Homebase & B&Q own-brand tools

Anyone got any experience with either of these?

Peter

Reply to
Peter
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Reply to
Peter

Yes. Which ones in particular?

PoP

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Reply to
PoP

It's a case of you get what you pay for.

I have purchased some at various times and found that I've had to return them through failure or being underpowered. B&Q routers were a prime example of this. The cordless tools tend to have poor quality batteries and poor motor control, especially the cordless drills and screwdrivers.

I tend to use the majority of power tools that I buy quite a bit, so I'm also looking for accuracy and ease of use. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to come either in my experience.

I don't subscribe to the notion that because something is for DIY purposes that it has to be cheap. While part of the purpose of DIY is to save money relative to using a professional, I think that the other aspects are to get a job done when and as I want to do it and to achieve a result equally as good, if not better. Unfortunately I have found on several occasions that the own-brand tools fall short in one way or another.

The DIY chains' marketing policy is to deliver products to a price to attract buyers and to move a large volume of them. A keen eye is kept of turnover per square metre in retail operations of this type. In order to address customer perception problems, a 2 or 3 year warranty is given. However, no service operation is provided. The retailer plays the numbers game and simply replaces faulty product with new, tossing the defective one in the skip. They have acceptable return rate clauses in their supply contracts. At the end of the warranty period, the tool has to be considered scrapped. The stores do not generally have spares or service operations for the products. B&Q were quite clear to me about this when I called their help line recently. Occasionally, one might be lucky and find that the same tool or one close enough to it coming from the same private label factory in China is being sold elsewhere and there is parts backup but this involves time and detective work.

Of course, one might be lucky and with occasional use a tool might last longer than the warranty period, but it would be prudent to budget replacement at the end of the warranty period. Another factor is that I don't particularly want to waste time and fuel returning defective products to the store for replacement - that eats into the DIY cost equation as far as I am concerned.

Having said all of that, I am not against the notion of buying store brand tools, per sec. If it's a question of budget being an issue, something is for occasional use and limitations are accepted, then fine. I am just surprised when people expect to buy something cheaply and expect high quality and reliability, and are shocked when they discover that there is no backup.

If it is a choice between having and not having, then there are certain types of tool that will do a job that is worthwhile and save time. I would count a chop saw and a portable table saw in this category. There are sometimes total duds like B&Q's router and their collated screwdriver. However, inadequacy generally becomes apparent quite quickly.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

Performance Power tend to be pretty lame. Performance Pro tend to be pretty good, with well designed ergonomic handles etc. There are both excellent examples and lemons in both ranges, though. I'd post about a specific tool for specific opinions.

Christian.

Reply to
Christian McArdle

Well, I bought a £40 PPower 14v cordless drill from B&Q in Jan 03 and I've been VERY pleased with it. The £30 version didn't have variable speed trigger (either on or off at 'screw' speed or 'drill' speed depending on switch) and had a 3-5 hour charger, so I bought the £40 version and didn't get all the drills/bits that came with the £30 option.

It might have poor batteries - I don't know. Mine stay charged for weeks and always ready for whatever job I've given it when I take it out again. Okay, it may not be used for 2/3 weeks at a time - so the usage isn't heavy - but for my jobs - I've never regretted buying it - its been wonderful!

That's my experience.

David

Reply to
David Hearn

My Homebase SDS lasted about 4 hours - now runs like a sick puppy so I presume I've burned out one of the armature segments. I didn't take it back because (a) I've lost the receipt and (b) with hindsight I was pushing it way too hard: it looks a serious piece of work and is probably fine for drilling intermittent holes, but I was using it for 10 minutes at a time in hammer mode demolishing a block partition. I replaced it with the £140 Wickes/Kress one which (a) is hopefully twice as durable; (b) if not, it's sold as 'professional' and has a 2-year guarantee, so if it breaks I would feel entitled to claim; and (c) if it breaks thereafter BMJ are up the road and can fix it.

I am a bit gutted about my Homebase SDS: if the whole drill was £60-ish (on a 10% day) then a new armature would only be £15 if parts were available: but I presume they're not (haven't asked though so would be glad to be corrected). I am just green enough to feel really bad about it end up in landfill so soon.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

I would not have thought that 10 mins continuous use counts as unreasonable even for a cheapie tool...

Reply to
John Rumm

Argos do power tools that are fine for light diy use, you can extend the g'tee to three years for a fiver.

Depends where you like shopping least!

cheers, Pete.

Reply to
Pete C

If you bought it with a "card" of some sort--they should be able to search it out of their system. Won't work if you used real cash money though. Still worth a try. If the store manager wants to keep you as a customer he can do it. Go for it.

Reply to
Jim

Reply to
Peter

I'd never used a router until a couple of years back. After asking a joiner to do a small finishing job for me and him telling me to borrow the router and do it myself, I then got the bug I went out and did the same as you're thinking now, I'll get a cheap one to see how it goes. After using the cheap one until it died, I went out and got myself a Bosch industrial one that goes from low speed to high speed and does all the table tops, the board edges, the fancy bit for repairing skirting boards and door facings. All in all, I can honestly say that I wouldn't be without it now. The amount of work it has brought in from friends and relatives is also paying for its up-keep. :-))

Reply to
BigWallop

I have a B&Q Performance power (Or is it pro?) Router and it's very good.

sPoNiX

Reply to
S P O N I X

I do hope that's not the B&Q Power Pro 2050W that I took up major bandwidth on this newsgroup about several months ago.....my experience was anything but positive. Words such as "barge pole" existed in my recommendation to others.

PoP

Sending email to my published email address isn't guaranteed to reach me.

Reply to
PoP

Watch the 1/2" 2kw one though - its lowest speed was far too fast for safe use of larger cutters when I looked at it (did not go below 15K rpm IIRC).

Reply to
John Rumm

I've got the older smaller one (1250W?, definitely PPPro) and have been quite happy with it. However, it is the first router I've ever owned, so I don't have anything to compare it to. (Except for a rather manky one I hired several years ago which had an incredibly sticky plunge mechanism. It was a total pain in the ass).

The fence is rubbish, but so far I've not needed to use it. The dust-extract cover limits plunge depth but is easy enough to remove for deep cuts.

Just fettled together a board that allows me to use it inverted, clamped in a workmate, to act as a table-mounted router. Now why didn't I do THAT earlier - very useful even if it doesn't have the super-perfectly-flat-and-a-million-features of a commercial table. Not exactly easy to alter the plunge depth, but not too bad.

David

Reply to
David Micklem

I've got the Wickes one and it's utter crap.

Reply to
G&M

Tony,

Just FYI I thought BMJ Power had gone bust?

Rgds

Noel

noel dot hegan at virgin dot net

Reply to
Noel Hegan

feel entitled to

Yep. Company no. 3248182 in liquidation.......

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

There is one Wickes one that looks like a badge engineered version of the Freud FT2000E which seems well regarded:-

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(very pleased with my one - got the Freud since the Wickes own brand was more expensive at the time!)

Reply to
John Rumm

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