So, what has been your worst experience with a defective or damaged product? This could be food that is moldy when you open the package, an electrical device with missing parts, or a child's toy that was dangerous. I have not had a truly awful experience, thankfully, but I have had food items that were stale or obviously damaged after opening. This can be disappointing, even if you only spent a little money, just because it's usually too much hassle to take them back to the store. I know someone who found a straight pin in their baby's diaper, though, right after taking it out of the package. Pretty scary!
I never have had any issues with the product I purchased until now. Recently, I received a product I bought on ebay. The product description said it was a new product and the listed price was far lass than store price. However, when I received the product, it was of course new but was sightly damaged. When I contacted the seller he said the product was in perfect condition when he shipped. Perhaps the damage occurred during the shipping process.
I haven't had a bad experience with a product I think... oh I just remembered, my Toshiba laptop. Just after a few months of using it, some screws fell out and then when I tried to close and open the screen, the back opened up and it messed up stuff in there. After a few months of dealing with that and also duct tape, I opened the whole thing up and I fixed the part that was in the wrong position, and rescrewed it. Thank god I don't have to deal with that anymore.
Vinaya, that sucks. I had a similar experience purchasing a refurbished phone on Amazon. It had hardware issues and would not charge at first, and then after fully charging, the screen would constantly time out and I couldn't change the settings because it timed out in about 1 second. They claimed it didn't do that when it left the warehouse. However, thankfully as it was from Amazon, I had buyer protection and could get a refund.
It is a tie between two products I got through Amazon. One was a slipcover that the picture showed covered a whole recliner, but when the product actually came, it was only big enough to cover the back of the chair, what a disappointment. The other one was a kayak paddle that fell apart in the middle of the lake. That was a lot of fun! Not!
Thankfully, I was able to get some compensation. I contacted the seller and told him I have the option to return the product and get a full refund. The seller gave me another option, I keep the product and get partial refund. I agreed. I had bought the product for $70 and was able to get $15 as compensation.
Well, I would exclude 2nd hand items then, since they're obviously prone to having hidden defects. I remember buying an mp3 player in Ebay from China, and it costs $3 and it was an auction. A USB cable and a pair of earphones were included. But lo and behold, aside from the casing being broken since it was shipped inside a sealed plastic bag, the mp3 player only worked for 2 hours, since the button sunk a bit deeper than normal, causing the mp3's to play in super fast forward mode permanently. So I got a refund from the seller.
I do wardrobe for commercials, and have quite a few clothes in my workshop, and needed a garment rack to organize them. I purchased on from Walmart that was in an unopened box, but it was still missing key components, so I took it back and exchanged it for a second one. The second box also appeared to be completely unopened (I examined it quite thoroughly). The second one was also missing pieces, but uniquely different ones than the first set was. I ended up having to buy three total boxes and fished the pieces out of them that I needed, and took them back. I did feel badly about that, because even though I spoke with a supervisor to make sure they understood what was going on, I assume the incomplete sets all went back up on the shelves, only to start the cycle again. Perhaps this isn't quite a damaged good situation, but I can only assume there was a factory issue in boxing this item, so in my eyes, it seemed and felt quite defective.
I think that it is bad when stores re-stock items that have been returned because they were defective. If the store is a liqudation store, then you expect to find returns and defective items; but if you are purchasing something that is supposed to be new, and it is on the shelf at Walmart (or elsewhere) then it should not be a returned item. The most defective product that I have ever purchased new , was one of those hoses that shrink up, called a "pocket hose", usually. We had purchased one of them, and it worked great, so I ordered a longer one from Amazon. When it came, it was totally defective, and would not even fill up with water, let alone stretch out like it was supposed to do. Water went in one end, got stopped a little ways down, and then just dribbled out the other end. If we blocked the other end so the water could not dribble out, then it eventually filled up and stretched out; but once you stried to use the hose, it jusst emptied the accumulated water, and then shrank back up and didn't work again. Thankfully, ince we had purchased it from Amazon, they just refunded our money; but after that, we did not even try purchasing any more of the pocket hoses.
From what I've seen the pocket type hoses seem to have pretty bad reviews, although it could be that some are lookalikes. I wondered how they were, because it would be helpful not to have to wrangle the hose when I do my front ditch, although I doubt they make 100' or 120' pocket hoses @Happyflowerlady. Were the two you purchased the same brand/style? I've had a few bad experiences. One was a clock radio with docking station for my iPod. When I got it, the iPod didn't fit, although it was for the model I had. It took a few weeks, but I got them to send me another, and I gave away the first one, since they didn't want/need me to send it back. The other was recently. I purchased some 'hemp' cord that was supposed to be jewelry quality. Of course I had to wait for it, because I bought it from overseas, and during that timeframe, I used up what I had. I was excited for it to arrive, because I needed it for some projects, but when it arrived, it was not hemp cord, but was sisal, which is much rougher, smells like petroleum, and is definitely not jewelry quality.
