Exploding Plate

Introducing the Nokia 6103:

The Nokai 6130 - when you tried to take a picture

Do not accept this telephone as a free gift for joining any cell-phone company!

Do not accept it as a free gift for renewing your contract.

My wife and I were quite pleased when we got our matching cell-phones.  It was the first time she had a camera phone, and it had all the regular features I’d come to expect in a cell phone.

But half a year later (and they made you sign up for a 1 year plan in those days - now I think it is a two-year plan) our cell phones were pieces of junk.

Nokia 6130 - Hinge Broke

On my wife’s phone the hinge broke.  And it wasn’t like she dropped it or something, or threw it around.  It went into her purse, and came out of her purse, and back in again, and back out… except for when she was charging.  And the stupid little thing: the hinge couldn’t eve stand up to regular usage for six months!

Broken Hinge on Nokia 6130

Meanwhile, I had problems with mine too.

Around the same time, if I tried to take a picture I would get an “operation failed” message.  So, the camera suddenly doesn’t work any more… and what’s the fun of that?

And around the same time, the little display screen on the front, where I normally see the date, time and incoming calls turns into this beautiful picture:

Oh, the irony!  A purple lemon!

Unfortunately, I had to wait until my contract expired to get another decent phone.  I was gonna keep using it (it still made phone calls) but one day I lost it.  Ooops! 

I bought a little cheap model for around 40 bucks to get me by until my contract expired.  No nokia for me this time!

Cheers!

Basil

Tags: Product Grumbles by Basil
3 Comments »

I thought it was cool that my friends and I randomly chose the same dishwasher. It was the Maytag Quiet Series 100.

A couple months later when my friends’ dishwasher was already breaking down, I thought it was only because they had four kids in their family, and ended up with things like Legos and cat poo going through the dishwasher cycles. But within six months of using my own dishwasher I began to notice rust on the bottom rack!

Within another few months and it became obvious that this was a serious problem.

But unfortunately it was past the end of the warantee when I finally realized this dishwasher was a piece of junk.

The bottom rack is slowly rusting away. It wasn’t like we were careless with our dishes or something. The metal is rusting through, the upright pieces are crumbling and falling off. It’s getting to where I have to rinse my dishes after I’ve washed them to get the bits and pieces of rust off.

It turns out I’m not the only one who has had problems with this dishwasher. That is, not even considering my friends.

Why has the Maytag repair man got nothing to do? I suggest he may be on his coffee break all the time because his phone isn’t working.

~ Basil

Tags: Product Grumbles by Basil
5 Comments »

How many circles do you suppose one can make from an inexpensive school-kid’s compass these days?

Well, we found out.

Apparently only six.

Yep, that’s all six of them there. Count them. My daughter likes to point out that some of them are not complete and shouldn’t count as circles at all. But let’s give this cheap-garbage product the benefit of a doubt and call it six.

So my daughter comes running up to me the other day. “Dad! Dad! I have something for your web page!” I’m thinking: “O, great! What broke now?”

So, she uses this new compass that we bought her as dutiful parents for school this year (because it was on the school supply list, but they didn’t actually need them at school), and so, she’s trying it out the other day out of boredom and discovers that it only makes defective circles because the pencil isn’t sharp.

Of course, they don’t sell them with sharp pencils - probably don’t want to be sued.

So, my daughter attempts to slide the pencil out in order to sharpen it in our nice new electric pencil sharpener (the second one we’ve gone through in as many months) and instead of sliding out, the compass crumbles in her hand.

The Crumbled Compass

The tell-tale signs were printed in tiny letters on the back of this gray-plastic piece of trash: “Made in China” - another couple bucks for the land-fill.

- Basil

Tags: Product Grumbles by Basil
2 Comments »

What’s the deal with cell phones these days? I had mine for six months and camera stopped working. Another couple of months and the front screen stopped working.

One day my wife calls me on the office phone at work and asks: why’d you turn off your cell phone ring? Well, I didn’t. I ask her to call me right now, so I sit there and watch the thing as it lights up and receives the call, but no ring. I check my ring-tones and, what-the-heck, it only lets me pick one or two of them and says all the other files are corrupted. So, I switch to another ring tone, and it rings fine. Then I switch back to the original again, and that one works fine too.

File not corrupted any more? Give me a break! It’s crappy workmanship. Maybe the thing was designed well, but it wasn’t implemented well, and they sold them anyway. They know that by the time it breaks down something more interesting will have caught my eye so I won’t care any more.

Nine months out of a cell phone! And I only use it maybe once or twice a day.

- Basil

Tags: Product Grumbles by Basil
1 Comment »