Home Depot’s “buy an 18V (or 20V Max) cordless power tool combo kit, get some free tools” promo is back for 2017.
It’s simple. Buy a new select cordless combo kit, and take your pick of free tool or battery. Buy a larger set, and get your choice of 2 free tools, batteries, or accessories.
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There’s a pre-determined selection of eligible freebies, which Home Depot has made easier to sort through this year.
Here’s the deal landing page. Following are links to the individual landing pages, as well as some light discussion about the deals.
I can’t see an obvious expiration date, and so I assume it’ll be valid at least into December.
The starter kit is a little weak, if you ask me. You can get a premium latest and greatest Dewalt brushless hammer drill and 3-speed impact driver combo kit, with 5.0Ah batteries for just over $306, as of the time of this posting.
But some of the bare tools in this combo promo might sweeten the deal. Personally, I’d go for the 2-bay charger and 4.0Ah battery pack bundle, or the brushless oscillating tool.
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Price: $299
But really, I’d step up to this combo. It starts you off with a similar premium brushless combo kit I mentioned just above, but with a soft tool bag and FlexVolt battery pack upgrade. The DCK299D1T1 kit (compare at Amazon) gives you the best impact driver and cordless drill that Dewalt has right now.
PLUS, the choice of free tools is really sweet. You can’t just pick the free bare tool, you pick from a choice of special single-SKU combos. There are a total of 14 options, ALL of them currently sold out.
Some of the combos are really, REALLY good. I’d check back often to see if they come back in stock. Or you could check your local store.
I’d get the combo that gives you the brushless oscillating tool and circular saw as the free bonus items. or the one with (2) 2-bay chargers and battery pack bundles. Or maybe the bundle with the free blower and wet/dry vac.
Price: $379
Why are there more special bundled together, instead of allowing customers to buy a combo and add the bare tools to their carts as separate items? Probably to simplify things, but also possibly because Home Depot got tired of people buying a bundle and then returning items to keep part of their order at a discount. Just because their system allowed it in previous years, that doesn’t mean they were happy about this happening.
As with the Dewalt deal, this Milwaukee “tier 1” offer is good, but not as crazy-good as the higher tier.
Wait. These are M18 BRUSHLESS tools. That changes everything. Pretty soon, you can buy the brushless drill and brushless impact driver standalone kits for $99 each. But this kit gives you a hammer drill, XC battery packs, and a free tool for $100 more.
If I bought this bundle, I’d choose the circular saw or compact vac as my freebie.
Price: $299
While not brushless, the combo kit at the heart of the deal is a 4-tool combo. Throw in 2 more tools, such as a circular saw and full-size reciprocating saw, angle grinder, and hand vacuum, and you have an incredibly good 6-tool combo for $400.
Price: 399
Makita’s “tier 1” combo kit is also a brushless hammer drill and impact driver combo kit, bundled with 4.0Ah battery packs. There are some good choices in the “free bonus tool” list, such as their compact brushless router, or a brushless angle grinder.
Price: $299
And again, the higher-priced combo tier offers an even better bargain. The base kit comes with a heavy duty hammer drill, 3-speed impact driver, and 5.0Ah battery packs.
Me? I’d go for the brushless router and angle grinder as my freebie choices.
Hmm, the angle grinder comes with both guard types? +1 gold star to Makita.
Price: $399
Ridgid’s “one free tool or battery” offer starts you off with a brushless hammer drill and impact driver combo kit. There are some very good freebie choices in the mix, including a brushless 7-1/4″ circular saw, a brushless cordless router, and their new LED folding panel light.
Price: $279
Take a big jump up in price, and you start off with Ridgid’s 5-tool cordless combo kit. The bonus tool selection is decent, and starts you off with a good selection of tools.
I’d pick one of the combos that features the brushless router.
