A reader (thank you Cody!) shared a Walmart social media post, where the retailer is advertising off-brand Milwaukee M18 cordless power tool batteries.
They wrote:
I just can’t believe Walmart is selling knockoff Milwaukee batteries; they’re everywhere now.
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Looking at Walmart’s product listing for the off-brand batteries, the image has typical “for Milwaukee” wording, but they list “Milwaukee” as the brand.
They also advertise that the battery has a 5 year warranty. But who exactly is offering this warranty? Who do you contact when (not if) there’s an issue?
What is “USA” about this? I don’t know of any company that currently makes cordless power tool batteries in the USA.
Walmart’s ad includes claims such as:
provides optimized performance and overload protection
Best-in-class construction
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The For M18 9.0AH Battery Pack delivers up to 5X more run-time, 35% more power, and runs 60% cooler than standard 18V lithium-ion batteries
Products are CE certified, tested by manufacturer to match or exceed
Same high quality as the OEM ones , but much cheaper
2X 6.0AH For Milwaukee New Lithium XC M18 Capacity Battery Extended 48-11-1860
Just underneath these and a couple of other claims, Walmart adds the following, along with a link to their full disclaimer policy:
We aim to show you accurate product information. Manufacturers, suppliers and others provide what you see here, and we have not verified it.
One of the user reviews gives the product a 1-star rating, saying:
These are not made by Milwaukee. They are fake.
This suggests they were confused into thinking the batteries were a genuine Milwaukee Tool product.
I can understand the appeal of less expensive battery packs, but do any 3rd party batteries ever deliver OEM-level quality, durability, performance, runtime, or safety?
There are quality 3rd party battery makers in other industries, but none that I’ve seen in the cordless power tool industry yet.
I’m sticking with genuine batteries.
Frank D
Somebody may lose their ability to sell merchandise at Walmart …
When you copycat name brand stuff and list it as the brand itself, without expressly disclosing that this is not an original product, but an aftermarket item.
Bonnie
Does Walmart police their marketplace any better than Amazon or Rakuten? There’s basically zero accountability on any of them and they’re all full of fake products/reviews/etc.
TomD
The scammers spin up new “marketplace merchants” faster than they get banned.
Bonnie
Fundamental problem with auto-approving platforms like this. But nobody wants to invest the money in actually vetting sellers.
TomD
There’s an easy solution that they don’t want to use (because they get their cut of the sale no matter how crappy it was) – require bonded deposits to open a storefront.
Mike
China crap. Bought 2 6.0 on amazon. Lasted. Till the 3rd. Charge. It’s probably not the batterys . I suspect it’s the crap electronics. I only have genuine milwaukee batteries now with no problems. I wait till they are on sale.
Maiane santos
My feelings exactly, up here I pay 250 for a 9 and 350 for a 12, but they last forever, never heat up (even on fast charge) and keep me on charge at all times.
Jim Felt
I’ve never had an issue with Amazon accurately describing their wares. In my 20+ years of purchasing hundreds if not thousands of either clearly and accurately name branded merch and even oddly branded commodity materials.
Plus their 100% exchange or refund policy.
Never once an issue. (Yeah. “Porch Pirates”. But I only use better delivery options).
Jon
I recently tested a bunch of generic m18s with a used milwaukee mower I bought. They had about 75% of the capacity of a real milwaukee battery. I can live with that for a quarter of the price.
Kenny Jamason
These batteries burn up __they also burn the tool elements __power cheep very bad for the tool s
Scotty.
These are all over eBay and probably Amazon too. If you read carefully it says “for Milwaukee” not that it IS Milwaukee. That’s how they get away with selling sketchy products.
Scotty.
And the USA is touting they ship from USA rather than directly from China.
Daniel L.
+1 to that. It’s become shorthand in obviously made-in-china items that are in stock in a USA warehouse, so you don’t have to wait 2-4 weeks to get it from mainland China.
Which…yeah. could be clearer.
MM
That’s what I think too, I’ve seen plenty of these kinds of things on Ebay or Amazon plastered with the American flag marked “US Seller” or “Ships from USA”. They are careful not to say “made in USA”.
Stuart
If you look carefully, they say:
Brand: Milwaukee.
Walmart also has the brand link as “Milwaukee.”
Franck B.
