Last year, I bought a Ryobi 18V RC truck, a Black Friday special by Home Depot. It was $59 and came with a Ryobi 18V compact battery pack and portable charger.
At time I had been pining for an RC rock crawler to drive around the backyard with my son, but I wasn’t quite ready to spend a couple of hundred dollars on one. Nor could I bring myself to try one of the no-name brands at the local Toysrus or Target.
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$59 for an 18V RC truck that works with Ryobi battery packs? Sure! Now, I wish I bought two – one to drive around with my son, and another to potentially modify into a robotics platform.
A few months ago, on maybe the fourth drive, the RC truck lost a wheel. We found it, but some of the hardware was missing.
I needed a new nut, washer, and axle component. I looked up the manual online, found what I needed via the parts diagram, and went to Ryobi’s website to request assistance.
What struck me as strange is that it required me to create a user account, and to then create a customer service support ticket using their built-in system. Usually, all that’s required is an email, direct or via a form.
They told me not to worry, and gave me a time-frame of 12-14 business days. Now, 20 calendar days later, I have my parts.
I am quite pleased that they were able to assist me, and it was nearly as hassle-free as can be.
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While this isn’t exactly the same as requesting a replacement part for a tool, or sending a tool in for repair or replacement, I was happy enough about the ordeal that I felt compelled to share it with you.
My son will surely be happy too. I had to hide the truck because he kept grabbing the loose wheel and my tools, asking me to fix it. I had better give it a test drive first.
If these were spare parts for a tool, I might have wished for speedier availability. But, I assumed that the delay was at least partly due to the special nature of the product.
I have my fingers crossed that there will be another Ryobi 18V car/truck/vehicle of some kind for this year’s holiday shopping season. I don’t think I’ve used the compact battery pack or “travel charger” yet, but we sure got our money’s worth out of the neat RC truck. I paired it with a 4.0Ah battery pack, but the lighter compact battery pack might not be a bad idea.
What have your Ryobi customer service experiences been like?
David C.
The wheel on my did the same thing. I couldn’t find the little metal rod in the yard, so I made one out of a finish nail.
Adam g
I had heard of wheels falling off so I check and tighten them regularly. I did destroy the body on mine by going under a car at top speed. The thing really goes.
Nathan S
The color scheme of the RC truck make it look like less of a toy than the actual power tools.
Didn’t know about this. In all seriousness, this is not a bad idea to get parents to buy into the battery platform, given that any remote control vehicles my kids have had run on smaller cells (AA, AAA) or undersized LiPo cells (100s mAh).
Sco Deac
I have wondered why none of the tool manufacturers haven’t tried to license their tech with Power Wheels. It would be awesome for the kids power wheels to run on a DeWalt flexvolt.
Cody Z
I just bought a 3D printed M18 mount off eBay to use my Milwaukee batteries on powerwheels.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Milwaukee-18V-M18-XC18-battery-adapter-dock-power-connector-12-gauge-3d-printed/142928738041?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649
Pete
Mainly because the power wheels run on 12v or 6v. At 18v the power wheels are SUPER FAST. I mean i had to RUN to keep up with my 4 year old daughter at the time lol. So that means only using 12v tool batteries and 12v tool batteries won’t last long enough and probably over stress the cells.
But if one could make it so the 18v tool batteries would run a 12v power wheels that would be awesome.
David
I would think that, if they designed the cars to be used with the 18V batteries, they would use different motors/gearing/etc so the cars wouldn’t be rockets.
TonyT
I’ve been happy ordering replacement parts and extras (such as circular saw guides and vac filters) from Gardner Inc (which handles these via the Ryobi web site). The process is a little clunky, but it wasn’t too bad to find what parts I needed/wanted, the prices were reasonable (like $0.75 for a OMT trigger button), and they came in about a week.
George
When I buy stuff I get it from a known brand with a good rep.
Specially rc cars that will need parts regularly. Not sure this
is a quality item that will last long nor will parts be available for long.
Unless it is made by a known rc car maker.
