THINGS THAT JUST DON'T WORK
"There is no product that someone cannot make a little worse and sell
a little cheaper.
Those who consider price alone are this man's lawful prey."
This page is cumulative, compiled from past issues of Northern Herald,
and is provided for consumer awareness.
Signed consumer submissions are welcome.
Northern Herald, P.O. Box 1132, Bemidji, MN 56619
© 1995-2008 by Northern Herald Publications, Inc.
Contents
PATTON® Oil-filled electric radiators
HI-VAL® (I/O MAGIC®) CD-RW drives
SYMPHONIC® VCRS
LEXAR® Compact Flash cards
OFFICE MAX® rebates
HEWLETT-PACKARD® product support
CELLULAR-ONE®
CARSOUP.COM
CARDONE rebuilt auto parts (sold by many Bemidji parts houses)
HOME REPAIR IN THE NORTHLAND
ROOFING
Crow Wing Exteriors
Brother n' Son Construction
Morris Roofing
& Siding
* R Johnson
Construction (*this is the only positive review)
LOCALNET (An Internet Service Provider)
Full text begins.
PATTON® Oil Filled Electric Radiators
The PATTON® Oil Filled Electric Radiator is a great thing to have
if your want a puddle of oil on your floor carpeting. In our test scenario,
a just bought new unit, assembled and operated per directions, at the middle
setting (900 watts), began to leak oil within a few minutes of operation,
and within an hour, had dripped about a 12 inch pool of hot oil beneath
the unit.
HI-VAL® (I/O MAGIC®) CD-RW drives
In our test case, this product appeared to perform satisfactorily upon
installation, but failed within 6 months. There have been other reports,
including by technicians, of this product failing. The product is sold
by Office Max and other retailers.
SYMPHONIC® VCRS
Certain of these products are known, after a year or two of use, to
sporadically malfunction, going into an error mode when the rewind or fast
forward button is pressed. The machine then has to be manually turned on
again, which ejects the tape and resets the counter to zero. As a result,
frequently, when the consumer tries to fast forward or rewind, he may have
to get up and reinsert the tape, and the counter place is lost. This product
has been sold by K-MART® and other retailers.
LEXAR® Compact Flash cards
These are touted as being compatible with most digital cameras, and
Kodak® agrees. But in our test case, the Lexar 32Mb card produced sporadic
errors when used with the Kodak DC120. The Kodak card (less than $1 more)
did not give this problem.
OFFICE MAX® rebates
How can they make money rebating that much? Mail-in rebates are predicated
on the theory that a lot of people won't send for them, and a lot
of people will fall through the cracks. Office Max makes a practice of
drawing in customers with offers of large rebates. But in our investigation,
many people didn't get theirs. Firstly, there's lots of fine print on the
rebate form, like rebates won't be sent to P.O. boxes. This lets out the
entire City of Walker, where that's the only way people get their mail.
There are lots of other loopholes that keep you from getting your rebate,
and even compromise the returnability of the merchandise if you send for
it. The bottom line is that if a manufacturer really wants to offer a bona-fide
rebate, you'll get it at the checkstand - not by mail.
HEWLETT-PACKARD® product support
HEWLETT-PACKARD® was once one of the most dependable brands of
computer peripherals one could buy. But no longer. Consumers should be
aware that particularly for long-term data storage and retrieval, HP products
can no longer be relied upon because HP policy is to not continue support
for those products. For example, people who, only a few years ago, bought
the HP Colorado 800 MB backup device, sold as a permanent storage device,
will now find that if it needs maintenance or repair, those services are
unavailable. HP will tell the customer, effectively, that they're SOL (Simply
Out of Luck). Data archived with the device is now, for all practical purposes,
irre-trievable and lost. Due to HP policy, users may find service for other
HP products to become unavailable not too long after they are purchased;
more dependable and integrious brands, in the long-term, may be a more
worthwhile option.
CELLULAR-ONE®
CELLULAR-ONE® is glad to take your money for monthly service, but
they make no guarantee that you'll actually be able to use your phone when
you need it, or that it'll ring when people call you. If the "tower's busy"
with other calls, your clients will just reach your voicemail - if you
wanted that, an answering machine would cost a lot less. Cell-One is now
reducing it's analog channels. That means that if your use an analog phone,
for more power and range (important up here), you're going to increasingly
get a fast-busy signal when you try to use it, even in an emergency, and
callers won't be able to reach you. Cell-1 did this without any notice
to present customers - people who depend on their cell phone to stay in
contact with clients were, one day, just missing calls and unable
to dial out. (This makes a good case for these jokers being government
regulated as a public utility.) There aren't presently many service options
in the Northland - Cell 2000, in the overall, also has their problems.
With any firm, customers may want to sample the service before entering
into long-term contracts.
