In a recent post I discussed about how it’s strange Home Depot hasn’t been featuring their semi-exclusive Dewalt 20V Max Atomic series cordless power tools at their typical seasonal promotional prices.
Not only that, Home Depot’s website indicates there’s plenty of in-store inventory, but I haven’t seen any of the floor displays that I expected for this time of year.
I didn’t see any spotlight on the Dewalt Atomic series tools in the spring, for Father’s Day, or July 4th sales.
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This struck me as being very unusual, especially since other Dewalt retailers do have the Atomic series cordless power tools at their usual special buy promo pricing.
Most of all, it is highly unusual for Home Depot to let Lowe’s get the upper hand.
Over at Lowe’s, they have a latest-gen brushless drill kit for $99, a latest-gen brushless impact driver kit for $99, and a 2-tool combo kit for $169.
Home Depot usually has matching pricing on Dewalt Atomic series cordless power tools. But not right now or the last many times that I checked.
And yet Amazon of all places DOES have the Dewalt 20V Max Atomic cordless drill kit, DCD794D1, at the $99 price Home Depot usually offers it for.
At this time, Home Depot has the cordless drill kit at $179.
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Here’s where things get stranger.
Amazon only has the Atomic series cordless drill kit for business customers.
When I look at it from my personal consumer account, they say “no featured offers available” and I can’t add it to my cart.
Maybe that’s just Amazon being Amazon.
About Home Depot’s Prime Day Dewalt Deals…
Since we’re on the subject, a reader brought up Home Depot’s Prime Day tool deals (see Home Depot Finally has HUGE Dewalt Tool Deals for Prime Day).
Home Depot’s July 4th deals ended on the 9th, and so they changed things up on the 10th, which was the third day of Prime Day deals at Amazon and many competing retailers.
For the first time that I can recall, Home Depot had Dewalt-only tool deals of the day.
The reader saw a ton of promotional banners on their phone when opening the Home depot app, all hyping up the Dewalt tool deals. They found this a bit confusing and exciting and asked my thoughts.
There are different things to consider.
One of the deals was for the Dewalt Atomic series cordless drill kit plus
At the time of my reply, 1pm ET, Home Depot was reporting 27 in stock of the Dewalt cordless drill kit plus Bluetooth speaker bundle. That deal seemed like a good value at $129.
24 hours later, Home Depot was reporting 14 in stock. Now, several hours later, it’s still fixed at 14 bundles in stock, not that I expected it to sell very well at its inflated “regular” price.
Also at 1pm ET yesterday, Home Depot reported having 14 in stock of a non-Atomic cordless drill and impact driver combo kit with PowerStack batteries. Right now, they’re reporting having 11 in stock for online shipping.
From this, we can surmise that they only sold 3 between 1pm ET and 14 hours hours later when the deal ended. Changing my zip code doesn’t seem to change the inventory count, suggesting that’s all Home Depot has for fulfillment.
Home Depot has 15 in stock of the Dewalt Atomic 2-tool combo kit at just my local store.
As discussed in a recent post, I found a couple in-store, and they were not in a prime location.
For this kit, Home Depot says they have 4,312 available for online fulfillment right now, at the “special buy” price of $249. Acme Tools has it for $169.
It was notable that Home Depot had Dewalt-only tool deals of the day, and some were quite good, such as the more pro-oriented tools such as the cordless cable stripper for less than half price, and PEX expender at $200 off.
But something still seems amiss.
And now Amazon is offering a cordless drill kit promo – at least to business customers – that I haven’t known Home Depot to miss?
From the inventory counts, Home Depot has all of these tools in stock.
Home Depot is LOSING to Lowe’s since at this time Lowe’s is offering much better pricing on “gateway” Dewalt cordless power tool kits.
The situation doesn’t make sense.
Some might argue that Home Depot gave in-store preference to Milwaukee M18 cordless power tool deals. Okay – so why aren’t the typical Dewalt Atomic tool promotions available online at least?
There’s no obvious explanation.
Tariffs? Home Depot’s inventory disclosures show they already have stock on-hand for fulfillment. Sometimes the numbers seem spurious, such as when something a drop-shipped item is shown to have exactly 1,000 in stock. But in this case I’ve seen enough patterns over the years during high volume sales periods to trust it.
