De Walt Tools

What are people'e opinions of De Walt tools? My right angle drill packed up 1 day inside the 1 year warrenty period, thank god. I took it to the service agents who suggested that DeWalt were rubbish and I would have been better off buying something else. For a drill to seriously overheat within a year of purchase seems to suggest something amiss, especially as this was a right angle drill and hardly got much use anyway.

Kevin

Reply to
Kevin
Loading thread data ...

Overheating a drill doesn't usually have much to do with age of it. You could do that 5 minutes after you bought it, or never, depending how you use it.

You could buy a drill with thermal protection, but this doesn't absolve you from the responsibility to use it sensibly.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

I did! I burnt my DW566 out. Entirely my fault.

Superb tool, and great spares availability/pricing. Will be buying many more DeWalts.

Reply to
Grunff

You took it to De Walt service - who make their living by fixing De Walt products - and they suggested you buy something else?

Methinks this stinks somewhat.

Buy a PPPro from B&Q. No problems with a service centre there.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I like my Makita combi lots too. I don't think there's a lot to choose in quality, but there are some tools where Makita win on price/specs, and some where DeWalt win.

Don't think I've ever seen one in the flesh - seen them on US websites. Who stockes them?

Reply to
Grunff

They're the badge under which Atlas-Copco are sold in the US. Some places in the UK sell them online - you can Google as well as I can - and I have a couple I bought for work through one such outfit. For long-term spares supply, you may be better off buying it under the Atlas-Copco brand it's "supposed" to be sold under in the UK - I'm not sure if the Milwaukee ones sold here are "grey imports" which the mfr will while about warrantee claims for (yes I do know the claim is "really" against the seller, but if it's been sold (a) by some Web-based outfit which closes down and reopens under a new name every 1-2 years, (b) has been sold for "trade" rather than "consumer" use, any Sale-of-Goods-Acts rights may prove difficult to enforce...)

They are very nice-to-use meaty tools, mind you! Especially useful for custom modifications to 19" rack units to hold non-standard bits of kit in the hardware lab. "Fridge? No, that's not a domestic fridge, guv: it's a Hardware Environmental-Stress Test Unit." Next comes the "2.4 GHz electromagnetic-immunity test device", which we'd *never* use to heat up pies....

Stefek

Reply to
stefek.zaba

There you are! I was beginning to wonder where you'd vanished to.

lol.

I will keep an eye out next time I'm looking for power tools (am I ever /not/ looking?).

Reply to
Grunff

Whilst I am a Makita man myself, I can't fault DeWalt products. Sure there have been the occasional 'surprises' (my DeWalt heat gun is the same as B&D's) - but if they were as crap as your service agent suggests why would people go back to them again and again?

Tell you what though, I used a Milwaukee (sp?) the other day - looked crap, but felt very solid in use, I was impressed.

Alex

Reply to
Alex

Up the Wye Valley, looking after 40+ kids for two weeks. "Holiday" isn't p'raps the most obvious word for it. d-i-y skills aplenty, mind, principally of the sanitary variety - satisfying turn-the-flapper-in-the-syphon-round so it works again, less satisfying retrieving Items part-flushed down the crapper :-( More fun was the "bomb detonator": take one Woolies el-cheapo cordless screwdriver, price 5.99; grind a good-enuff approximation of 6mm hex flats onto the end of a piece of 8mm studding; place long (threaded-rod-joining) nut with expoxied-on Piercing Poing onto other end of rod, tape body of driver to wooden backing board with stack of plastic corner blocks either side of nut-with-piercer, replace driver's built-in switch with two singles joined to the Green&Blue and Orange&Brown pairs of a sacrificial Cat5 cable, cause kiddies to hunt for Cat5 extenders and Cat5 patchcords, and old metalclad plateswitch with same pairs of other end of chopped Cat5 across its switched terminals. Place driver up close and personal to large balloon with added custard-powder within. Press switch: whirr, whirr, whirr, nut-with-piercer winds slowly along threaded rod guided by corner blocks, whirr, whirr, nothings going to happBANG. Shower of custard powder, satisfied kids.

Best moments of d-i-y-related light relief came from the fire alarm, which went off (a) 4 times during the day in our absence with just the cooking volunteers present, who reset the panel each time but didn't know to look for the little LED on the detectors to tell us which one had gorn orf, as opposed to just which zone had trigerred the alarm; (b) at 02:30 in the morning - at least we could find the detector which was raising the alarm, replace it with a spare, discover the spare wasn't working, replace with a new working spare, sleep soundly having cleaned out large quantity of dead insects from the detector-head which had been causing the alarm; and (c) at 18:10-18:20 the next day - unclip sensor, ooh look there's Something Moving around the cable-entry point, it's an insect of some sort, a WASP? oh b****r surely not a wapsesnest in the attic!?, no, closer examination shows it and the two others which came out in the next 10 mins to be honeybees rather than waspen; presumably exploring their new locale and (at least in the day) attracted by the little bit of daylight visible through the smoke-detector screen. Fill up cable-entry hole with silicone sealant to discourage further insect access, no more fire-allarum problems for the remaining 10? days occupancy.

