Here's why Ridgid Li-ion Tools have such a poor rep

Can confirm that I had bought 2 sets of these 12V drills for my dad.

ALL 4 batteries have died. Good thing I registered them. I’ll try to get them replaced through warranty.

I had the same experience with my nespresso cappucino machine:

Now I am using a Nivona cafe romatica 855 :bigsmile:

I also had slight misunderstanding with my router. It suddenly stopped working. Dunno why:

I regularly experience this issue with mobile phones.
Stupid humans we are, what with subjecting inanimate objects to our emotions, oft the result of a third party, which these inanimate objects don’t belong to…
Ahh well, they’re replaceable I suppose

ive had good results with mine…… once i gutted the battery pack and slid in a 5S li-po RC pack lol.

Brian

I’ve got a Rigid drill and impact driver (18v) which I’ve owned for about a year. So far, I’m very pleased with them in homeowner-type usage. I’ve just finished a large remodeling project of our condo (gutted and rebuilt kitchen, two bathrooms, new laminate flooring all around, molding, new fireplace, etc). I used both pretty heavily and they worked great. They are well constructed and solid. Battery packs hold a charge well (no use for a month, etc), have decent runtime and charge quickly in the supplied charger.

No experience using them all day every day as a contractor, but for consumer-level use, I think they’re excellent. Can’t beat the lifetime warranty.

I need a corded oscillating tool/saw. Can’t afford a Fein. What do y’all recommend? Porter Cable, Ridgid, Dremel, Dewalt, Rockwell…other?

I have a Horrible Freight one. It’s…ok. I used it a fair amount during the aforementioned remodel and it was very useful. If you just want something, I’d suggest that one. Inexpensive.

If you want something that will last…save up and get the Fein.

i wonder how bad the actual drill part is compared to the battery…. cause i know the batteries probably wont last.

sounds like a battery pack id like to swap RC Lipo’s into. :slight_smile:

then see how the actual drill would last. i know my craftsman drill will break my wrist with RC lipo’s.

Brian

this is why i would not buy lithium for homeower use, it may get used a few times a year and stored charged means 5 years from now and maybe 50 uses the battery is toast (i would go for lsd NiMH if its available)
As a contractor i would go lithium, constant use, less downtime due to higher capacity, fewer batteries needed on standby, but at the price of lower lifetime, but your using the tools to make a living so its a good trade IMO

I would not have picked Li either, but the lifetime warranty covers it.

very true, best of both worlds (take a photo of your receipt, the thermal paper many companies use starts fading in a few years, i have 2 year old receipts that have gone blank)

Do Proxxon have anything in their range ?
They appear to come recommended.

What is this forum? how to bad mouth Ridgid?

It’s highly obvious that the guy in the first video is drunk, I wouldn’t take anything he has to say as being serious.

The second video we have no clue how he treated that battery, and why didn’t Ridgid honor the warranty? we don’t know if he bothered to register the tool! He may have thought that he bought it and that’s all he needed to do, people are stupid and lazy that way.

I have a Ridgid drill and hammer drill, I bought in 2008, I’m still using the original batteries and they run just fine. I also use the stuff pretty extensively, probably not as much a pro but I do own a lot of rental property which I maintain myself and have to use my Ridgid stuff frequently. I also registered the tools which I have an account on Ridgid website that shows that I did plus I printed out the information for hard copy proof. I put together a large deck using deck screws with the hammer drill and that thing made short work on the deck.

I have a friend who also bought the Ridgid drill and hammer set, he’s a handyman and does jobs all over the county as well as out of county jobs, and works on my stuff when I can’t do it, he uses his stuff everyday, no problems in 8 years of use, still on the original batteries and he got the larger batteries than I got so he can run his stuff longer on a charge; later he also bought the Ridgid battery powered circular saw, the portable light, a reciprocating saw, and a grinder, no problems with any of that stuff either; of course he needed more batteries, the original batteries are still good but he needed a couple of more and those are also fine.

It doesn’t end there, my friend the handyman knows of other professional builders that use Ridgid and none have ever reported an issue.

I told a friend of mine who was beginning to build his own house and wondered about my Ridgid tools if they were any good, I told him I thought they were great for the price and the warranty, so he bought a drill and hammer drill set along with a circular saw, he built the house and those tools worked without fail during the process, he’s now had those tools for 5 years without any issues.

Does that mean they are the best on the market? No, Milwaukee probably makes the best on the market these days, but a lot of people don’t want to spend that kind of money either, plus they don’t get a lifetime warranty…as long as they register the tools correctly.

The only complaint that I have with mine concerns the power of the hammer drill, mine will not undo lug nuts on a car, but mine is an older design, I asked my handyman friend if his could remove the same lug nuts mine failed on, so he tried his and it did take them off. His is the same 18 volt style as mine so not sure what’s different other than his is a newer version of mine, and I think his has more foot pounds of torque than mine, which is ok, I don’t need mine to take off lug nuts, I was just testing it to see if it would, and the newest brushless units really ramped up the foot pounds of torque vs any of my friends stuff, or mine.