Right, but the seller usually provides that information. Or some Walmart employee does and they haven’t done this before for 3rd parties. I’ve seen it happen on Amazon on new listings and they get fixed after Amazon covers a bunch of returns.
JS
Odds are they are made by the same company many US manufacturers outsource to. This is the same paradigm used by store vs. name brands. Often very similar or the same with price being the big difference. People feel better about a product they pay more for. This is nothing new. There are exceptions, but this should not surprise anyone.
Stuart
That is simply not true.
OEM and knockoff batteries are not made the same.
Peter
Stuart is correct. An engineer did a teardown of a dozen of the most popular off brand batteries sold on Amazon for Dyson handheld vacs. Not one was in any way similar to Dyson. Each copy had serious safety deficiencies, including lack of high temp cutoff, dangerous cell bonding. Most had unmarked cells. Yet, even with shitty reviews people still buy them. Same issues as with tool batteries: OK to mediocre performance for a few months, then dead.
MM
And what company would that be? As far as I know there is no major cordless tool company who makes batteries in the USA. In fact that’s one of the red flags here: If Milwaukee, Dewalt, Makita, etc, aren’t making their batteries in the US then why would the much cheaper knockoffs be made here?
Jeremiah D
Theyre not claiming to be made here. “USA” just means they’re supposedly distributed from a domestic location.
They use buzzwords and catch phrases to get people to think or assume they’re saying something without violating any laws. Same as “for milwaukee” ive seen the exact same product snd ad on ebay recently.
Robert Chavous
No such thing as “Truth in Advertising” anymore..these Companies throw the word “Billion” around like its a Hundred.
They Ride the Fence so Close to “Lying” with the Phrases “As low as” & “Up to” that its Pathetic.
Read the Fine Print and Just Refuse to Do Business with these Crooked Companies..
Brad Sanders
How is it a sketchy product? Does it work as a replacement for what it says? Does it say that it has identical power and battery life as oe? I’d you are paying a 1/4 of the price you would have to be a fool to think it is going to be just as good as name brand. Absolutely nothing wrong with this. Options are a good thing.
Franck B.
I’m confused. It’s stated there was a social media post from Walmart, but I don’t see the link for that anywhere?
Walmart, Sears, eBay, Amazon all sell items as a marketplace without having anything to do with the items being sold other than to act as a payment processor and occasionally a customer service intermediary.
Since I don’t see a social media post… I don’t see anything here that hasn’t already been going on for 20 years.
What am I missing?
(On Amazon, Sears and Walmart, I generally–but not always, depending for what I am searching–filter by seller so that only Amazon, Sears or Walmart sold items are shown; I don’t shop on eBay anymore.)
Stuart
Screenshot is above.
It’s a shopping post from Walmart’s IG account. I can click through on my phone from where it was shared to me, and swipe or click images, but there’s no link I can grab.
Franck B.
Got it. Looks like paid promotion, probably part of the program to promote them on the web site as well.
TomD
This is the part that I think Milwaukee would be interested in and can poke at them. “Brand Milwaukee” is pretty suspect, and the brand defense Lego does can be used as a pattern.
The cynical view is that Milwaukee won’t care much, once use of these yumcha batteries and you’ll be back to only buying big Red (assuming the battery didn’t burn down your tool).
Travis
I don’t know about these Amazon also sells nockoff batteries. I wonder how good they run and how cool they stay . I’m saying no I’d like to see tested
TomD
https://youtu.be/YsZE86NFG4M Here’s one but you could do more detailed testing (would love to see Tesla or someone who knows batteries do it).
Ct451
There is no way these will last 5 years. I have tried a “for makita” 6ah one and it performed similar to the 3ah originals. Lasted about a year. I also bought an empty battery case and added quality cells inside but the electronics in the clone were lacking cell balancing and monitoring. It’s better to you get a supermarket brand battery that has good electronics and some warranty and find an adapter.
Bonnie
The closest I’d come to one of these would be a re-built original. I had an old Makita 18V NiMH’s like that that got me a few more years out of the tools before I upgraded.
Ct451
….also why get the 6ah? Get the 6.5ah.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Vanon-6-5Ah-for-Milwaukee-M18-Lithium-XC-Extended-Capacity-Battery-48-11-1860-1850/545515167
Stuart
Don’t expect anything other than mediocre performance.
