Regulars may recall the horrendous trouble I've had with a Makita 6844 autofeed screwdriver.
Its never actually got through a belt of 50 screws without jamming or developing some other kind of fault - like screwing itself to a deck board which took 15 mins to free off.
I bought it brand new from a seller on EBAY who was just a box shifter, not a proper tool shop, somewhere in Poole. Mistake. Had I bought it from Screwfix, Axminster, Lawsons etc I would have had easier redress.
It went back to Makita for repair, who promptly claimed I was using the wrong collated screws. Screwfix confirmed that their collated screws were perfectly suitable for the machine, so I was stuck in the middle.
To their credit Makita sent me 2 boxes of their own brand screws and a square head drive bit to try.
The machine worked reasonably well on one decking job, but on the one after that it played up again, jamming every third or fourth screw, inserting some only half way, the guide head falling apart & finally screwing itself to a deck board - twice. Nightmare.
Another e mail snottogram to Makita last night provoked a call from them at
9:00am this morning.Guy from the service dept was highly apologetic & couldn't understand why I'd had so much trouble, why a normally perfect machine should play up etc. He suggested there wouldn't be much point in them exchanging it for a new one - I agreed.
TBH I don't think he was fully confident in the reliability of the product either.
After discussing my application - speeding up the fastening of deck boards - he agreed to swap it for a brand new 14.4v impact driver with 2 x 3a/hr NiMH batteries.
Great shame really, it would have been the answer to a maidens prayer had it worked. I've progressed from drill drivers through impact drivers through to an autofeed in an effort to speed up the job. Impact drivers are fast, but not as fast as this beast would have been, had it worked.
So, what do I think of the Makita autofeed screwdriver? The one I had was a pile of crap, caused me endless grief, cost me time & money.
What do I think of Makita? - an excellent honourable company fully prepared to back up their products, do the decent thing and solve a customers problem.
Anyone want a box of Makita collated screws?