A reader emailed in today, asking me to make sense of some of the pricing irregularities going on at Home Depot right now.
Over the weekend, one of Home Depot’s Dewalt free tool deals bumped up in price from $299 to $319, only for the price to bounce back by Monday. Another Dewalt free tool deal dropped from $499 to $449, and it has remained at that price.
To put it bluntly, that’s pretty weird. There are a lot of weird things happening this holiday season, and I definitely think there are deeper implications to some of what I have noticed.
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Home Depot has had Dewalt organizer deals for what seems like forever. For the past few years, they’ve had a Dewalt shallow pro organizer for $12.88.
A few days ago, I was able to see that my local stores had tons of inventory – many dozens of boxes at each location. But when I visited my Home Depot stores, all I found were Dewalt ToughSystem organizers and cheap Stanley organizers (which are actually pretty decent).
What about the Dewalt shallow 10-compartment organizer? Home Depot bumped the price up to $40.55.
Over $40? No. That is completely unreasonable high price.
As I see it, there are 2 explanations. Either Home Depot and Dewalt pulled the deal, or they decided this will be a Doorbuster deal to try to pull in foot traffic or online sales for Black Friday and Thanksgiving weekend.
From when I last checked, stores were reporting high inventory counts even though I have yet to see them on the sales floor at any of the 3 Home Depot stores I checked.
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So either those stores shipped everything back, or they just haven’t put anything out yet.
Of course there could be other explanations, but Home Depot saving this for a Black Friday Doorbuster deal is the most reasonable one.
Consider this Milwaukee M12 cordless ratchet and screwdriver combo kit. At this time, it’s priced at $199.
Also at this time, you can buy an M12 Fuel impact driver and M12 Fuel brushless ratchet kit for $199. They’re the same price, the 2-tool combo kit with brushed motors, and the 2-tool M12 Fuel kit with brushless motors.
Take a look at the inventory count – 6,532 available. This is going to a doorbuster deal or similar late-reveal deal.
If you can’t wait for the price to potentially drop from $199 to $99, Home Depot has a bundle deal with a screwdriver bit set at $119, and another bundle with the same 2-tool kit with a 43pc 3/8″ impact socket set at $189.
This deal – the 2-tool combo kit – might be in stores, or maybe just online, that part isn’t clear to me yet.
Home Depot has the Milwaukee M12 cordless screwdriver kit at $99. All of the stores near me have a bunch in stock. It has been a Black Friday doorbuster deal in the past.
The stores near me also have this new slimmed-down kit for the same tool. It doesn’t exist in Home Depot’s online store. Yet?
I recently posted about a new Ryobi 18V tool – see New Ryobi 18V Compact Circular Saw. There are strong indicators that it’s going to be a “special buy” promo.
All of this is to say that some irregularities are actually very typical for this time of year, with Thanksgiving just 2 weeks away.
The price of the Dewalt organizer makes no sense and is a break from what Home Depot has done in the past. But unless the situation is far different from how I perceive, I very strongly suspect they’re simply setting the stage for an in-store promo.
In the past, Home Depot has switched online fulfillment on and off for this deal, with online ordering returning shortly after Thanksgiving. I always assume this was done to ensure there was adequate inventory to fulfill advertised deals, and also to encourage people to visit their stores where they are likely to make additional purchases.
The same reader who prompted this post also asked about the “personalized pricing” we have been seeing. This isn’t new, for retailers such as Home Depot, and to a greater extent Lowe’s in my experience, to show different prices depending on the zip code or store selected.
Typically we only see this for clearance items, but it’s been happening more for other items. One idea is that some stores have activated promotional pricing earlier than others. Other than that, I’m out of possible explanations.
Lowe’s has a new Kobalt 3pc pliers set, and it’s priced at $24.98 right now.
My Lowe’s store had them marked at $19.97 in the last week of October, and they still had the same price sticker when I checked a few days ago. It rang up at $24.98 and I needed a manager to override the self-checkout price.
