CEL Power8 Workshop WS4 Lithium Pro Workstation - WS4E

There are two parts to this review. The first is with regards to the product I purchased from CEL. The second is a reflection on their customer service.I purchased a CEL WS4, which is the Power8 set with the upgraded chassis, circular saw and lithium ion battery pack. I also bought a secondary battery pack at the same time. On arrival, it was immediately apparent to me that there were some serious flaws with the unit. The guard on the circular saw caught constantly on the blade. The jigsaw twists to the left at the bottom of its travel, thus causing an oscillation in the cutting edge. The drill press has enough play in it that there is about a cm of movement at the tip of the bit. The bit that holds the screw driver heads is off true and therefore also oscillates, rendering it largely useless.I immediately removed the guard from the saw. With that impediment out of the way, I have to say that it is a pretty good compact table saw solution. It will happily cut large timber and cut blind. The saw has a good amount of power, and the battery packs deliver an impressive amount of work per charge. I concluded that that function alone was valuable to someone with limited workshop space such as myself. The Drill press is useable if you make clear guide holes to locate the tip, so it's not a complete write off. Oh, and you should rub some bike grease on the saw guide/protractor shaft. It's a vile, grindy experience straight out of the box, but a little grease makes it infinitely more useable.However, after 6 weeks of owning the unit, it stopped charging. The lights still came on on the power unit when one of the battery packs was connected, but the packs would not charge, either in the main dock or using the secondary charger cable. I was doing a job at the time, so I kept using the unit til my two packs ran down, then checked all the fuses when I got home. No luck, the unit had just bricked.So, before I move on to Customer service, is the unit any good? Well, it's not as good as the adverts suggest (what is?) There are plenty of parts that would benefit from better machining and less play. However, if you need a compact table saw with a pretty efficient fence, and especially if you need it to run on batteries, it does alright, and is fairly unique in its class.To resolve the issue with the charger, I got in touch with the company i purchased the unit from, and they put me directly in touch with CEL. CEL suggested I send it back to them for warranty repair (at my own expense). I also quizzed them about the other defects of the unit. They admitted that the accessory packs that come with the power8 sets are garbage, and only bundled to make the sets look more desireable. Apparently the identical looking sets they sell seperately are of professional (ie actually usable) quality. They were sure that the issue with the jigsaw was a torsion on the blades and not the saw driver itself, and offered to send me some good quality blades to test with. They conceded that the drill press arm was under engineered to keep costs down. They noted that the metal back of the blade guard was slightly bent, due to the way the unit had been shipped to me, and suggested that I bend it back. So far, alright. If they can return me a working unit swiftly, I'm still broadly of the conviction that this unit, though flawed, is of use to me.I sent the power unit back. A week later they got in touch to say that they had resolved the issue and that they were shipping it back to me (no explanation as to what the fault was). Two days later they get in touch again to say that they have shipped the unit to the wrong address, in spite of the fact that I had filled out the returns form they sent me with my full address details. They said they would arrange for collection and redelivery.That was just over two weeks ago. I have heard nothing further since. I have emailed both my contacts at CEL a couple of times over the last few days and received no response. I would have called them, but their only customer service number is an 0845 number (which my mobile deal doesn't cover, and I don't have a house phone), so that's a no go. At this point I am moving strongly to the position that I should have invested the not inconsiderable amount of money I spent on this unit in some real power tools from a real power tool company.