I should also point out that this image is WRONG. It shows the starter kit as featuring (3) battery packs, when the combo kit only comes with (2) 4.0Ah battery packs. The LED is shown with a battery pack that is not included in the kit.
Price: $499
Lastly, buy a Ryobi 18V One+ brushless drill kit, and get your choice of free bare tool. I’d go for the 7-1/4″ circular saw, or maybe the cordless miter saw.
Price: $149
Which of these offers do you find most appealing?
Personally, I think that the Dewalt 20V Max brushless kit, with its 2 free tools, is most appealing. I’m probably not alone, as all the options are currently sold out. Or maybe that just means that shipments are on the way to the stores or warehouses. The Milwaukee deals, and first tier Makita deal are also particularly good bargains.
Adam
December 30th is the typical end date for this promotion.
Stuart
That sounds familiar, but I don’t like to guess or state as fact if I can’t verify it.
Chase
The fine print on the in-store displays I saw Monday shows it being valid through 1/24/2018.
Damon
These deals definitely lasted into the new year in the past and in fact, I seem to recall that they actually dropped the price of the kits a little bit as stock dwindled and they needed to tear down the holiday displays to gear for spring. Might have been just after Christmas of 2015.
Adam
The day before it ended, the price dropped $50 or $100 on the Kits. That was an easy choice to buy another for someone a friend that it was a little out of their range.
Stuart mentioned HD changing it to one package sku, so you can’t separate later. That seems to be more true for the packages online, but this offer is also in store w/o all the items tied together. So that way, if you want 2 of the same extra freebie you can.
With the Milwaukee Tier 1 promo, the tools aren’t pre-bundled online, but Tier 2 are. Math must be to hard for the computers to figure out 2 free items. LoL
Stuart
It’s not the math is hard.
Let’s say there’s a $200 combo, and 2 freebies, each with retail prices of $100.
So it would look like this:
$200 combo discounted to $100
$100 tool discounted to $50
$100 tool discounted to $50
Total cost: $200.
Some customers would then turn around and return the 2 “free” tools for $100 back, resulting in a discounted price of $100 for the combo.
Or they’d return the combo and keep the “free” tool at their discounted prices.
This was allowed, I’m guessing because there was no way to prevent it, but probably not “kosher.”
Dan
I think the ads may have been hijacked, I have been redirected 2x from toolguyd, once for winning a Walmart gift card, now for an Amazon gift card, and I am seeing Fuccillo the car dealer in the ads, where I have never seen anything but tool related ads before… I hope I was accidentally clicking these ads not getting redirected from some virus or something…
Stuart
I’m sorry about that. That happened to me once today, and it happened to me on other sites in the past.
Today was the first time it happened here, and I hoped it was an isolated incident.
There’s been no security breach that I can tell, and it hasn’t been repeated for me since the one occurrence on my phone this morning.
I’ve opened tickets with my service providers, and have been keeping an eye on things.
But unless or until it repeats for me, there’s nothing I can do to track down the source.
I didn’t think of it coming through the Google Ads, but I’ll look into that. Thank you!
It’s technically possible for code in an ad to force a redirect like that. I have blocked lot of ads before, for autoplaying audio or video and things like that, but I’ve never had this happen before, to my knowledge.
Adam
I’ve started to get those pop-ups on legitimate sites that I have visited in the past, that never had a problem. Often I can’t even use the back button to get back to the intended page. Super fustrating
Reguarding the end date, it’s the Buy a Milwaukee Fuel Kit or Saw Kit, get a free other item, that goes until 1/30/18. That promo replaced the get $150/$200 promo from last year, that ran the same dates.
Stuart
That’s happened to me every now and then, and that’s what I’m hoping happened here. I never thought hard about the reason, but maybe it is – a rogue or malicious ad that passes through Google’s approval process and is allowed to show on publisher’s sites until they’re blocked.
ANY information you could provide, screenshots, even the time, would be appreciated. Leaving a comment or submitting an email via the “Contact” form https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/contact-us/%3C/a%3E gives me and my support something to work off of.