The holiday season is fraught with mistakes, errors, and irregularities. It’s just how things are this time of year. Sometimes mistakes are made, such as when the wrong pricing stickers are placed on floor displays, and other times they’re part of retailers’ deliberate plans.
Lowe’s has a brand new style of mini tool box on their website. They also have tons of their drawered tool boxes in stores. Is this new design going to be a doorbuster deal? Online-only? Will it be discounted at all?
The best we could do is guess and predict, sometimes with experience and historical trends guiding the way, and other times wildly, as we wait to see how things play out.
For myself, the difficult part is in sorting out what’s unusual from what only appears to be unusual. This has been even more of a challenge this year, given the changes I’ve seen so far in pricing, promotional product configurations and deals, and also retail strategy.
This is proving to be a very interesting and atypical holiday season.
Plain+Grainy
I seem to sense prices are governed by the amount of inventory. If their inventory is low on a certain item, they will jack up the price to protect their current stock. When more inventory arrives they lower the price back to historical levels.
Stuart
Not usually. Nearly all promos are hard-set at specific pricing even as the inventory dwindles down to zero. Some are restocked throughout the season, other are not. Price changes are typically planned out well in advance, and also hard set with specific start and stop times.
TomD
They may be adjusting because tariffs and other shipping situations have caused stocking delays.
Will
The deep pro organizer that includes a seal is 27.98. It is very strange that the shallow box jumped higher than it’s regular price, especially after it already went to its seasonal promo price. Some of the big retailers seem very confused this year with their marketing and pricing.
Rog
I went to my local HD a few weeks ago and they had the Dewalt folding work table for $79.98. I snagged one at that price, went back a few days later for something unrelated and it was back to the normal sale price of $89.98 *shrug*
Mark M.
Agreed that pricing is a hot mess. I had a similar Lowe’s experience, but the reverse- there was a display for the 27-1 Klein precision screwdriver for $21, which at the time was cheaper than Amazon by about $6. Went to check out and it rang up as $16. Went back and got another because why not at that price! Strange times.
Coletrain
MY home depot still has the $12.88 DeWalt boxes. They only ever carry them this time of year but they have them. picked one up but might get another after reading this.
Chris
When I looked online, the shallow organizers were priced at $40.55 with pickup at my local store. When I visited on the weekend, there weren’t any out in the main displays, but I did find a few cases of them in the PRO area priced at $12.88.
Rob H
I talked to a friend at the local Home Depot and told them I was looking for the organizers. I was told they were holding them in overhead but that if I wanted some, I could place an online order and they would pull them. This was a week or so back. I also asked them about the clearance deals they used to put on end caps (they don’t do this at our store any more) and was told store management decided to keep stock overhead on this as well so that they could limit runs on inventory. I guess they have issues with resellers buying things up. Although…the store is still selling at the price they want so I’m not sure why they would care about this.
I can say that the store about 10 miles away has end caps of clearance items still.
Evan
I’ve also noticed a lot of price inconsistencies with Lowe’s daily deals. Sometimes a deal will be really good first thing in the morning and bump up mid day. For example they had a metabo hpt sds max corded drill for $299 in the morning and it was $369 later in the day. $369 is the normal price, but it was crossed out with a sale price of…$369. very weird
Todd
I picked up 4 of the Dewalt shallow 10-compartment organizers last week at $12.88. They had to bring them down on the pallet. Someone probably screwed up listing them and had to raise the price to $40.55 so stores stopped selling the doorbusters.
Mike
I actually wrote to HD customer service on the shallow parts organizer when my local store’s online price jumped from $12.88 to the $40 price. The rep confirmed that they were priced correctly at $40.55, but they saw I’d ordered it earlier at lower price and would look into that. Within an hour, the product was delisted on their website.
That’ll teach me to reach out to customer service.
Stuart
I used to spend time on deal forums. “Don’t call!” was often repeated as the number one rule.
