'll ever need to use it again but it seems durable enough that I should never need to buy another.

I'm pretty handy, but this was impossible to use, and you'll live in mortal fear it may retract quick enough to slice open your hand. To be clear, it didn't cut me, but it retracts fast enough I believe it could.

Maybe it's a quality control issue but I couldn't get mine to unwind properly either. The ONLY way for me to get it to unwind was to 1. Hold the handle 2. Pull on the metal tape 3. Hold the knob and slowly unwind.
That's three hands if you counted with me. It doesn't release/unlock if you simply unwind it a bit. You have to unwind quarter way, pull it out, then keep unwinding one full rotation, then stop, hold the tape and let the knob go forward, then start again. Does that make sense? No.
Obviously not every user has had this problem unwinding so I guess it's luck of the draw.

Also they used motor oil as lube for the fishing line. My hands look like I been fiddling with a car engine not wire fishing tool.