As AH goes up, max performance capabilities go down. Expect this to overheat in tasks 3Ah, 4Ah, and 5Ah batteries can handle with ease.
Brad Sanders
Lol I’m pretty sure no one is expecting anything other than mediocre out of a 6ah battery for $35 new. I don’t get why everyone is crying. Options are a good thing. It keeps the brand names from gauging too out of control (although some may argue they are now). If the thing works as a replacement that’s great. Not everyone has 175$ to buy a new brand name in a pinch. If you don’t like them the solution is simple. Don’t buy them.
Ruslan C.
The same batteries are selling all over, the keyword is ” for” Milwaukee . It is legally safe to advertise like that. Regarding warranty, I’d call it b.s. but who knows ))
Jeremiah D
Warranty doesnt matter if the company isnt around. It is similar to the many companies selling led bulbs that are warrantied for ten years, but the company is only around for 2-3.
Gregg
I would never trust an offbrand battery. After wonder if it would void the warranty of the tool goes well. I see a lot of these knock off batteries on Facebook ads.
Chris
I searched for Dewalt flexvolt batteries on eBay. At least half the results were aftermarket batteries.
Lots of battery comparison tests have shown that brand name tool batteries are way better.
I’ll never use an off brand battery as I have no idea what kind of battery/tool protection they have. I don’t want to leave one on a charger only to have it overcharge and blow up overnight.
Not to say I’m not curious about the batteries, especially for the price. I just don’t trust them if they aren’t branded.
JoeM
There’s this Electronics place in Toronto that sells off-brand/bulk style knock-off tool batteries. A1 Electronics. When you go in and ask about them, they say “We only sell them to people who have an outdated tool that works fine, but the batteries are worth more than a new tool is. We don’t recommend them for new tools at all. they’re solely for old tools, even though they’re brand new batteries.” So they are at least honest about it.
I’ve seen knock-off batteries on Amazon as well, and even knock-off USB/12V Battery adapters that mimic the DCB 090/091. They come up in a search for a specific model of USB-Powered high end Soldering Iron, as a power source. And honestly, I do see why the knock-off would be desirable, especially when you have plenty of the real batteries around. If it’s cheap, and it breaks, this won’t hurt the soldering iron or battery that are real. But, just as easily, I can pull the one I have in my DeWALT Heated Jacket out of its special pocket, and use that with the same cables.
These knockoffs serve some purpose, but only when the retailer is 100% upfront about not using them to replace the real thing.
Walmart is on my Boycot list anyways. They have violations of Indigenous land in the past, and I don’t tolerate that. Luckily they were denied, but they still try, and it’s not right.
mattd
It says right on the listing “Sold and shipped by SBS Trends | SBSProducts&Services LLC.” So it is no different that any other market place site like amazon or ebay. I hate walmarts online site because they copied sears and just let anyone list whatever they want on their site and claim they are not liable for false products. You can’t even return these purchases to the store because walmart did not sell you them. At least with ebay or amazon this is expected. People who buy on walmarts website think they are in fact buying from walmart.
Brad Sanders
What a time to be alive that people are looking to Walmart to “be better” than their competition.
Ricky
These batteries are worthless unless you don’t mind replacing them every month or two if that. I got drawn in by the cheap price as compared to the real Milwaukee batteries. I’m ashamed to admit not once but twice I’ve bought multi packs of these cheap knock offs. They short out and just quit. Won’t take a charge. I finally wisened up a heeded my dad’s teaching ( you get what you pay for) and bought Milwaukee brand batteries. End of issues.
DavidY
Expanding on the comments from Chris, why take a chance on an unknown knock-off battery blowing up, or worse? I’m personally aware of this happening with small electronics batteries, at least. Safety first!
I don’t use batteries heavily and wait until the name brand batteries I need go on sale to purchase, usually about twice a year. Plus, from other reader’s comments it sounds like you get what you pay for in the long run.
Jp
Omg thanks for the post! I’m gonna jump right on these. Not really. Did the fake battery thing bc of money years back. Got burned some while others worked. In the end its the education on this site which led me to never repeat that mistake. I’m not a fan of burning my house down.
fred
Every few weeks I will hear a news story about a house fire caused by an e-bike battery failure. I’m not sure about how analogous this is – but when knockoff tool batteries start contributing to this problem in a big way – maybe we’ll see some action.
