Bought a $900 laser level, used it twice, the battery is now dead forever

Saw a fancy rotating laser on sale last spring and figured it would pay for itself on a couple of downtown Charlotte jobs. Thing sat in the truck for two months because every site I got had too much sun to see the beam anyway. Finally busted it out on a night shift, worked great for about 40 minutes, then the rechargeable pack gave up and won't take a charge. Replacement pack is $140 and the company says it's 'normal wear' since it sat in a hot cab. Anyone else sink cash into gear that just ends up as an expensive paperweight? What's your dumbest purchase that you still keep hauling around?

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ray_sullivan9d ago

Figured I'd bite since you hit close to home. Sitting in a hot truck cab is honestly the worst thing you can do to lithium batteries, that heat cooks em faster than any amount of charging cycles. I learned that the hard way with a cordless impact driver that now only holds about ten minutes of juice. What gets me is they sell these tools knowing they'll live in a service truck, then call it normal wear when the battery gives up. I'd say pop the pack open and check if it's just one dead cell, might be a $10 fix if you're handy with a soldering iron. Otherwise yeah, it's a paperweight, but at least you got two nights of use out of it instead of zero.