Kobalt’s Hypercoil LED worklight, Magnum Grip locking pliers, and Triple Cut utility cutters dropped in price at Lowes and are currently 75% off. The LED worklight is $6, and the hand tool sets are $5 each.
To be frank, the Magnum Grip locking pliers and Triple Cut utility cutters still aren’t worth the money. I reviewed all of these products back in 2013 when they were released for the winter holiday season, and they were grossly disappointing. I don’t use this word a lot, but I found the designs to be awful. The tools didn’t function well at all.
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The Hypercoil LED worklight is decent, although I am much more a fan of the Black & Decker LED Snakelight. But, at $6, the Hypercoil is a good bargain for what you get.
Buy Now: Hypercoil, Locking Pliers, Triple Cut (via Lowes)
What I find interesting is how the “was” prices are significantly less than when the tools were first released. Then, the tools’ “was” pricing was inflated to prices that you couldn’t buy the tools at. For example, the hand tools would have been listed as “was $25,” but you couldn’t buy them online or in-store at that price. Then, when the tools were finally put out on display and were available for online ordering, pricing signs said “now $20, was $25.” I felt it to be a bit misleading. I suppose the “was” price has been lowered to reflect the most recent prior price to help save face. When a tool is discounted by 75%, one might wonder what’s wrong with it.
A quick look at in-store inventories for all three tools shows that there are still way too many in stock. It’s unclear what happened, but it’s not a good sign when there are still tools left on the shelf beyond the winter holidays and Father’s Day. It will be interesting to see how Lowes will change their strategy for 2014’s holiday season.
Reviews
You should read and watch our reviews of these tools before considering whether to buy any of them, even at 1/4 their original prices. Readers’ comments are also worth reading through.
Hypercoil LED worklight review
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Daniel
Hopefully at some point in the near future Lowes will start carrying quality/functional tools again, and steer away from the latest gimmick that gets pitched to them. I think sales numbers dont lie & when you have year old inventory that you basically have to give away, maybe its time to change your strategy.
I for one would rather pay premium prices for premium tools VS bargain prices for junk that will break or never get used. Kobalt is fast becoming a kitchen drawer variety of tools.
vk
I have to say I love the flashlight kit – I ended up buying 3 of them. The light can focus to shoot a great beam over 300ft. I bought the others, but mainly because they are cheap and I hate passing up a “deal”.
dan
In the UK it would be illegal to state a was price that you could not buy the tool at, here on the advert or price ticket they state the was price, a pair of dates for when it was available at that price and often an indication of how many stores it was available in at that price because lots of chains would inflate prices in a few stores for a while so they could claim bigger discounts, now they do it in many more stores.
A newly launched tool would have its price stated against the rrp usually if they were discounting from the start.
Stuart
It’s against FTC guidelines to do that in the USA as well. (Section 233.1, part B.)
The products were listed at their “was” price online, but you couldn’t buy any for delivery, and my order for in-store pickup was cancelled. Then, the pallets were moved to the sales floor and started shipping online and the “new low price” banners were slapped on.
They’ve done this before.
Months before the Double Drive was released, Lowes PR told me it would be $20. It was initially listed at $25 and then when it was available for sale, they advertised the “new low price” as $20.
Ktash
I got 5 of these at this low price. They will make great stocking stuffers or small gifts. I do like to have both rechargeable and regular batteries, since they will still work once the rechargeable battery goes. Please note that I still have the original snakelight, so I like things to last a loooong time. Of course, build quality isn’t what it was for any of these things.
Also, in case you haven’t seen it, Woot had Knipex pliers for $20. Just the needlenose left last time I left. http://tools.woot.com/plus/tools-woot-clearance-rack?ref=cnt_wp_2
Stuart, not sure how to contact you to report hot deals.
Mick
Hey Stu, I’ve been corresponding with some people at Lowes about someone upstairs making some poor decisions and us consumers ending up with less-than quality of stuff. Thankfully, it is a free country and if we don’t like the selection of China made tools, we can go elsewhere. But now with oil companies making record profits, it would be nice to stop and buy rather than flip over the pliers or whatever checking where the tool is made and drive off to somewhere else. My question to you , Stu, is permission to copy and paste the address to this article above to make a point of what us consumers think of their product.
After more than a dozen years, I am somewhat bitter about an exec at Stanley Tools decided to yank the production lines out and send them overseas. Thus sending a lot of excellent people job hunting. The hacksaw blades, one example, we made were labeled for a 10-15 different companies plus we met and exceeded all government standards and all made in USA. I’m getting off track here.
May I copy and paste this article to Lowes? No biggie if not.
*looks around again*
Yeppers, Stu….I like this site
Thanks
Stuart
Hi Mike, sure, you can send a link to the page to anyone you wish. The fact of the matter is that the Kobalt seasonal tools are all designed around a price point. They want to sell these by the tens or hundreds of thousands in a very short period of time. In past years, Kobalt tools like the Double Drive screwdrivers and Multi-Drive Wrench seem to have sold really well, really quickly.
But with these tools, someone at Lowes must have been really ambitious and ordered too many tools. Three special tools also means diluted advertising efforts. According to the online stock levels, the 5 stores closest to me and within 12 miles have 350 Hypercoil LED lights, 271 locking pliers sets, and 612 Triple Cut cutters combined still in stock.
I’m not opposed to imported tools that work well. My issue with the cutters and pliers aren’t that they are made overseas, but that the tools didn’t work well for me at all.
Yadda
Some of the buyers at Lowe’s have really missed the mark in the past 5+ years. The Re:solve line of multitools they had several years ago at Christmas come to mind. At $15.99 they sat on the shelf. They finally closed most of them out with the final mark down under $2. I’m sure they weren’t expensive, but a closeout that takes more than 6 months to accomplish is not good retailing. The tools mentioned in this article are a further decline in that direction. Granted even at 75% off they are probably breaking even, but no one goes into business to break even. You need profit to keep the lights on. It’s a good thing other items in the store sell well.
John Sullivan
For what it’s worth, Lowe’s must have bumped the price on the LED light up to $7 (specifically, $6.98) since this was posted. Last night my local store had them tagged and coming up at the register for $9.98 (the “was” price on the tag was $12.98) but I showed them the $7 online price; they honored it and said that they would update the shelf tag and computer, but I’m not sure if they really did. Surprised me that they would have prices that differ from the online pricing, since I thought their PoS terminals all connected to the same database.