When I’d visit our workout center and see the line of batteries being charged (back then we bought Makita BL1830’s in bulk) – I’d often wonder if something like 50 batteries on charge might not be a fire waiting to happen. I could never find any real guidance about how best to store such batteries – other than the usual admonitions about keeping them in a cool dry place.
Justin
I’ve purchased similar Milwaukee an DeWalt Batteries in the past ‘5ah’. I felt that they were well worth the money! MAKE SURE to FULLY charge the batteries before 1st use! And run 2 or 3 full to dead to full cycles before periodically charging! Out of the 4 purchased one crapped out fairly quickly… I replaced the 2 bad cells myself and it continued working well.
Jeff
It’s a third party seller and not Walmart themselves. Got to pay attention to who the actual seller is.
Lip
It’s about time. Why put up with brand batteries that are way over priced? Only tool snobs hate this
Ben
As a professional mechanic I have used these and they work just fine. Have had mine now for 3 years and use them everyday. Never had a problem with them.
Josh
Yea. Just spend the money and get the real deal, my job carries Milwaukee tools for building signs and so forth, and they bought these batteries and didnt last a month or stopped charging or didnt work at all. DO NOT BUY THESE!!!!
Will
Third party seller is not walmart
Niles A
It says on the postings that they’re REPLACEMENTS for Milwaukee M18. They are not advertised as OEM or from the manufacturer. The sellers pay for the advertising on Walmart.com, and amazon.com, and they’re not sold directly by Walmart, Amazon, etc. They’re not “counterfeit” as they’re not sold as authentic batteries, but as REPLACEMENTS, as I mentioned above.
I’ve ordered them off Amazon in the past, and they’re good for when you need a battery in a pinch, but shouldn’t be expected to be your new daily battery for your POWER tool needs. I recommend them for flashlights, or other lower demand tools like the portable shopvac or the basic leaf blower for clearing smaller areas.
As for the warranty you can contact the sellers and have them replaced. In the past when I contacted them via email I let them know the issues I was having, and they sent me a new battery without requesting that I send back the other. As a side note, this was not the posted seller in this article, but a seller off Amazon.
Paul C.
After ordering something from Walmart about six months later they ordered a phone that was utterly useless to me (T-Mobile network, not available for over a hundred miles) sent to my in laws vacation/second house where it sat for months Nobody had access hundreds of miles away to “return it”. They refused to retrieve it like Amazon does and claimed I signed for it!!. There is no customer service at Walmartstores. There is no customer service number and the web site doesn’t do anything but limited responses. They flat out refused to fix their mess. They have been blocked from my credit card for years. Even without scammers, Walmart.com themselves is worse than Amazon of EBay. Don’t do it, ever, even on legit items. They are not “Walmart”. They are just one big scam site.
Marvin McConoughey
I will be buying my next Milwaukee batteries at Walmart in order to save money. Tool companies have taken consumers for a costly ride in two ways. One is the extensive non-interchangeability between tool brands of identical voltage and the other way is by charging very high monopoly prices on their proprietary batteries. Now, competition is emerging, and I predict that it will expand.
Jeff R
That’s just a fly-by-night Walmart marketplace seller. You’d likely find the same exact batteries sold under a hundred different names on Amazon, eBay, etc. The most recently added ones always have about 25 to 50 five-star ratings, and then promptly thereafter the more recent reviews will be consistently one-star, two-star, or three-star. Once people realize the first 20 to 50 reviews were fake, the company in China begins selling the same POS under another name with the image flipped (if they are not lazy) and with 20 to 50-five star ratings.