I have mixed feelings about pocket hoses, @Diane Lane . The first one I got was on an end-of-season closeout from Krogers, and it was 25 feet long, It worked fine, and was SO much lighter weight , and easier to drag around and water the flowers with than the regular hose. The second one we got (the defective one) was either a 50 foot, or maybe 75 feet, don't remember anymore, but since it was so much longer, I thought it would be exactly what we needed. However, after we had the pocket hose for about a year, even the good one shredded itself one day. I have not bought another one; because I think that it is not the right product for me. The ads show the hose being used to spray down the pool area, and then put back away in its container, and in the garage. I think that if you only used the hose for a short time, like they show in the ads, and then put it away in the container; it would probably work great, and last a long time. However, I water at least once, and sometimes twice a day in summer, and leave the hose stretched out in the yard; so this allowed my hose to wear out much faster. I thought about it, and decided that I would rather drag around the heavy hose, than have to coil up and put away the pocket hose each time I use it. But for the occasional hose user, I think it would work fine, as long as it was put away each time after you use it.
What I do is have 2 hoses always attached to the house spigots, and those are used for watering the lawn, filling the stray cats' bowls, washing the car, etc. I have a longer hose that's 120', although I think 100' would be sufficient, and I use that for when I attach the chemical containers to the hose to spray for weeks, pests, etc. I then take that off when I'm finished, and store it in a large plastic bin in the house, until I need it again, and reattach the regular old fashioned type of curly hose. It's a fairly cheap hose, since I'm broke, and kinks all of the time, which is really irritating, especially because I have an audience sitting across the street watching my every move. I'd love to be able to use something lightweight and flexible like a pocket hose, and just get the job done and get out of the view of the audience. I might have to check into them to see if they make longer hoses, if I come into some money. Since I only use it off and on, and it's stored indoors, maybe it would serve my purpose.
Well the most recent one that comes to mind was a particularly frustrating experience with a drain snake. I have been having issues with the kitchen sink here for some time, and I finally got work that if I got a drain snake I would be able to get whatever is clogging it out. Well it all seemed to be going fine and then thing started to break on me. It was hinged at the top and the little hinges keep coming apart, and it was extremely frustrating to the point where I just gave. I am still trying to figure this sink out.
I think that a longer pocket hose would be perfect for the occasional-use hose, @Diane Lane , and if they don't have 100 foot ones, you could always get two of the 50 foot and attach them together. Even one of the 50 foot hoses would help; because you could attach that to one of the hoses that you already keep out in the yard and use that to drag around when you are spraying. That is what I did with the watering. I had th heavy hose laying out in the direction where I was going to water, and then the pocket hose attached to that, and I only had to drag around the pocket hose. If I had not left it laying out in the sun and weather, I am sure that it would have lasted much longer; but since they are kind of a nylon material on the outside, they can't take the sun like a regular hose can.
I once bought a mobile phone with a brand name and supposedly manufactured in the USA. It looked attractive and sleek on the surface. The first thing to note was the horribly low battery life. Webpages loaded slowly and the internet aspect was rudimentary. Worse was to follow. It couldn't save images. The final straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that there was some literature embedded in one of its outer parts indicating that it was made in China!
I wasn't even aware that connecting two hoses was an option @Happyflowerlady that's a great idea and would have been helpful to know before I bought the super long one I have. Would I need to buy some sort of coupling to do that? I'm really not oriented in that way at all, this house is the first place I've dealt with yard work. Although I had an abundance of container plants at my previous homes, I had a special hose for that purpose that connected to my kitchen faucet. I don't have much familiarity with garden hoses, or the adapters that might work with them.
Garden hoses will just connect together the same way that you connect them to the faucet, @Diane Lane ; so there is no need for any kind of coupling to connect them. You can see on the end of the hose where you attach the sprayer nozzle, that it has grooves, and the other hose just attaches on to that the same way that the sprayer does. It really doesn't make any difference whether you are dragging around two short hoses or one long one, if you need the length , you need it. But the pocket hose is just SO much lighter than those heave duty rubber ones, and it doesn't kink up like the rubber ones do either, so it is wonderful to use, and should last a long time, providing you put it away after using it. I have seen some for free or a dollar on the Amazon Review Trader or the Amazon Review Kick websites, so I might get a couple more of them and then next spring, use them carefully so that they will last for me.
I have never dealt with anything terrible before. About a month ago, we went to walmart (bleh) and bought an external hard drive. Total price for the item was $137. We got home, got it out of the box to find that someone took the actual hard drive out and left the casing for it... Luckily walmart fixed it but wow!
The worst so far was when we bought a phone online with a basic phone as a freebie. We ordered a black unit of the phone and ended up getting a white one. Which was just fine, but then after using it for a day we figured it was over heating so we decided to return it. Didn't want to wait for it to explode.
