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Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 at 22:09:18 :
In Reply to: REVISITED - OT: If you need any vise-grip pliers get em now! posted by Bob Stopka in Panama City on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 at 21:51:53 :
A couple years ago I bought a portable dehumidifier for my basement. It was on sale cheap at the liquidation store, but was new in a sealed box, so I figured it would be okay. I think the brand was Haier or something like that. Got it home, plugged it in, turned it on, and nothing happened. The store where I bought it was 400 miles away and I doubt they'd take it back anyway being a liquidation place, so I took it apart. I see two wires with spade terminals on the ends hanging into space, and two spade terminals somewhere else in the box with nothing connected to them. It wasn't clear which wire was supposed to go where, but figuring I had a 50% chance of getting it right the first time I plugged wires randomly onto terminals, shaking my head at how something like that could make it through final test and into a box.
Put it all back together, turned it on, and it fired up, making a god-awful racket. Something was obviously hitting on something inside. Took it apart again and looked at the fan. The fan was held on by 4 long mounting screws each of which had a nut just barely started on the end of it. I tightened the nuts down, put it back together, and this time it worked fine.
It's mind-boggling to me that any factory anywhere in the world would package up any electrical device without ever plugging it in to see if it at least more or less somewhat sort of appeared to somewhat work. But here was a dehumidifier that had two very large and obvious manufacturing flaws, either of which would have been caught be even the most primitive sort of final test, and yet they didn't want to waste the time testing it.
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