CARSOUP.COM
This web site advertises heavily for people to list cars there for
a fee. But, in our test, in early 2004, for people looking to buy a used
car, the site just doesn't work. Never got to the sample category of cars
we were looking for. If buyers can't get it to work, there's not much chance
that they'll find your car there. And the site bombards users with lots
of garbage "cookies" which may also discourage use.
CARDONE rebuilt auto parts
Caution Needed With Bemidji's Rebuilt Car Parts
(from Vol. 10 No. 1 - 10/25/04)
Rebuilt car parts make sense, both for the wallet and for the environment.
A major cost component of any part is the housing; that's usually practically
indestructible; if a
rebuilder makes quality replacement of the little components inside,
the part is perfectly fine for
use.
But in Bemidji, virtually all of the parts suppliers, whether Carquest,
Auto Value, even NAPA, use
the same jobber, who uses the same suppliers, and don't really give
a rat's behind about whether
the parts work. American pride of workmanship used to mean something;
it doesn't anymore,
which is why we're (rightfully) "outsourcing" so much. The Taiwanese
worker, who may not even
speak English, cares about the quality of the part that leaves his
bench. Today's American factory
labourer really doesn't, as long as he gets his benefits. This is compounded
when plant
management doesn't care enough to test the parts, either.
And it's no skin off Auto Value's nose if they sell you a part that
doesn't work - they make as
much when you bring it back for replacement; the costs of reinstallation
and your time, after all,
are usually your problem.
Sooooo ... caution should be exercised when purchasing parts that originated
in the shop of the
CARDONE (pron. Car-do-ny) company, of San Antonio, TX (all the Bemidji
parts houses use this
supplier - it's in the small type on the box, under the parts house's
larger logo).
Those are the brakes. In recent testing, four brake master cylinders,
in a row, from this rebuilder
were found to be defective. Causes varied - some leaked fluid out the
seal, some drew air. None
were usable.
The Bemidji parts houses just react as if it was routine for this to
occur, and they all have lots of
excuses. But there is no excuse for a rebuilder to let master cylinders,
to be installed on people's
cars, leave the shop without quality control procedures.
And there is no excuse for the parts house to continue stocking, and
selling you, that supplier's
defective parts, until the supplier has taken steps to ensure quality.
Of course, this is Bemidji. The Bemidji parts houses know about this
problem, but they are
Bemidjians - they don't give a rat's behind about what they sell as
long as they get your money.
They have given no indication of changing suppliers, so it's caveat
emptor, as usual. It's up to the
customers to know that CARDONE is putting defective parts on the market,
and to insist upon
other brands if they can be found.
The Internet may disclose other parts sources (insist on a warranty
that covers shipping if
possible); and, for Bemidjians, out-of-town parts houses may work,
if one is going there.
Hopefully, some day, Wal-Mart will expand into this area (they
already have dependable tires and
batteries), and put the charlatans out of business, while providing
consumers a quality,
dependable source, as Wal-Mart has done with so many other things.
HOME REPAIR IN THE NORTHLAND
A few dependable tradesmen can be found here, but, as there is no work
ethic, most just waste your time, and many homeowners end up doing the
work themselves, or it just doesn't get done and the house rots, making
money for the demolition guys and the corrupt new home contractors.
ROOFING - a short survey of contractors
Crow Wing Exteriors
May give a good estimate, but doesn't show up for follow up and to
start job. This is run, near Walker, by Shannon Jacob and a female,
possibly his wife; the phone is usually answered by a machine. Calls are
often not returned. When one does reach Shannon and makes an appointment,
when the day of it comes, they may receive a call from the female saying
something like, "He wanted to bring over some samples, but the roofing
supplier hasn't gotten them in yet - they weren't on today's truck -
can we reschedule?" And then he just doesn't show up for the reschedule.
If one calls about it, and actually reaches Shannon, he just hangs
up on the customer. This is how they treat their customers, which
really isn't that uncommon here among the building trades. As these people
are practiced liars, for the jobs they actually do, the attractive estimate
may not be worth the wind that saying it produces.
Brother n'
Son Construction
In Menahga. Makes estimate - doesn't return calls to start work.
Morris Roofing
& Siding
Will schedule estimate appointment and not show up. On day of appointment
may call and say that they have too much work already.
* R Johnson
Construction (*the only positive review)
In Hackensack. Of the contractors we surveyed, this is the only one
that actually shows up for the estimate and to do the work. And the work
is done well. Mr. Johnson takes jobs, large and small, within a reasonable
driving distance, including Bemidji.
LOCALNET (An Internet Service Provider)
Localnet provides dial-up Internet service on Northern Minnesota exchanges.
It was once a recommended provider, but has changed over the years, and
is no longer recommended. If you like being halfway through downloading
an 11 megabyte file, and being "bumped" and disconnected, so you have to
start all over again, then Localnet is for you. If you put in a service
call, the Localnet techs will argue up and down that the problem is on
your end or in the phone lines. But it isn't. It's on their end and they
just don't want to do anything about it. So, if one wants Internet service
that's absolute manure, Localnet is the company to call.