Peter
Exactly, welcome to a sucker is born ever minute. I work with Siemens SPD engineers . They buy every Chinese no name whole house surge protectors out there and open them up. I find it hard to believe their stories. Many have their protection status LED’s wired to Line and not the MOVs, so the unit could be burned up inside and you would never know it. Keeps the claims down. Obvious why all the cheap crap has no UL, CE or ETL. They are not competitors, they are just crooks and fraudsters with no conscience
1day@atime
Funny how folks who’ve never owned or used these batteries seems to have expert opinions on purchasing decisions involving these batteries and claiming that they won’t deliver OEM-level quality, performance, runtime, etc. Htf do you have any idea since you’ve never owned or used these batteries? I never knew I could become an expert just by watching videos of people taking batteries apart. That’s impressive. I’ve got several of these batteries and they’re no different than my OEM batteries. I’ve had them for years. Not once have they failed to perform within OEM-level standards. Not once have they failed to charge or cut out while in use. But you can’t trust these batteries. And they die after a month of use and no longer charge. There’s a chance of them burning down your house because they’re not OEM. They’ll blow up. They just quit and die. Yep. It’ll all happen if you don’t buy OEM batteries. Is that why they’re being sold and people are buying them? I don’t know, but maybe I bought the super special knockoffs and that’s why all of mine are still working. Each one was bought on four different occasions. Its been two years since I bought the last one. So why aren’t my batteries experiencing what it is that you all are claiming to have taken place or could potentially take place? They’ve been dropped and split apart and plastic welded back together. They’ve sat out in the sun on the charger for a while on many occasions. They’ve gotten soaked in the rain. They’ve suffered a lot of abuse. By all accounts, they shouldn’t be working at all according to the claims I’m reading here. They could explode at any moment, right. But somehow they still perform the same as the rest of my OEM batteries. That shouldn’t be happening though, right?
Franck B.
I agree with your point that you can’t know what you’re buying until you buy it, so don’t make assumptions on the quality of something you’ve never seen. People will often assume things without knowing.
But, that’s actually part of the problem. You don’t know what you’ll get when you buy an off-brand item from China.
You may have had received quality items. I don’t doubt it. So we can benefit from your experience, can you tell me enough about your item to ensure I receive the same quality that you attest? Probably not.
For every item sold that is a knock-off of a likely high volume item, there’s probably 1000 factories in China making it. Even buying from the same seller or brand doesn’t ensure you will get the same quality item (and this problem is even on known name brands who offshore their production). Some of these factories are using excess production while they’re not making high quality things like iPhones. Other factories are ones owned by the people who turned out products like pork buns with lye-softened cardboard trash for filling, and dirt-filled poker chips (some factory owner noted that people wanted high-quality poker chips like made in the US, with clay as a component–when you look in a translation dictionary for “clay”, you often find the word for “dirt”, and so the factories started including soil inside their chips). Or on a better quality item after initial sales successes, greed will set in with some sellers and later product runs may be inferior.
So unless you’re buying from a known source with a known sales channel that stands behind the product, you probably don’t know what you’ll get. The concern people have is genuine as many people want a product and don’t have time to continually verify its suitability.
The other issue is that people often tend to say things are “always” a certain way when they don’t really mean that. No one can say all of these batteries will be bad. And I’m not certain that they did, it’s just many often don’t have time to gamble with products like these, and they’re expressing their reasons why they don’t. Conversely, because you’ve had a positive experience, you can’t reasonably expect everyone else to have the same experience nor that they should be willing to take such a chance. Everyone has their own risk assessment to do and should act accordingly.
I do appreciate your input that you’ve received several high quality batteries though, it adds a data point to help some decide, and may make taking a chance worthwhile for some.
Roy Nickerson
I have been using Milwaukee cordless tools exclusively for over 20 years M12, M18 and Maxx. I have tried other knockoffs and aftermarket batteries, non out preform Milwaukee’s. I wll bet these will not either.
Brad Sanders
You really think that you are going to get a battery to perform just as good as name brand for a fraction of the price? Come on now.
Mike+I
Fortunately, genuine Milwaukee batteries do have a long service life and I have a bunch of them. Still, given how prices on genuine batteries have skyrocketed, I get the appeal. Even if capacity is below listed and warranty is worthless, for many they become a viable option. I have a small Worx car vac. Ne battery was nearly as much as I paid for vac with battery. Picked up 2 generics for considerably less than 1 oem. They work as well as the original.
If my livelihood depends on my tools, I will stick with oem. For the home handyman, 3rd party may make sense. What is always wrong is when sellers try to pass off repro units as genuine.
SteveP
“…do any 3rd party batteries ever deliver OEM-level quality, durability, performance, runtime, or safety?”
