Over at Home Depot, there’s another Milwaukee M12 FREEBIE special going on right now. Buy an M12 Fuel kit, get a free bare tool.
The way this promo works is that you buy the special combo that has the tools you want. There are no rebates or forms to fill out.
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Eligible Milwaukee M12 Fuel kits include their drill/driver, impact driver (check out our review!), impact wrench, hammer drill, their new Hackzall, and there are a couple of combo options.
There are also a couple of non-Fuel kits that worked their way into the promo.
Freebie M12 Tool Choices
- 3/8″ ratchet
- 4Ah XC extended capacity battery
- Non-brushless Hackzall
- Oscillating multi-tool
- 1/4″ hex impact driver
- Right angle drill
- Hammer drill/driver
Seems like a good deal if you were looking to buy a new Milwaukee M12 Fuel kit or combo kit anyway. There’s no indication as to when the deal will expire. Milwaukee’s Fuel tools, which are brushless, are very rarely included in promos because they’re still in such high demand and command premium prices.
It looks like the promo is only available online. You have your choice between free shipping, or free “ship to store.”
Buy Now(via Home Depot)
Bonus M18 Deals
Not interested in Milwaukee’s M12 Fuel tools? There are a couple of M18 cordless power tool freebie deals as well. For instance, buy their Bluetooth radio/charger, get a free M18 2.0Ah battery pack.
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Buy Now(M18 deals via Home Depot)
James C
So to be clear, this does not work with the new M12 circular saw, right?
Stuart
Correct. The only special combos are the ones shown through the Home Depot link. Or you can search for “Milwaukee M12 Fuel free tool” or similar.
Nathan
Bummer about that, huh? Would have got me to open my wallet if they had.
Jason. W
That’s a pretty good deal. To bad I don’t have 200$ to spare.
Frank
Bought a M12 impact driver kit at cpooutlets.com during their 15% off Presidents Day sale. Selected the M12 right angle drill as my free tool and am very pleased with both. They are a good compliment to my M12 hammer drill driver. Both were manufactured within the last 4 months according to the date stamp. With the holiday sale discount the impact driver was cheaper than any other site I visited. The free tool promotion was also being offered at HD at that time. The details at cpo state that the free tool promotion is good until March 31. At my age my projects are mainly homeowner light projects and the M12 series is ideal for me. For heavy duty stuff I break out my 30 year old Milwaukee 1/2″ corded hammer drill.
Julian. Tracy
FYI, so that they don’t have a sku number that rings up as $0.00, HD distributes the total discount of these kind of deals across all the tools that comprise the total buy.
This calculation is then shown after each item as “maximum refund value”.
Thereby, you can purchase a combo, get a free tool and then return the combo for the prorated amount and yield the “free” tool at a discount of 25-35% off their regular selling price.
I’ve done this multiple times, for instance, bought a Milwaukee combo, got the free sweatshirt, ended up with the sweatshirt for about $73 with tax.
Same with a Makita circular saw, free two pack of batts, returned the saw, got two 3.0 batts for about $65 total. And so on and so on….
Great opportunity to get discounts that would otherwise not be available.
JT
Chris
Very similar to how the recent 50/100/150 off promo worked.
Buy a kit to active the 50/100/150 off, buy another tool and the discount gets spread across both items.
The ethics of it all are questionable, but HD knew about it and allowed it (and that promo went on for 3 months). The only issue I see with this one is that you are constantly buying/returning stuff from the web, they might refuse you (since the stuff needs to be shipped back on their dime)
Stuart
If more people do this enough times, Home Depot might put stringent restrictions on their freebie tool deals. They might require that tools be returned together, or they might switch to a *shudder* mail-in rebate system.
In any case, these promo combos have unique internet SKUs. Stores might not be participating in this deal (do they even carry Fuel tools in-store?), and even if they are, selection and availability won’t be as good as online.
Nathan
I know that with the bare tool + free battery deal, the local store had nothing to do with it. I received the wrong battery (the 1.5 A-h version instead of the 2.0 A-h) and, after wasting far too much of my time, they required me to return both the tool and the battery, and then ordered the replacement tool and battery. The local store wouldn’t even take the battery (right then and there, unopened) and swap it for the correct one from their inventory.
Chris
Unfortunately the unique SKU thing will not prevent “return without receipt”.
In the case of a deal like the one right here, a customer can still just return the free tool “without receipt” for store credit provided the free tool is also stocked in store. And there are very few things that Ive found that arent stocked in store (I know how the web says “online only”, but there is a way to find out from the website if a store SKU exists….and if it does, chances are your local store will take it back)
Julian. Tracy
I wouldn’t bother online, too much hassle, but in the store, no bother.
Ethics wise: please – we’re talking about HD…. They’re no trader joes. They implicitly approve it by distributing the discount across the sku’s.
JT
Stuart
No, they do this because if they didn’t, people would buy the tools and then return the base tool and keep the $0 freebie one. Home Depot’s POS system might only allow for discounts to be distributed among all items when a discount is involved.
A lot of stores do this in case a customer needs to return just one item. That doesn’t mean they implicitly approve of customers exploiting a POS limitation for extra discounts. Other stores require that promo-bundled items be returned together, but HD’s system seems to lack this capability.