If you were to buy a John Deere mower or a Lincoln Mig welder at Home Depot, the authorized Deere and Lincoln dealers will not handle warranty work on either product. they claim that a lot of the name brand products sold at HD and Lowe's aren't necessarily the same as those sold in dealer stores. Makes me wonder if the Milwaukee tools are the same as those sold elsewhere or built to HD's price point.
The problem is, you can't trust "Brand Names" anymore. All the big tool companies including Snap-On, John Deer, Milwaukee, etc. have all realized that there is money to be made on their name alone and if they want to stay financially viable, they will have to cash in on that fact.
Add that to companies like HD with a large buying power who will go to these companies and offer to buy 10k or 100K or more of one specific product with just one catch. They need the product at a lower price point. Now depending on how far off they are and how much product HD is willing to buy, the tool company be able to just lower their price a little give HD a deal but sometimes that divide is too great.
In the case of John Deer, HD goes to them and says we want to start carrying your lawn tractors your prices are too high for our target buyers, what can you do? JD says there is no way we can make our normal line of tractors for that low but what we can do is make a new model that will look like our other models and even have some of the same features and components but we will use a cheaper engine and transmission to bring the price down to your level. HD says great, as long we get to sell "JD" lawn tractors at the price point we want to hit then do whatever you have to. Most of our shoppers won't know the difference anyway.
Lets face it, the average shopper doesn't do much research and probably doesn't really need a professional quality grade tool either. Those people just know that JD is "the good stuff" so they go to HD and see a JD with a 6.5HP motor and 50" cutting deck for $1200. Then go to the local JD dealer and see a 6.5HP model w/ a 50" cutting deck for $1600 and assume they are the same model and that HD just has a better price on it because of their buying power. The average buyer will jump on the HD model and still brag to their friends about buying a "deer" but in reality they just bought a lower quality mower that happens to be green and have the John Deer name plate.
JD dealers won't touch these models. Partly because they feel betrayed by JD for even making these cheaper model. They know they are loosing potential sales to HD and that JD is helping the big warehouse stores and screwing the small local dealers. The other reason is they simply don't stock the parts for these cheaper models.
Now a popular misconception is that because HD does this on some models people assume that all models that HD sells are custom made, cheaper knock-offs. That is not true.
While you can not trust Brand names anymore, you can still trust model numbers. If you are looking for a new Milwaukee drill model "#1234", that model will be the same regardless of where you buy it. Just because HD sells it for $20 less then your local small tool vendor doesn't mean it's a special model made for HD. If it was in fact different, it would have a different model number, maybe even something similar like model "#1234-5".
You have to remember that even on the same model that sometimes HD can beat the local guys price. Partly because of their buying power and partly because HD sells in bulk compared to smaller stores their their mark up per unit doesn't have to be as high
