Over at Amazon, they have this Milwaukee Packout and 100pc Shockwave bit set bundle, and they’re beating Home Depot on its price.
As I’ve posted about in the past, this set is “regularly” $100, but sells for $50 much of the year as part of different seasonal promotions or sales.
Every now and then there’s an added deal of the day or similar, where Home Depot will drop the price to $45 very temporarily.
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Finding Milwaukee Tool products on Amazon isn’t surprising.
From what I have seen, it seems that a lot of 3rd party sellers buy up inventory from Home Depot or other authorized dealers, and put them on Amazon at a markup.
That’s retail arbitrage, and a lot of resellers on Amazon do this with a range of products.
But here, it lists Amazon.com as the seller and shipper, which makes no sense, as Amazon is not an authorized dealer.
So where are they getting their inventory from?
This has happened a couple of times over the years, such as a couple of years ago when Amazon was selling Harbor Freight Hercules tools.
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If the items weren’t available for purchase, I’d chalk it up to a search engine optimization type of tactic. But you can buy the Milwaukee bit set and Packout tool case combo, and for less than Home Depot is selling it for at the moment.
Update: It looks like the set is back to its regular pricing. Check back; we don’t know when, but the set has always gone back to its promotional price of ~$50, it’s just a matter of time.
This is strange – I wonder what’s going on here. How are they selling this directly if they’re not an authorized dealer?
Mr B
Interesting that at Home Depot you can get the a 220 piece set for about $18 more (with my 10% military discount). same set but it includes 2 additional bit sets and some extra bits. One of the extra bit sets has small drills. Not a bad deal for a little bit extra.
Paul Harden
Can you please post a link to the Milwaukee 220piece set you mentioned?
Mr B
Same link as “Buy at Home Depot” in blue above. Then select 220 piece.
Cheers
Mikek
Out of stock. Darn it!
Robert Kendzierski
The 175 piece is $57
Mike
Home depot has this bit set on clearance
spark
Amazon and Home Depot price compete with each other regularly. Seems rather normal to me.
TomD
It’s not the price but the fact Amazon is selling them at all.
Adam
I was a bit surprised to see this was actually sold & shipped from Amazon. Most times it is third party sellers selling Milwaukee on Amazon.
As long as the HD scrapers catch it, they very well would match it.
Todd+shaffer
But if you have the product and ship it to Amazon to sell and Ship. Would that be sold by Amazon. I am not sure
Vards Uzvards
Sold by … / Ships from Amazon
It might be even Prime-eligible, but you will still see the seller’s name.
Joatman
Maybe the rules are different for selling “accessories”, as opposed to actual tools. Do you have to be an authorized dealer to sell them?
Stuart
This is akin to Wendy’s selling a Big Mac at a lower price than McDonalds. Where are they getting it from? How? Why?
Brad Clarkston
Same price as of July 29 7:39pm central
Ct451
https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/no-amazon-is-not-a-milwaukee-tool-authorized-dealer/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
seems like the same “problem” from 2016.
Robbie
You see this in electronics all the time, in those cases it’s grey market products, it’s identical products but instead of being imported through official channels, resellers buy the products from overseas and bypass the official importer/seller.
For example only canon USA can purchase cameras and import them into the United States from Japan as an official product where you have a valid warranty and direct support from the manufacturer. Some retailers in the United States will buy cameras directly from japan and resell them here, bypassing canon USA, those cameras sell at a discount. It was always a discussion on where these retailers get so many grey market cameras retailers like Amazon, B&H and Adorama always seemed to have an endless supply of them. Some even suggested these giant retailers were buying directly from the manufacturer bypassing the official importer which would be a violation of the contract between canon USA and canon Japan.
Robert
I doubt B&H Video and Adorama would jeopardize their relationship with Canon. What I was told at trade shows is because of their volume and their relationship with influential professional photographers, they get preferential supply from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, etc.
TomD
Large companies sometimes make shipment mistakes, and a pallet of stuff ends up at the wrong retailer; one of the solutions is “hey, just buy it off us and sell them through, we’ll both pretend it never happened”.
Todd+shaffer
I got the set for 60 at Ace Hardware.
Ryan
Could be a lot different reasons. Accessories sometimes are treated differently than the main product line. Meaning accessories are sold to anyone and not requiring dealer agreements.
