Dual Drill - Two Heads Make One Bad Idea

Brad, one of our Customer Service Reps (if you've called us, you may have talked to him), asked me if I had seen the infomercial with the gimmicky drill yet with the flip around head. I hadn't at the time, but now I can say that I have. They called it the "Dual Drill", and I've got to say - it's revolutionary. Well, if you consider a very bad idea revolutionary.

Drilling Power
Let's start out with some basics of drills. They spin, and to have power in doing so will need a solid connection between the motor and the chuck. Anything that can flip and use a different chuck with minimal effort doesn't have a solid connection between the two. That means you'll have limited power at best. It may not show up when drilling small holes like they show on the infomercial (appeared to be 1/8" or less), but if you're trying to use a wood spade or a holesaw, you're going to want a different drill.

Drilling Speed
According to their site, this drill is "0-550rpm". What's my Makita 18V cordless drill run? 0-450 on the low setting, and 0-1400 on the high speed setting. Making holes on the slow speed is pretty annoying. The high speed is much better for drilling. The newer models are 0-1700 rpm. I also noticed they don't have a clutch for the screwdriving chuck of the dual drill. That's not even a true drill/driver. It's just what they called it, a dual drill. So why do they show it driving screws? They probably figured nobody would notice.

Chuck Quality
A quality chuck alone runs around $30 each. If you have 2 of those, there's no way they can make a decent drill with the cost that's left. Adding in a charger and a battery doesn't leave much, then a case and the included bits? There is no way that the chucks are of a reasonable quality, let alone the rest of the tool.

Crafty Camera Angles
They show a "Contractor" drop one of these out of the 4th story window. It falls, the battery comes off, but it still works once they put it back on. Well, as it's falling we see it turn on its side. Let's just say that it was carefully dropped at a specific angle to do the least damage. They also don't show it actually hit the ground, so who knows if they cut away and have a different drill or not. They also drop it onto material that will reduce impact. They're not dropping it onto anything as hard as concrete or even packed dirt. It was dropped onto a loosely packed rubble pile. At the angle it was dropped, I'd venture a guess that any drill could handle that fall into a pile of soft materials.

Google Shows Deceit
Not that most "Only on TV" products don't have that problem, but I wanted to point out that this one is no exception. Some are even as bad as this customer comment on HSN's site about the infomercial itself:

Customer Reviews

What a deal! (Dana, GA)		01/27/2006
My husband is a tool junky. He saw the info on this and had to have it. We ordered off the infomercial and 3 weeks later had heard nothing and they hadn't taken the money from the charge card. He was very upset. I decided to look on HSN. Found it and ordered it. He had the drill in hand within a week. 2 weeks later we got the charge from the infomercial order. Needless to say . . . HSN is great!

There were some others that came up on the first page of results for this product as well. Sites like www.infomercialscams.com had several complaints already listed, which isn't good for a newer product.

Other Clues
There are some other clues that this company doesn't intend to be around long. If you go to the official site, which is listed as dualdrill.com but redirects to tvgoods.com/carts/dualdrill/index.php?t=tv&m=tv&c=na&k=www.dualdrill.com, you'll quickly see that clicking on the "Customer Care" link shows their other "quality" products, and a different phone number for each. However, the Dual Drill has 2 phone numbers depending on when you placed your order. Nice. The page for the Dual Drill also doesn't look like the rest of their website, which is a sign that it isn't a reputable company.

The Dual-Drill® is the perfect gift, but the manufacturer has only allotted us a limited amount. This is an amazing offer you need to jump on right away!

Nothing says I'll be around tomorrow like the terms "Limited amount" and "jump on right away"... especially on the "Official" website.

As part of this introductory offer we're adding something nobody else does. Order the Dual-Drill® now and we'll give you free replacement batteries for life * - just pay the shipping!

Let's face it - every battery quits working eventually. Offering free replacement batteries for life, with the "Life" having the * next to it, sort of implies that there is a weird condition here. If it were free with the *, that'd be a different story. They do have a note saying "* When your Dual-Drill® battery wears out, simply send it back to us and we'll send you a new battery, and all you pay is shipping and handling." They don't say how much that shipping and handling is, nor do they say what "life" implies. If that's the life of the battery, then it's worthless. If that's the life of the company, it may be worth even less than that.

One Final Clue
For those of you not familiar with "Search Engine Optimization" (I'd assume most of you here aren't), the use of hidden text is something you'd do for a short term gain if you don't care about keeping the ranking for a long time. They included hidden text of "Home of the Dual-Drill, also known as dualdrill, duel drill, dueldrill, and dual drill." on the homepage of the product (scroll to the bottom of the page and press CTRL+A to see it). Hidden text is a spamming technique and is generally considered a very bad idea if you're running a legitimate company that intends to be around for a while. Most search engines will find that and penalize the site, although not usually for a short while - which is where the short term gain comes in as well as the long term loss.

Bad Idea and a Shady Looking Company
Not only do I find this to be a bad idea if you really want a drill and not just a glorified screwdriver, this also seems like a very shady company for the reasons I've listed above. If you don't want to get taken to the cleaners, I'd avoid these people and buy a quality drill from a leading manufacturer of cordless drills. Adding a quick-change set will allow you to switch the bits out easy enough that you wouldn't see much of a benefit from this drill from an ease perspective, but you'll also have a lot more power and a much faster drill from a company that has been around this industry for quite some time. If this "Dual Heads" were really a good idea, one of the current manufacturers would have purchased that patent.

Do Your Own Research
Don't take my word for it. These were just my observations on this product. Do some searches on Google. Watch the crafty angles of the commercial. Do some research, check out the reviews, and remember that good tools will be available from an industrial supplier.