another item in the stupid-design category

[sev]

Plagued by stupidly designed products.  Good reason to just not buy stuff, I suppose.

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Recently reminded of: The rechargeable hand-held blender.  It comes apart into three pieces: a blade assembly, a motor assembly, and a power assembly.  It comes with a "handy" storage rack into which the blade and motor assemblies fit perfectly.  The power assembly plugs into the wall.   When I bought it, the ad copy suggested that the power assembly should be kept plugged into the wall for storage so it's "always ready for use".

The rechargeable battery is the kind that needs to be drained before recharging or else it acquires "memory."  The documentation didn't say anything about not plugging it in before it's drained, though, so I plugged it back in when I wasn't using it -- especially since it didn't fit into the storage-stand with the other two parts, and it's round, so it would roll around in my cabinet if I didn't plug it into the wall.  So every time I used it, it got weaker and weaker until the battery wasn't powerful enough to move the motor at all.

I could send the manufacturer half the replacement cost of the damn thing to replace the battery.  And then have to deal with it rolling around in my cabinet and possibly not being charged up and ready when I needed it.  Or I can just buy a blender that plugs into the wall.

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Also reminded of:  The knobs on my dryer.  Hard plastic, which snap onto metal pieces that sticks out of the center of the dials..  Two of them have already cracked, in the five years since we bought the dryer.  I visited a local appliance repair shop after the first one cracked, and they fished a knob out of a bin of used knobs.  The old used knob is rubbery and the hole where the stick goes in is lined with metal.  This one, the appliance repair person pointed out, will likely last forever.

After the second knob failed I thought about ordering a bunch of replacement knobs from the manufacturer and just keeping them in a box next to the dryer so we could keep replacing them as they broke, one after another.

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I was reminded of the knobs because the same company that makes the "rechargeable" stick blender also makes a countertop blender, which consumers report breaks easily because the part where the motor attaches to the blade is hard plastic.  I didn't buy the countertop blender.

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Also annoying me: the oven, also about five years old, with two broken buttons.  Fixing it will cost nearly half what replacing it will cost. (notice a theme?)

I'm beginning to think, whenever I go to buy something: Why bother?  It'll just break anyway. 

Comments

[grey-evil-twin.livejournal.com]

My stick blender (also known as my Zizzer), is still chugging along 10 years later. Mains powered. I love it.

As for the knobs, I remember coming out of a friends house and noticing that the street had piles of junk ready for collection out the front the yards. This included a clothes dryer the same make and model as my one at home, the one with the broken door. Two minutes work with my trusty swiss army knife, and that door was mine. Now if only I could find hubcaps that way...