Amazon sales are so big that Milwaukee probably has a hard time in saying no. They could sell direct or sideways through another outlet. Maybe not being authorized appeases existing retailers, but then Amazon wont have to follow pricing rules.
Amazon could be using grey market, sideways or another door from milwaukee to force an official dealer authorization.
I noticed years ago amazon was selling electronics much cheaper undercutting authorized outlets. Sometimes they were cheaper than small dealers could buy for direct from the manufacturer. The solution was to authorize amazon and make them follow normal dealer pricing. Cant find those good prices on amazon anymore.
JR Ramos
With Amazon listed as the seller (not just the platform shipper) it could be that a third party seller was forcefully removed and their stock absorbed into Amazon’s for sale. This is really crappy in some ways but it happens a lot (most recently with a crap ton of import Chinese products from sellers who broke rules in various ways, primarily ratings and direct customer contact for same, or backdoor refunds for “free” products).
I’ve bought three tools and a number of batteries via Amazon over the last 6 years or so and all have been legit (and two of those batteries were crappers and I got warranty replacements on those from Milwaukee with no trouble). All were third party sellers, a couple of which seemed dubious (home/garage sales, not “real” businesses). One item arrived in a plain brown chipboard box, which I understand is (or was?) the typical bulk packaging used for warranty replacements or fleet sales (so to speak) at service centers and some industrial suppliers. The other tools were in normal retail boxes. With that brown box, I contacted Milwaukee to inquire about legitimacy and all was well.
A lot of companies have gone under since the pandemic, too, so the auction and liquidation market has been strong…so obtaining stock that way is a possibility. Or perhaps like CPO when they lost their dealership rights (they still have some surreptitiously listed Milwaukee products on their site but pretty much zero advertising or logos).
I bought one tool on Ebay as well, which was legit, and it was a large seller but obviously not an authorized dealer…who knows where they get their stuff sometimes. I suggest if pursuing these avenues, use PayPal so you have one extra method of payment protection in case there’s a problem and the seller and/or platform don’t make it right. Going directly through your bank or card issuer is a major hassle with unpredictable results.
Adam
That makes a lot of sense about absorbing the stock.
As far as brown boxes, that is how they come if they are in a kit that isn’t in a blow molded case. It would be nice to have an office label on the outside, but either warranty purpose or from a kit, that is how they come if they aren’t meant for retail.
If Amazon fees weren’t so high, I’d sell my extra tools on there as well, but makes more sense to do it locally or other avenues. Lot of people just buying low, selling for a little higher. People know Amazon, but don’t know any better for warranty purposes, so items sell relatively quickly for flippers.
Liquidators would have a hard time selling on Amazon, as a majority of those are returns, and are at the very least opened to be tested & can’t be sold as new.
Amazon Seller
This is the most likely reason. I’m a fairly large Amazon seller and Amazon has lost tons of my products in their warehouses. They will either reimburse, or replace them. A lot of times if they reimburse and then find them later, they will just sell it themselves. It doesn’t seem like they had many of these, so this is probably what happened.
Stuart
It seems that Amazon has sold hundreds of these directly.
That’s got to be multiple pallets’ worth.
Jeremiah James McKenna
I’m always leery about buying anything Milwaukee Tool, that is marked as “new” from Amazon.
Milwaukee Tool does not allow their products to be sold on Amazon, and will not warranty them.
Me personally, I’d gladly pay the $2.03 for peace of mind, plus I don’t have to wait for it to be delivered.
JR Ramos
Not entirely true. And by law they are not allowed to reject warranty based on place of purchase (they can limit the duration, be more strict about providing a proof of purchase, and a couple other small things, but they can’t deny if the tool is of genuine manufacture and unaltered…there are exceptions with global market regions, though (as in cameras, etc).
They don’t want them sold on Amazon because they want to protect their value image and distributor network/profit/agreements/promotions/MAP pricing restrictions, so it is “unauthorized.” Ostensibly they will tell you it is for your own good since their distributors have more knowledge and service so you don’t make a mistake. 🙂
They will warranty both the tools and the batteries even if purchased on Amazon or elsewhere, and they are new products. If they hedge or deny you can escalate that and they will do what’s legal and expected and generally take good care of you. They will also still service them where warranty claims are not relevant.