Bruce
I really wish this had become a regular item. My Home Depot got 1. Sold out in minutes.
Jerry
My experience with Ryobi customer service has been that they do a good job in terms of quality of service, as well as honoring the warranty, but could use an improvement as far as speed goes. As long as you aren’t in a hurry, they will make things right they even honored the extended warranty on a cordless rotary hammer that failed on me while drilling some 1 inch holes in high strength concrete. The drill was rated to 5/8 but the service rep said it was supposed to have overload protection which didn’t do it’s job so they covered it. It took close to 3 weeks to show up though, which wouldn’t be good if I needed it right away.
Benigno Garcia
The same thing happen to me not to happy about it
Also I hate the controller it keeps lossig signl plus why wouldnt it just use a 18v battery just how the car does I got to worry about having AAA batteries
I have almost every Ryobi 18v tool so I’m all in
Even the clip that hold the shell down to frame got to go so cheap they should just be wing nuts and not plastic
Cush
Tried to get customer service from Ryobi a few years ago it absolutely sucked attitude really bad! Will never bother them again.
Jeremiah
I’m guessing the remote would be too heavy with an 18v even a slim one. If they hadn’t phased it out already a Tek 4 battery would be perfect though. I wish more platforms had a small battery like the way Milwaukee is developing it and Ryobi had, but retired it. 4v is perfect for small, compact, low power and light tools.
I had, and liked, the Ryobi self leveling cross laser (until it got stolen with a bunch of tools).
Ed
Same thing happened to our car but we just found the parts locally to fix it. It is a nice starter car for my younger son. My older son has a 1/10 LOSI Brushless and it literally drives circles around the Ryobi. But it is perfect car for younger kids as a starter car.
Patrick
I haven’t had the chance to find out their customer service yet, but it sounds like your experience wasn’t too bad. We have probably 8-9 18v things from them and none have broken yet. I figured I could have killed the edger or pole saw by now, but nope. We also have a 7.25″miter saw I grabbed on clearance as a throwaway for cutting pavers (Not advised, but it worked exceptionally better than the circular saw for the brick pavers with a nice diamond blade and hooking the dust collection up to the Shop Van made it surprisingly clean. I would do this again in a heartbeat.). That miter saw never skipped a beat and has been used for several other projects. Cleaning it out with the air compressor was really all it needed to keep chugging along. For a fairly average to highly DIY homeowner, I feel like Ryobi really fits the bill.
Honestly, your experience sounds so much better than just about anything else I have had break ‘within warranty’ lately. I had to buy a laptop for my side job and settled on a high end Dell. The thing was broken out of the box. It would turn itself off after a few minutes and wouldn’t turn on for hours. Since I bought direct from Dell, it involved an hour over the phone with somebody reading from a script that did not understand anything I was saying. Somebody across the globe digests this, orders a part and sends it to a local technician. A week later the tech visits in-home (which is cool), replaces one thing, scratches up the top by not putting anything between the unit and my kitchen table, loses screws in the carpet, leaves 3 minutes after it starts back up……and it turns itself off and wouldn’t turn on for hours. I get a ‘case closed’ email before the tech is out of the driveway and I was back on the phone this morning with somebody else halfway across the world starting from scratch. I was literally asked 11 different times if the power was on or to turn off the unit when I’m calling because it will not turn on. Are they going to send the same part to the same tech again?
My 5 year old ‘Cadillac of furnaces’ crapped the bed a week ago and thank God the $3200 in parts are covered, but the $185 an hour for 3 hours of labor isn’t. A recall on my car a couple months ago and I told them repeatedly I couldn’t pick the car up until the day after the service because I couldn’t leave work before they closed. They left the windows down enough to reach through and it poured for hours overnight and the morning I picked it up. The inside was soaked. They offered a complimentary car wash (Thanks?) and then basically told me that they called and told me to pick up my car before it rained, so it wasn’t their responsibility.
Customer service is dead.
Wow that turned out long. Rough week. Thanks for everything you do and the interesting topics Stuart!