Here you go here’s a quote from a guy who works for ridgid

_Coming from a former employee of Emerson Electric(Ridgid and Ridge Tool co.) and currently an employee of T.T.I.(TechTronic Ind.) I can tell you all benchtop,stationary, and hand held tools(drills,sanders,saws,etc…)are manufactured by T.T.I. with the exception of four tools which are made in Germany by Metabo for us. T.T.I. also does some private label for Sears Craftsman and a small amount of Mastercraft for Canadian Tire(Canada only) to their spec requests.Other than the four tools made in Germany all other tools are made in either Taiwan or China(except Ryobi routers -they are made in South Carolina,USA). But you must remember these tools are made in our own manufacturing plants not by a manufacturer who is making for every Tom,Dick,and Harry. The quality control is tighter and by producing in house we can keep costs down and in turn relay a cheaper cost to the consumer.Also, T.T.I.purchased all the tooling(moulds)from Emerson Electric when they bought that division from them so the tools are pretty much the same except for the colour change and a few improvements they made on certain tools(and we lowered the prices on most tools). Emerson Electric still makes the wet/dry vacuums and air filtration units and Ridge Tool(a div. of Emerson Electric) is still making all plumbing tools and devices. Hope I’ve answered your questions without too much detail.
_
Froze back now, a lot of other tools are made in China without the oversight that TTI has, and they are made by a factory that will make a bunch of brands, but not TTI tools, TTI has their own manufacturing plant and they don’t make tools for anyone else either, so the quality control is higher than a lot of other tool companies.

Here is another forum discussion concerning a person that bought some Ridgid stuff:

https://www.ridgidforum.com/forum/power-tools/power-tool-discussion-forum/705733-new-x5-brushless-tools-my-review

That forum guy expressed some concerns about filing for the warranty process, when I got mine I never had any hassles, so maybe Ridgid changed their requirement like the receipt thing, I never had to send mine in by registered mail, but it’s something to be aware of. Don’t ever throw away that receipt, not sure from the forum guy if he had to send the original in or a photocopy would suffice, if he had to send the original than you need to make a copy of the original, or better yet go to Home Depot and have them print you an original, or even better yet make sure you get two receipts when you buy it. Also make sure you print a copy of the warranty information from the website so you have hard proof they registered it. Be always thinking what you can do to protect yourself, and always follow their guidelines by the letter! This is true for any warranty on any product, not just Ridgid.

[quote=borked] Manufacturer: Tianjin Lishen Battery Model: LS LR1865BE 1350mAh capacity Seriously, one of the rare times I can suggest *fire probably would be a better option without it being an out and out joke! [/quote]

7 years later .... A Ridgid supporter comes to the companies defense :)

Hey Froze you may have had good luck with various Ridgid products ..But when a product fails almost immediately there are people here who will tear it apart to figure out why the product failed . People that know batteries and If they immediately spot garbage cells they start to question everything /every product the company makes . It's their reputation and screwing it up is their choice too .

Instead of talking to a REP . I like this guys way of dealing with the problem ...making a video to send to the manufacturer is always wise :P

dchomak is a beloved (highly missed member of this forum).. I'm glad you revived this old thread .I've never seen that first video and it had me on the floor .

thank you for that ...

Strange it also is that its his/her first post in the forum. Spammers often do things like this, “necroing” some related to its purpose thread, which looks like a carefully redacted advertisement in disguise. But I'm not here to judge. I also recommend products often yet not being affiliate in any way with them.

TL;DRed most of this, yet I highly discourage reviving any war. Things have changed a lot, and people should learn its better to collaborate instead of fighting, a lot better. Lishen makes good cells, by the way.

There is a lot of junk being sold on the market place, take Samsung appliance products, their crap is so bad they have class action lawsuits against them for their refrigerators, washers and dryers, they are fighting and refusing to do anything about the refrigerators because it’s such a huge problem involving hundreds of thousands of units and there is NO repair which means they would have to replace them!

Dewalt is having major issues in responding to warranty claims as I’ve know people who said it took 18 months to get their tool repaired!

HOWEVER, due to this discussion, I researched the Ridgid warranty, and I found a lot of complaints…this is a sad thing. So when the time comes that my battery or drill fails, I will try to get it warrantied, but if that fails I will never buy another Ridgid product, and I may stop doing business with Home Depot since they too are refusing to help people with Ridgid problems from what I’ve read, just depends on what Home Depot does for me when I take the item in; and if Home Depot starts giving me a problem I will do what I always do when something like that happens…I talk real loud, not angrily or like a jerk, just loud conversation so others around me can hear what’s going on, and if Home Depot tells me to be less loud I’ll say no unless they replace my drill right then and there.

The other thing I found out a couple of years ago, is that if you want to buy a quality name brand anything, in this case a drill, say Milwaukee, is to not buy it from any big box home improvement place because they get lower quality units because they sell them cheaper, so get them from commercial supply places, and don’t buy kits like I did because they put in cheaper units to make the price point. Also if you pick up the floor display tool minus the battery, stay away from the lighter weight units, those will have more plastic innards.

Anyway’s at least myself and people I know haven’t gotten any lemons and the units are working fine even in a professional environment.

lishen might be ok now but i remember the bad old days….

Strange when someone reports an opposite reaction to others you all immediately think it’s a spam.

Listen you $#%)* #)! I have no interest in Ridgid whatsoever, I don’t even own one share of their stocks, so I don’t care if they go bankrupt. I’m just reporting what I’ve experienced and what others I know have experienced, JUST LIKE YOU DID! Get it? I kind of doubt it you get it.

There are spammers out there that bad mouth products, and as far as I know this is what I ran into, a small group of malcontents that bad month Ridgid hoping others will see it so they can influence their buying decision.