It's not just that. There was some controversy and people were buying and selling / returning part of the bundles or something. Like I said I never really understood what all the commotion was.
It's a promotion that gets triggered when you buy 2 participating items,(packages) - You can bundle a combo kit with a another bare tool, radio, battery pack ect.. (as long as the items qualify for the promo).. Doing so, depending on which combo kit you start out with, can earn you a promotional discount of either $100, or $150 off the TOTAL price, with the discount being spread proportionately across the prices of BOTH items..
Example using easy numbers.. A $400 Milwaukee combo kit triggers the $150 off promo deal if you buy a second qualifying item. If your second item was $200, then $100 would be taken off of the $400 kit (making it $300) and then $50 would be taken off the price of the $200 item (making it $150).. SO - original combined price w/o the promo would be $600, but with the promo the new total is $450.
These newly assigned prices are shown on the receipt... So NOW - if you were to return the combo kit, only $300 would be refunded to you.. By doing that, you essentially got a 25% discount on you second item that you kept... (Because you still got a $50 price break on that $200 item, that you only paid $150 for)
If you do the return the other way, and ONLY return your second item - you will be refunded $150 (for an item that retailed for $200), but you would have still gotten $100 off your combo kit (you still only paid $300 for it).
The feeling by some is that you are not living up to the rules of the promo, by NOT keeping BOTH items... The feeling of others is that the newly assigned prices are printed on the receipt with a "return value" IF YOU WANT OR DECIDE to just return one item and keep the other.. The store allows the partial return without even a second look, since they are only giving you $150 back for a $200 item and vise-versa.
The LOOPHOLE is combining items in a certian way to tip the discount in your favor as much as possible if you plan on returning one item from the get-go.. Example.. -
Buying a $400 Milwaukee combo kit and say a $29 Ryobi radio (the items don't need to be the same brand) will also trigger $150 to come off the total.. But about $140 will be deducted from the combo kit alone, and only about $10 from the radio (I'm guessing/estimating the prices on this one, but you get the idea).. So after you return the radio, you would have only paid $260 for that $400 kit...
HD never assigned a minimum price for the second item that would trigger the promo. So you could "in theory" do the combo kit and radio thing 10, 12, 20 times if you were motivated enough, and then break up the kits on eBay / Craigslist to maximize profit if you wanted to resell them, or just list the kits for sale at $350 each, and make $90 on each one.. This is ALOT of legwork and time to do something like this, and you'd still need to wait to sell everything off to recoup the money and see a profit. BUT - those people could also still use the promo the way it was intended and make money that way too, since your still only paying $450 for $600 in tools following the regular promo deal.. This is what most of the guys did that wanted to sell stuff.. It's just easier and a lot less time consuming...
Most people just used the promo to grow their own tool collection. You could even buy a cheaper $369 dewalt combo kit, and a more expensive second tool, and doing that would shift a few extra dollars in favor of the discount on the second tool, and return the dewalt combo..
Regardless the promo generated a TON of sales on dewalt, Milwaukee, Makita, Ridgid and Ryobi power tools. Also - HD charged more this year for some of the same items they sold last year.. Last year, they even raised the price of the Milwaukee kit from $369 to $399 right before the sale to help tip the odds in their favor a bit.. The store wins on one deal, the consumer on another.. It's all a big retail game but it still got a lot of people buying stuff.. Generally, you would wind up with like a 30% discount on most items, give or take some depending on what you wanted to try and get..