Ahh, the joys of intermittently-occupied multiple-user properties! This one has a particularly ingeneous derangement for controlling the fire alarm: there's a keyswitch which isolates (effectively, turns off) the fire alarum, which can only be removed from the fire alarum panel in the "alarm on" position, and is required to turn on the main contactor which turns on the electric for the whole building and its outbuildings. Clever, eh? This way, the fire alarm is off when the place is unoccupied (no-one around to hear the alarm, all it would do is discharge the panel's batteries in driving the bells), but it's infeasible to comfortably occupy the property without turning on the fire alarm, at least if you want any electricity! (And the circuits which keep the emergency lighting and the fire-alarm's backup battery charged are pre-contactor, before you ask, so those safety-related lead-acids are kept topped up even when the place is unoccupied...)

Cheers, Stefek

Reply to
stefek.zaba

Were you abducted and forced to do this?

Surely you could've come up with something more injurious than custard powder ;-)

Reply to
Grunff

The initial impulse was to use a condom filled with purple-dyed flour, but on mature (yeah right) reflection that seemed an unnecessary echo of the parliamentary stunt; and explaining to all the 7-11 year-olds exactly why that big ballon had the funny little end-bit on it might've been a Step Too Far ;-)

Stefek

Reply to
stefek.zaba

Wickes I should think with spelling like that! :-)

Reply to
usenet

This was a car mechanic friend of mine who owned it - he certainly gave the impression that quite a few of his colleagues used them too. I did a quick search on google, which shows a few UK stockists.

No idea on reliability, but if I had to guess I'd say they'd be good (based on the brief time I used it), and they seem reassuringly expensive to buy :)

Alex

Reply to
Alex

funnily enough, this is almost exactly what the service centre said when I took my DW circular saw to see if they could repair it! Although they sold both, they said the Makita was a hell of a lot better tool. Ah, for the benefit of Hindsight!

eeks, run away... :-)

-- Richard Sampson

email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

Reply to
RichardS

Stefek wrote | > Surely you could've come up with something more injurious than | > custard powder ;-) | ... and explaining to all the 7-11 year-olds exactly why that | big ballon had the funny little end-bit on it might've been | a Step Too Far ;-)

They'll all know anyway.

When I was a lad the only banana we saw in school was the domestic science teacher making a fruit salad.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Generally I've had good results with their drills and screwdrivers, not with a biscuit jointer which had a design fault.

Personally for drills I like my Makita rechargable angle and normal drills. Then I have a large Bosch SDS which is pretty good.

BTW, don't be hoodwinked by warranty periods. They are a convenience for the retailer and manufacturer only and sometimes used as a marketing tool. If you have paid for a DeWalt or other branded tool and used it as specified, then it is reasonable to push statutory rights. I wouldn't expect to pay for a repair for three years at least and would push the point. Remember that if you are spending north of £100, always use a credit card, then the card company is on the hook as well.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Reply to
Andy Hall

I've only got the SDS mains drill, and that's excellent quality at a competitive price.

Other items may be different. There's no reason to stick to one maker, unless you have a colour coordinated workshop.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Just wait. Appalling price for what you pay and even the agents discredit them.

Reply to
IMM

You jest of course. A one year guarantee packs up after 2 years and they will totally disown you. A 3 year guarantee packs up after 2.5 years and they either fix, replace or money back.

If a power tool is about 4 years old and needs rep[air, a Makita or DeWalt will be just as much as a new one. This begs the question whether it is worth buying high priced tools at all, and using them only for DIY is ludicrous.

Reply to
IMM

I never jest about things like this.

I have successfully pursued issues like this with retailers by pointing out to them the statutory situation and making it quite clear that I will pursue them in the courts if I need to do so. Shop assistants may not be aware of consumer legislation, but a branch manager or owner of a business certainly will generally be.

I have never yet had to issue a summons with respect to a faulty power tool, but have certainly made it clear that I do not mess about.

One of the main principles of consumer law is reasonableness, and for that a comparison is made. If I were to buy a cheap tool costing £50 when the average price across the market for the tool type is £150, then I can't expect to get the same redress as I would have done had I bought one costing £200. If I buy a professional product and it fails with less use in comparison with all day, every day use, then clearly there is a design or manufacturing defect. It gets replaced or refunded. For this purpose, redress *can* be as much as 6 years. Obviously the balance tilts over time, but warranties are not an alternative for statute as you seem to believe.

Typically I press for some level of compensation as well and usually get it. However, to put a scale on this, the occasions are few and far between, because to me the waste of time and effort is the most important issue, not the purchase cost.

This is not true in my experience.

It doesn't at all. I look for good quality, well reviewed products that are going to give good results and be pleasant to use as well as the likelihood that I will not have trouble and that if I do there is easy redress. With a good degree of consistency, that comes from the major globally branded manufacturers. One pays extra for that and I choose to do so. This does not necessarily mean buying the top of the range item because the price differential to the second product in that manufacturer's range may be a feature that I don't need rather than a basic reduction in quality.

I don't buy into the notion that something that is "only for DIY" has to be bought on low price and does not need to meet the criteria above.

You may feel that your main criterion is one of low cost and that DIY applications don't require anything more than cheap OEM tools from DIY stores. Clearly others share your view because the stores seem to do a good trade in them. I'm not going to lose sleep over that, but it doesn't alter my view that DIY can equally equate to using top quality tools, which in the right hands give outstanding results. If that costs more, as far as I am concerned, so be it.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Reply to
Andy Hall

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.