I estimate that Home Depot has thousands of Atomic series cordless power tool combo kits in their stores right now. And yet they only had a few dozen of some of the tool kit promos that were featured in their tool deals of the day yesterday.
The tool deals of the day doesn’t change any of this. However, maybe it shouldn’t go unnoticed that there was a paltry of Atomic series promos there too.
There could be deep implications here, or it could mean nothing.
Hopefully discussion of all this could potentially lead to greater clarity, and if not then at least I have a record of my thoughts and observations about the matter.
The only thing I know for certain is that we’re not seeing clockwork-like Dewalt Atomic series cordless power tool deals at Home Depot. Regardless of the reason, that’s not good for Home Depot, and it’s not good for Dewalt.
Why is this happening, and what will mean for the future?
In the meantime, you can buy the Atomic series cordless drill kit at Amazon (direct) for $99 if you have a business account.
Robert
Stuart, this is another post where you mention having an Amazon business account allowed you to see things normal accounts cannot.
How does one get an Amazon business account?
Stuart
It’s free, but you might need business info such as a company name or email. At some point they allowed sharing of Prime membership benefits.
I barely use it as there is very rarely any difference in price.
David
I have been shopping for a home backup generator and some other business-typical items recently and they started sending me Amazon Business invites. I do not own a business but they are actively “fishing” for new business sign-ups.
As Stuart said, you do need verifiable business cred.
Stuart
They did the same with me. I clicked the link but didn’t sign up, and eventually they offered a hefty coupon code that convinced me.
Rich
My solution! as of 2 minutes ago – cancelled Prime. Yippee!!
They can take their cesspool dynamic island. Got tired of the washing machine belt notices in my cart up 1cents, down 1cents, up 5cents, down 20 cents.
I’m out of the cesspool! Earlier I searched for item “x” and got a hit return of “1 of 860” items. 15 pages for a lug nut socket. Good night. I’m off the Amazon rodeo circuit!
ps Thanks for the deal guide this run. ToolGuyd. I bought a few things with the links here.
Stuart
You can always sign up on a monthly basis for Oct-thru-Dec if there are Prime Day October deals you want, or shipping or whatever benefits over the holiday season.
Rog
I would love to hear your tinfoil hat speculations on why this is happening, Stuart. I’m genuinely curious at all this “drama” 🙂
Stuart
There’s not enough present and historical info to guess with any confidence.
Could be some kind of dispute, could be something else. Could be nothing, but I don’t think so.
This hurts both parties and so maybe it’s a joint circumstance. But both also could be trying to punish or leverage each other in ways I don’t understand for reasons I cannot imagine.
This is like finding a splatter stain on the ceiling with no knowledge of how it got there. “It’s supposed to be there” is the only wrong answer.
The only thing I am confident about is that things aren’t as expected. The Amazon listing could be a clue, or nothing.
We need more clues to solve the puzzle I believe we’re seeing.
Katie
Maybe it’s a negotiating tactic. They are trying to get better terms with DeWalt, so they are putting them a step down from Milwaukee.
Or maybe they want people to buy more Ryobi. I got two amazing Ryobi deals this time. Atomic may compete with Ryobi for some customers.
Or maybe they are not doing so well, and it’s based on that, perhap a bit of desperation.
That said, I’ve been very happy with some of their free and very fast shipping. I’d rather order from them than Amazon. For one thing, there’s no 30-day only return window like Amazon. For another, the shipping is more reliable. Amazon will often ship early or late. Yes, early is a problem if you travel. With HD it’s there when they say, often the next day. Some of that depends on your location. And returns are easy and fast, at least at my local store, rarely long waits, plenty of staffing.
One of our two local lumberyards closed (retirement of owners) The other lumberyard no longer carries hardwood, but you can order it. It seems they sell a lot of cabinets and other home upgrades. And construction lumber. Home Depot does stock some hardwood (so do Lowe’s and Menard’s. So that’s something else I like about HD. Amazon can’t do that well. If I make something with hardwood (or even pine), I’m very picky about my boards. I don’t want them chosen for me and shipped.
Aaron Lipner
Could be HD had some people leave the company or the roles that normally track this. I’d expect someone higher up to watch or know what is going on. Maybe AI gone awry…. Seems like a people thing vs any real strategy.