That said, I don’t think you caused this. Who knows what happened. There’s also a chance someone from Home Depot acted upon some of the comments they saw here about availability.
S
Am I the only one suspicious of AI playing a part?
It seems it’s the most common root cause lately whenever things don’t match societal norms.
Here’s my larger theory. Some person somewhere in product ordering input their overall sales goals into Big A.I..
A.I. takes those goals and translates them into daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly sales targets. Depending on the traffic for any particular item, A.I. adjusts the price to reflect the desired outcome. If it adjusts too far down, where goals are suddenly entirely met, the ‘sale’ ends, and the price spikes to counterbalance the demand.
If Uber can do it with surge pricing, I don’t see how home depot can’t do it as well.
Stuart
No. Holiday promo inventory requires planning and production time. Tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of tools aren’t just sitting a warehouse somewhere to be ordered.
Algorithm pairing can sometimes explain Home Depot pricing, but not on deliberate promos.
Either something really disruptive happened, such as a stop-sale, or the organizer will be a doorbuster deal.
I’ve seen temporary take-downs and price hikes ahead of Thanksgiving, just not on this product. In the past, shipping was halted and then reactivated for the organizer. A temporary price hike fits the pattern in essence.
Rick
Regardless of whether what you suggest is happening is correct, there is no need to involve “Big A.I.”.
The dynamic pricing adjustments you describe have been in place long before the use of AI became commonplace. How do you think airlines were dynamically pricing their fares thirty years ago?
Scott K
I’d be curious to hear your first impressions on that Kobalt pliers set. They look appealing.
Stuart
I bought the Kobalt adjustable pliers 2pc set last year and thought they were good for the money. I expect these to be above par for the cost too. Frankly, I probably won’t have a chance to test them anytime soon.
PW
I bought last year’s version (a 2-pack without the Twin Grip knockoff) and have been completely satisfied with them for occasional homeowner use.
I’m assuming this year’s version has a 3rd pliers to help justify the tariff induced price bump.
I quite like last year’s model. They’re not as polished and smooth acting as the Knipex tools they’re ripping off, but they seem serviceable for the price. I would get ’em if they’re tickling your fancy.
Scott K
Thank you- I don’t need them, but they look appealing and I just wrapped up a home project that would have benefitted from something like this. I can’t justify a pair of Knipex for my uses.
Backcountry164
Big box store pricing is done by algorithm now. It’s all automated. We see this everywhere. Amazon is the worst. Some items will change prices daily with the cost fluctuating from a few cents to significant percentages.
Stuart
Sometimes, yes.
My local HD finally put their Dewalt organizers on the sales floor, and I counted 24 cases each with 5 organizers.
If we assume that 2,000 HD stores received the same amount, that’s 240,000 cases. Some might have received more, others fewer.
Still, when we’re talking about 6-figures worth of products that all shipped to be put out on display for a specific promotional period, that’s being done algorithmically.
A lot of these promos do NOT change algorithmically, they are hard-set to the penny.
If supplies remain after the promo period, some are clearanced, but retailers have explicit instructions on what to do with inventory that cannot be discounted.
Amazon is… Amazon. I’m sure that’s part of the reason why Amazon doesn’t get most of the same promos Dewalt gives to Home Depot, Lowe’s, and independent tool stores.
Similarly, a lot of people like to insist that retailers are simply dumping old stock this type of year. The reality is that the inventory levels required to stock deals at HD and Lowe’s stores nationwide, among others, requires careful planning, and the dollar amounts are firmly set.
mark w
Awesome write up I hadn’t thought of tons of that! Thanks Stuart.
Stuart
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Tim
Just found them restocked in my local store in Upland, CA
Rob H
These are available again for delivery or ship to store at the sale price. Not for immediate pickup at my local stores though, for some reason.
Stuart
Thanks! I’m guessing they want to conserve in-store inventory for store shoppers. I’ve seen images on social media of people buying entire case quantities.