WTF Lidl?

[CelticRambler]

Lidl taking packaging lessons from Amazon?

Wheelie-bin for scale:




I don't think you have Lidl online in Ireland, do you? Don't bother ... They don't even give you to option of cheap/free delivery if you collect from one of their stores.

And WTF Lidl (2) ?

Those SDS drill bits are going back. I used one to drill a hole for some electrical conduit. Grand, did the job in about ten/fifteen minutes (the wall is 70cm thick, with random lumps of bit-melting quartz in it); then spent two hours trying to get the bit out of the chuck.

Cheap Lidl crap! Bit on the left is unused and seemingly okay; bit on the right is unused and ... ; bit in the middle is the one I used, and I strongly suspect it was as wonky as the other - until the hammer battered it square across the end and mushroomed the end so it couldn't escape. There's a 16% difference in the thickness at groove, one compared to the other.

[jmayo]

Ehh you get what you pay for.

Lidl and Adli stuff is ok for light work or infrequent use.
Would not use for heavy duty or prolonged use.

I know some builder that buy the stuff and just throw away.
They can buy 3/4/5 lidl/aldi items for price of big name stuff and because they are always getting damaged it works out as cheap.

[CelticRambler]

Drilling one single hole hardly counts as "prolonged use" though, does it? And using a masonry bit to drill through masonry is not exactly "heavy duty" either.

For the most part, I find their stuff to be "reasonably priced for what you get" ; sometimes you get great value (their reciprocating saw has put up with a lot of heavy-duty prolonged use), other times it's just cheap crap. These days, I'm trying to use anything I buy within a very short time so that I can get back to them with a complaint if it doesn't live up to expectations. But their customer service is sh1te, so given the choice, I'd rather buy my cheap crap from Ali or Amazon.

[kadman]

Hey CR, you should be fekked into that box and fast tracked to El Salvador for buying cheap lidl shite.
For a hole that depth through masonary, you want quality, not rubber masonary bits......Jeez

[jmayo]

Drilling one single hole hardly counts as "prolonged use" though, does it? And using a masonry bit to drill through masonry is not exactly "heavy duty" either.

For the most part, I find their stuff to be "reasonably priced for what you get" ; sometimes you get great value (their reciprocating saw has put up with a lot of heavy-duty prolonged use), other times it's just cheap crap. These days, I'm trying to use anything I buy within a very short time so that I can get back to them with a complaint if it doesn't live up to expectations. But their customer service is sh1te, so given the choice, I'd rather buy my cheap crap from Ali or Amazon.

Yeah but 70cm is deep enough and you said there is quartz in there.
Those bit probably work just fine going 20-50cm through concrete block, but you are going deeper and and hitting some pretty hard stuff.
That's good idea to always thoroughly test stuff out in case of warranties or returns.

[CelticRambler]

Hey CR, you should be fekked into that box and fast tracked to El Salvador for buying cheap lidl shite.

"Tested and certified in Germany" it says on the label - are you telling me now we can't even trust the Germans?

Yeah but 70cm is deep enough ....
Those bit probably work just fine going 20-50cm through concrete block,

Specifically sold with a stated working length of 860mm, so I'm not accepting that 700 is "deep enough" (the full length of the bit is 1000mm). And besides, if you sell something like this in a country where three quarters of the houses are built out of stone - especially the ones where lads'll be drilling holes in them ....

The thing is: it did a grand job drilling the hole, and I'd have been quite happy to grind the stock back into shape (and square off the wonky one) - if they'd straight-up offered me a refund and told me to throw them out. But seems I have to send them back for that. Pity.

[jmayo]

Look they are Lidl so really they are Einhell.
They are fine for light enough stuff, but not real trough stuff.

Einhell may be German brand, but IMHO they are not as good a quality as Bosch, even the green stuff, never mind the blue.
Then if you want to go even better German quality tools you go for Festool.
Now I don't know if Festool do SDS bits that size, but quick check shows some of their masonary bits cost anything from €40 to €50 each.

Heller are another German brand I have heard someone recommend for bits, but quick check on Google and you find 3 SDS masonary bits for £256.

How much did your Lidl bits cost?



Sadly another issue with all brands now is to maintain competitiveness the big brand names are moving production to places like China, Mexico, etc and the quality of some of their products are dropping.
Some of the Makita stuff is now done in China and some of the DeWalt is Mexico.

[marhay70]

Sadly another issue with all brands now is to maintain competitiveness the big brand names are moving production to places like China, Mexico, etc and the quality of some of their products are dropping.
Some of the Makita stuff is now done in China and some of the DeWalt is Mexico.

A lot of the brand name stuff coming, especially from China, is counterfeit. I doubt if De Walt, Makita, Bosch, etc would deliberately set out to damage the brand by allowing their chosen Chinese manufacturers to produce substandard goods. I reckon the brands set the standard for what the manufacturer produces and the manufacturer sticks to that.
For my own part. not being a serious tool user, I use a lot of Parkside stuff and generally find it more than adequate for my needs, the fact they offer 3 years guarantee on basically everything, shows that both they and whoever makes the tools have faith in the manufacturing process. I actually watched a You Tube video by a guy who repairs and sells tools for a living and even he was surprised by the quality of Parkside, with the proviso, of course, that they are not for serious use, obtaining spares being an obvious problem. In my younger days when I used tools on a more serious basis, Makita was always my go to.


tools.

[CelticRambler]

Look they are Lidl so really they are Einhell.
They are fine for light enough stuff, but not real trough stuff.

Yeah, but if your definition of "real tough stuff" is exactly what they're marketed for, then that's not a valid argument. If it says on the packet "for drilling >800mm holes in brick, stone and concrete" then that's what it should be capable of doing. The fact that (in this case) a bit sold with this spec suffered a function-killing deformation on its very first use, and that a second bit in the set showed a factory-fresh defect, doesn't invalidate the design (or certification process); rather it points to a quality control problem with this production run. Like I said above: the bit did actually drill the right-sized hole through the wall and was showing no signs of giving up; the problem wasn't at the cutting edge or even the full working length, but the SDS seat, which I reckon would be (could have been) a quick fix.

At the time, when I googled "how to get a stuck bit out of an SDS drill" there were plenty of reports of "quality" brand name bits/drills having the same problem. Overall, I would say that I've had far more failures-to-live-up-to-expectations when using high-profile brands than cheap knock-offs ... probably because my expectations for something that costs twenty times as much are that it'll last twenty times as long and work twenty times more effeciently/effectively. That's rarely the case.