Bolt
I got the ryobi drill and picked up the new brushless angle grinder to go with it.
I was thinking about getting the circular saw but the only one they had in store looked like it had been dropped from a pretty good hight. The other thing that pushed me to the angle grinder was hat I scrapped my hand on the gate leaving the house in the morning so it let me fix that problem in no time at all.
Blake
I’m interested in the Rigid 7-tool combo (18v Gen5x) with what looks like *free* R86011B brushless impact wrench and R86041B brushless grinder for $499 (was $747).
Am I understanding this correctly that the regular price for the 5-tool combo (without the impact wrench and grinder) is $747 and it’s being discounted to $499 *PLUS* throwing in the impact and grinder for free??
If that’s the case then this deal is a fantastic deal, right?
The tools I’m most interested in are the impact driver and impact wrench. I’m sure I’d get use out of the grinder and reciprocating saw as well. From an automotive use would the Brushless Automotive Kit (3-Piece) for $299 make more sense?
Or would the Rigid 18v GEN5X Combo Kit (6-Tool) with (4) 4.0Ah HYPER Lithium-Ion Batteries make more sense? My current cordless tool is a Makita and I’ve had a battery die just beyond the 1-yr warranty so the lifetime replacement batteries sounds good. I assume that all 4 batteries in this kit would qualify for the warranty as they’re purchased together in the kit.
Stuart
Their Gen5X combo, model R9652, is typically $499, but has been on sale for $399.
https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/ridgid-gen5x-18v-cordless-power-tools/%3C/a%3E%3Cbr /> https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/ridgid-gen5x-cordless-kit-deal-052015/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Their “was” pricing looks to add the bare tools to the price of the regular kit.
It’s sounding like the automotive kit might be better suited to your needs. I’d say sleep on it, you probably have time to buy either.
Blake
Thanks for the clarification, Stuart. I went ahead an purchased the 3-Piece Brushless Automotive Kit. When I have a need I’ll get the Rigid reciprocating saw.
Craig
Really wished the Makita subcompact was part of this deal.
Stuart
Maybe there will be a one-day deal, or an unannounced holiday deal.
Patrick H
Is it ever worth holding out till the end in hopes of last second deals?
Ian
Why does every promotion include a drill and driver? How many of each of those do you need!!! Last I bought the ryobi drill and tool deal for $99, and got the new led lamp, which is really great, plus 2 new batteries.
In fact it’s almost cheap to buy the tools with Batts, rather than batteries direct.
This just promotes more waste, and encourages people to throw away still good tools which could last several more years
Whiskey and wood
Or you could sell the drills as bare tools and save yourself money, save someone else money, and not generate extra waste.
Quand
Why does every kit have to have a drill and an impact driver? Everyone should have enough drills and drivers at some point.
Blake
I don’t already have an impact driver so I’m glad the kits have one 🙂 In the Ridgid kits I’d gladly swap out the cordless circular saw for a cordless grinder. For the infrequent times I need a circular saw my corded saw is adequate.
Bolt
The kits are there to get people buying that brand of tool so they’ve got to cover the basics. They want everyone else to be paying more for the tools they want.
Stuart
Makes sense.
If someone is upgrading or buying their first set of tools, brands can take a hit on the initial investment because they’ll have that user locked in for future tool, accessory, and brand purchases.
Plus there’s so much competition that they really have to.
Everyone needs a drill, and impact drivers have become nearly as ubiquitous. So that’s why they’re included.
G Crowe
Please remove me from your post ,I am not in USA!
Stuart
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Bill
I ended up buying a Makita kit that I already own because the freebies were too good to ignore. As Stuart suggested, I went with the router and grinder option. I’ll see if I can find someone to buy the drill and impact. Both of my Home Depots were pretty well picked over today so you may have to check stock often to get what you want or buy online.