Well, after a number of $100 Makita 18V batteries decided to suffer sudden deaths with no warranty, I switched to Ryobi tools (yet to have a dead battery) and now run the few Makita tools i still use on “crap” knockoffs – that last longer
I’m certain the “dead” Makita cells were perfectly fine – it was just Makita being over-cautious with the “auto bricking”. You can buy new circuit boards to resurrect them, but it was much simpler to switch to a better brand
Wayne
📣I’ve been a Tradesman my whole life and strongly suggest to never buy aftermarket batteries !!!! I tell you this because I already threw the money away for you.
Note; they die way quicker and they can’t even drill one hole with a 2 1/8″ or a 2 9/16″ bit
Scott ALKB
I bought some knockoff Worx batteries off Amazon. They only lasted a few weeks in my lawnmower. And since their warranty was only 30 days, I could only get a refund on one of the two sets I bought.
Then I found some official factory-refurbed ones on eBay, and they’ve been going strong for months.
bob urz
a lot of times, when cordless battery’s go seemingly dead and wont charge, there not really dead, there battery’s are just below the threshold of what the charger thinks is proper to recharge them. With a little trickery, you can jump start the batterys to get enough charge in them to use again. Plenty of articles on the internet on how to do this. If anyone has dead power tool battery’s you don’t want, ill gladly take them for free..
Bluto Blutarsky
Now that I am in the lithium power tool community-I am studying these comments VERY CAREFULLY. I have had much experience with knock-off computer batteries which have been using this same lithium chemistry for years. Thesechinese knockoffs were 100% substandard-wouldn’t charge, or lasted just….long enough for the 30 day warranty on eBay or Amazon to expire. learned my lesson. Are they pulling the same Mickey with these packs now? Chemistry 101-I also have been in the serious R/C game-using a variety of same chemistry batteries in various hobby machines. I’ve had the interesting experience of deliberately igniting cells I’ve had that were going dangerously bad-swelling primarily is a sign it is about to go hand grenade, I managed to destroy these before I lost fingers or worse. This is one way to neutralize a lithium cell-by blowing it up. it isn’t hard to do-a quick short across the terminals, or a puncture in the protective sleeve-and these can blow white hot flame like an acetylene torch-and give off a cloud of noxious gas, and this with a small 3.7V single cell. Please don’t confuse a NI-CAD or NIMH pack with a lithium. Lithium ignites in the air-and cannot be extinguished with-much of anything except a specific smothering chemical-ask any fireman. Do I trust this new round of knock-offs, no not yet. I don’t even trust the originals as even a minor defect and you will have the equivalent of a hand grenade going off with a pack of 5-6 or more 18650s if there is a short anywhere, I am careful to charge these out in my workshed, even the hobby batteries. These must have a tight tolerance balanced charge-and if even one cell is over or undercharged in relation to the rest you are in big trouble, why the internal circuitry is so critical. Like Dirty Harry said…you got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
bob urz
Interestingly enough, i have not seen many cases of tool battery’s catching on fire. if it is happening, its underreported in the media. It is certainly possible. just not common. generics? i have a bunch of them for dewalt and such and have not had any issues with them so far. as far as there stated rating go, you may get less than advertised. i use a mix of factory battery’s and generics so i don’t have all my eggs in one basket. when doing high drain outdoor work with blowers or weed whackers, i freely swap them in as need when i run out of juice. now, i did have a USB power brick that swelled up and was bulging. still worked. quit using it. I don’t have a high duty cycle use as a building contractor or such would do, so that may factor into the equation. One interesting thing i did have happen was with a dewalt 20v to 18V tool adapter. loaned it to a friend (never used it yet) and it started to smoke the tool it was on. tool would not turn off and had to pull the battery. turned out after forensic investigation that the polarity terminals were reversed on the 18V side of the adapter. With this Chinese crap, you never know sometimes on what you get.
Bluto
Here is another problem that I have experienced with single 18650 Chinese cells I removed from packs that went bad Not sure why but I have had more than one reverse it’s polarity! This is very dangerous and can blow an entire pack. I am lucky none have blown up on me, but I feel like I’m working in an exlosives factory with all the defective Chinese cells I’ve disassembled and tested. Yes, quality control is not consistent. I’d like to be sure I could get the less expensive cloned packs, but not anymore not with the tests I’ve done. Be careful.