I've got a Ryobi 18V cordless drill that is finally on its last legs after 5 years of building stuff and trephining people that annoyed me. So I stopped at Home Depot the other day to look at new drills.

I was pretty much sold on getting a Ridgid drill because not only are they pretty well made, they have a wacky service agreement in which they will replace pretty much any part of the tool for its entire service life. Motors, brushes and even batteries! Since new batteries for power tools like this run about $80 I figured it was too good to pass up.

Anyway, I started getting confused when I was looking at their selection. They had single tools along with a plethora of kits, which bundled two or more tools together.

Here's where it gets weird. Start with a Ridgid 18V drill, more or less what I had before. On its own it was $179. Bundle it with a burly cordless screwdriver that's $80 regularly and it's only $189. A good deal, but not really that weird. But wait.

18V hammer drill, $249. EXACT same drill bundled with a cordless jigsaw, $229. WTF? Are they overcharging you for the drills when you buy them by themselves? If I bought two tools in a kit and got one for like half price I'd think that was a great deal. So how do they price this stuff?

Anyway, I got the hammer drill and the saw. The drill works great, and the saw can dismember an entire corpse on a single battery! Teh awesome.

sorry gabe I accidentally read your diary!!!

I don't see that bundle on their website. What I see is the 18v hammer drill for $249 and an 18v hammer drill/recip/circ saw combo for $279... but the combo is reconditioned. This makes me think you got a recon.

Either that or theyre blowing out overstocks (they get taxed on inventory you know), or maybe they've discontinued the drill/recip combo.

 Pricing is weird.

home despot is the wal mart of the home improvement world.

I hear that. When I lived in Cleveland there were no less than 5 Home Depots within 20 minutes of my house. There's actually a local place called Jerry's Home Improvement that's actually better as well as bigger than Home Depot. I usually try to go there, even though it's way out of the way, but I had a $100 gift card to Home Depot.

Speaking of Home Depot gift cards, did anyone read about the awesome scam someone thought up recently? Most chain stores have their own brand of gift card available and they're usually everywhere all over the store.

Some some genius no-goodnik realized that all one had to do was to just start picking up the cards and then scribbling down the numbers on the back. Once you get a whole bunch you go home and wait.

Maybe once a day you log onto the site of whichever store you swiped the numbers from and start checking the balance on all the gift cards you have numbers for.

Sooner or later people will start purchasing them, probably to use for gifts which means they may not get used immediately. As soon one has a balance, you start buying shit with it, get it sent to a mail drop somewhere and voila, free shit.

i was hoping people wouldn't find out about that for a while longer.

I just load up a cart with stuff, take it to the garden center, heave it over the fence, and then drive around and pick it up. Then it's off to the pawn shop. Hooray, crack money!

I can never find anything at Home Depot and their staff is no help. Hint to Home Depot staff: "Uhh, maybe the Garden Center?" is NOT the correct answer to "Where is the caulk?"

They probably thought you said, "Where is the cock?"

Most Home Depots have a little shed in the garden department where the employees can turn tricks for extra pocket change.